This wasn't the last time I've been on the pod, so don't forget to catch it on Nebula, and support NJB in the process: nebula.tv/agenda Check out my Patreon: / adamsomething Second channel: / adamsomethingelse
@Generaal You forgot the name. Not Just Bikes. Did you know there are other things that go up hills, that are not cars? You should, you're Dutch after all. Hint: Tokyo has them!
@Generaal okay I can cycle to ikea in 20 minutes here in amersfoort. On the other side of the city, separated bike paths all the way and tunnels across the ring road. I can take the bus to anywhere pretty quickly and the same goes for groningen. I've lived in edmonton and Vancouver canada too, both rather flat and vancouver is rather bike friendly with most daily things from schools to grocery stores and sports facilities close by. Meanwhile you can't ride a bike in edmonton without being flatened by an SUV, all stores are massive and very far appart, meanwhile the bus service is extremely disconnected and it might as well not exist. There are a ton of flat cities that could do a lot in terms of infrastructure to make it more accessible, why not give it a try
@Generaal and how often do you need to haul large amounts of cargo? At ikea you get a bed you'll use for the next 20 years, a cabinet you'll use for the next 13 years, floor plints you can carry with a bike, light bulbs you can carry with a bike, blinders you can carry by bike, shelves you can carry by bike, If you can't carry it by bike, use your car. No one says cars should go, but it would be nice to not have to haul a 2 ton metal box every time you go shopping, get groceries, go to football practice, going to school, going to work. And i do agree that the public transit in the small villages could be better in groningen and drenthe, but what's exactly the problem with walkable cities? What problems arise for the villages around groningen?
Yes, but car manufacturers realized around 1904 that you could make the most money selling bigger and bigger cars, provided customers could pay for them. And market the personal living room on wheels, to further stroke individual egos. The state of mind has some shifting to do...
We have "suburbs" here in India too. But they are "15 minute" because someone will see there are no shops in a 15 min radius and then they will open a shop, inside their property. Someone else will see this and in a few years you have 5 shops, a restaurant and even a small clinic inside a colony (that's what we call a neighborhood) giving people everything they need. America can do this too if they do not wanna fundamentally restructure the system.
Hope, yes; damn good RU-vid for sure! Add 1 or 2 more of our Fav Urbanist/Transport Creators and we'd have the nerd equivalent of a 1960s/70s style SUPERGROUP: Cream, CSNY, ...🤯
Greetings from Tokyo 👋 I just came back from a 10min walk where I first chose between 7 restaurants and then went to the convenient store on the way back. I can also walk 15min to my office and am at Tokyo main station in 15min by subway. From there, the whole country is reachable in a couple hours by Shinkasen 🤩 Japan definitely also has some downsites and is by now means a Utopia come true - but man, the infrastructure and urban planning is so nice!
Your trains make me jealous ffs I only wish New Zealand had that sort of technology and the population density to make it worthwhile by simply moving everyone in the South Island to the North Island and tripling the population
Yah, man. Here in Kobe I live up next to a tiny mountain where I can hike for 2 hours and let my dog off the leash and less than 2k from a (honestly not that great) beach. I had to run an errand the other day and realized "wow, it only takes a 15 minute ride to get here, but it always seemed so far away..." Why did I feel like it's so far away? Because I have pretty much everything I need within a 10 minute walk/2 minute bike ride. Like you said, Japan isn't all hello kitties and sakura, but it's been built for convenience.
Japan has the admittedly dubious advantage of having been utterly obliterated in a world war in living memory. Because you all had to rebuild quickly and efficiently, you built the least expensive forms of transportation you could everywhere you could, and because everything else had been leveled by the bad ol' USA you didn't have NIMBYs or other idiocy getting in the way of efficient urban planning. Same thing happened in the Netherlands. The country was wrecked by the war and had to build something quickly, so they built bike lanes and train depots everywhere. The United States hasn't had a shooting war on our soil in over 150 years, and only bits of London were destroyed by the Blitz in the UK. We're working with ossified land allocation, inbred cultural institutions, and a political system with hubris overgrown from generations of effective material inviolability.
@@Frommerman Sometimes hearing this I actively wish one or more of NZ's cities got leveled into non existence and had to be rebuilt from scratch because of natural disaster, just so that our government would get its ass into gear and be able to tell the car lobby to go to hell and mass invest in public transport.
