Fifteen Minutes

You you've heard of the 15 minute city concept, right? If you're reading this blog, you probably think the idea is a complete bag of shit. Strangely enough, The Guardian has managed to find a writer who is all for it

 

And even more stangely enough, the Guardian has managed to find a writer whose attitude is dripping with contempt for anyone who disagrees with him and whose article is written in the condescending style of a school ma'am disciplining a naughty five year old. To be honest, he doesn't look much older than twelve himself

In praise of the ‘15-minute city’ – the mundane planning theory terrifying conspiracists

Even the headline starts with calling us conspiracists, which nicely sets the tone for the rest of the article

There’s an international socialist conspiracy afoot, and it wants to make it easier to walk to the shops. Fringe forces of the far left are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot. The liberty of the rush-hour commute, the sanctity of the out-of-town shopping centre and the righteousness of the suburban food desert is under threat as never before. The name of this chilling global movement? The “15-minute city”.

The article is all about bigging up the concept and telling us how amazing life is going to be when everyone is only 15 minutes away from a unicorn, but doesn't do anything to explain how all this is going to happen

Simply put, the 15-minute city principle suggests you should have your daily needs – work, food, healthcare, education, culture and leisure – within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from where you live. It sounds pleasant enough, but in the minds of libertarian fanatics and the bedroom commentators of TikTok, it represents an unprecedented assault on personal freedoms.

Well I'll explain why this Libertarian Fanatic (I don't do Tik Tok) thinks it's an unprecedented assault on freedoms

Simply put, the 15-minute city principle suggests you should have your daily needs...

What do I need?

I order to have everyones daily needs placed within fifteen minutes of them, people cannot possibly be allowed to decide what their daily needs are. The central planning team will have to get together and determine everyones needs for them

I need a second hand bookshop. I can't live without one. As it happens, there is one within fifteen minutes of my house, but it isn't within fifteen minutes of my mums house. The bookshop can't be moved close to my mums, because that would mean moving it further away from someone else

So how does it work? Do you have to first find out who needs the bookshop and then move them closer to it? 

I also need a gun shop. Can't keep up the clay pigeon shooting without one. The closest gun shop to me is twenty minutes in the car, so they are going to have to build a lot more gun shops. Oh, and the range is 45 minutes away, so gonna need more of those too

Am I being pedantic?

you should have your daily needs – work, food, healthcare, education, culture and leisure

No

The major problem with the 15 minute idea is that cities and towns already exist and they were not built in this manner. If you could start from scratch and build new towns on unused land, following this method, maybe you could make it work, but you can't change existing towns and cities into 15 minuters

The town where I live is probably similar to many. There is a central shopping district and business district. Further out, there residential, mainly terraced houses. Further out than that, there are residential area which are more urban. Dotted around the outskirts are small commercail districts with production and warehousing

If you head out of the town in a northerly direction, you hit the urban areas for the next, bigger town. You you head out to the south, you reach the moors and farming areas before hitting another, larger town. East and West have more farming and smaller villages

Even if you could decide on what are 'needs', you couldn't supply those needs to everyone in the area, by putting them in a fifteen minute radius

within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from where you live. It sounds pleasant enough,

It doesn't sound pleasant to me. I fucking hate bikes and I fucking hate riding them. I don't mind walking, but if something is too far to walk, I'm getting in the car

The article even rubbished out of town shopping areas, as though they can somehow be miraculously integrated into 15 minute time zones. Are we all to have a DFS within 15 minutes walk? How about a Tesco supermarket? The Left loose their shit when Tesco Metro charges more for goods than they do in a superstore, bacuause the Left do not understand the economic concept of 'convenience' and 'bulk' (Or any other economic concept, for that matter)

So we all need a supermarket within 15 minutes walk, right? Because small shops charge more for the same products, so we wouldn't want that

Anyhow, bollocks asside, it doesn't matter how much this Gurdaian child wants to believe the 15 minute city is a good thing and it doesn't matter how many benefits he thinks it's going to bring, it isn't

Look at what's already happened. Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol, Canterbury and Sheffield have already made a start down this road, and what is the first thing they have done?

Blocked some streets to traffic

That's it. No roads have been changed or new roads built. No goods and services (needs) have been brought to areas that don't have them close by. Nothing has been done to make it easier to walk or ride bikes

The only thing these councils seem to want to do, is make it harder to drive. The name '15 Minute City' and useful idiots in the Guardian, are simply the duck blind they will use to achieve it