@@Frommerman If you look in the state in the decade after WWII, your explanation is less clear cut than you may sound. For example, a lot of places were The Netherlands was supposed follow the US such as the infamous plans to build a motorway through the centre of Amsterdam (not to the likes of the residents, though) and many canals were (supposed to be) replaced by motorways as well (see the Catharijnesingel in Utrecht for a former exampe), while Rotterdam, a city which was completely leveled in WWII, used to be one of the most car-centric ones (NJB even calls it the city rebuild for cars, though commentors noted that this has been changed more or less recently). What you see today in the Netherlands (or Western Europe in general) are more modern developments as thanks to the Marshallplan, West Europe recieved a lot of money which was used for car centric developments, this argument only truly applies to Eastern Europe where the USSR and its allies weren't as rich as the US and their allies (incidentally, these countries today develop towards car centrism). Relatedly, the destruction of Japan also doesn't mean car centrism didn't happen there as well. Some comments on NJB's video on the car dependent island nation Nassau mention that many places in Japan are very car centric like Okinawa (fitting for an Island which also is a US base), Sendai, etc. In fact, even places like Tokyo used to serve the car first before focusing more to public transportation. The population density just made car centrism much less viable than it is in places like the US. Lastly, it's one way to do a radical shift in development when a city has been levelled, it's the other when the said city _wasn't_ levelled - except of the immediate area where motorways were build, hence the phrase "America wasn't build for the car, it was bulldozed for the car".
My headcanon is that this is 40 minutes long because walking 15 minutes to a store, shopping 10 minutes, and back another 15, you'd just listen to the full thing.
"I will NOT get in the pod," said the suburbanite walking 3 seconds from their cutout empty five room mcmansion into their empty 8 seat SUV. "I will NOT eat the bug," they said, while driving to the Olive Garden to eat microwaved frozen factory food.
not to mention bugs are not even efficient or effective in terms of yields per carbon emissions, or as a protein source. Cows produce dry fertilizer (regular fertilizer has massive greenhouse impacts), leather, and so much more. The amount of cows in North America are similar to how many buffalo were here prior to colonization aswell. Chickens are just as effective in terms of protein per emission as bugs, and also not to mention most of bug protein isnt digestable by humans, so actually its worse.
Man, this type of talk is like a cool balm on my head telling me I'm not entirely insane and that there are more people outside of my few personal friends that think this way.
Austin, Texas was trying to make a transit project work for the city, but is going to have to cut the majority of the project. Meanwhile TxDOT is heavily funding a big 8 mile long Highway Widening right next to the city. TxDOT is not investing at all in the transit project, so they are a joke being called a transportation department when they only help build roads.
@@storkstorm6925 one of mine too. It has the potential, but the current leadership is going to screw over the future generations that already can't afford the average new car price.
Unfortunately this is how Departments of Transportation work all over the US. There's a federal money fountain flowing into them and they've only built highways for longer than any of the people working there have been alive.
I-35 isn't going next to Austin, it cuts straight through the heart of downtown. They want to bring the I-10 Katy Freeway stretch (We've all seen that, just google worst road in America) straight into Texas's least bad city.
Finally someone who actually talks about 15 minuet cities who can explain it! I’ve seen SO much conspiracy crap from out of nowhere recently about them, without anyone even explaining what it is. Cheers guys
@@soundscape26 That might be true, absolutely. But listening to this will help me understand it, which means that I can call out misinformation and explain rationally and calmly to those conspiracy people how they are wrong but more importantly what the truth actually is. So it is good either way in my opinion :)
Yeah, I'm just back from another podcast discussing the conspiracy mongers of 15 minute cities and if I didn't know they were deliberately lying, I would have called the conspiracy theorists insane. I'd tell you what they were claiming, but it's just too ridiculous.
Thanks for this podcast. I was just having this conversation with a friend about how they think that this 15 minute city concept is a way to trap people in one location because, "You have everything you need, why should you leave?" They dint understand how much government intervention it takes to create suburban hellscapes and how worse off everyone else is for it.
Funny thing is, I argued with a guy on twitter about the 30 km/h speed limit and he literally said "lowering the speed limit would restrict cars, which means people would buy them less and we really can't afford to do that in this economy." It's kind of sad. Like Adam said, Prague is some 30 - 50 years behind Amsterdam when it comes to urban planning. We will wake up eventually, but it's frustrating.
that is probably the dumbest argument I've ever heard. People will spend money on other things, the economy won't crash if people stop buying as many cars. They'll never stop buying them entirely.
Sidenote: Cash for Clunkers took hundreds of thousands of decent economy cars off the road in order to subsidize the purchases of people who were going to buy brand new cars anyway. Every old Dodge Caravan that got crushed was a vehicle that a poor family could have used. The government will always find a way to subsidize big business, it's their nature. And yes, it's both big parties doing it. TARP was Bush, and Cash For Clunkers was Obama. They've been doing the same thing with housing by refusing to regulate it and keeping interest rates at historic lows for decades.
People just don't understand that money isn't real. It's an abstraction of societies' resources. It doesn't go poof when you stop spending it. It just means you're not putting your resources into that thing anymore.
I'm Dutch and was only od enough to travel alone outside the country a view years ago. It honestly blew my mind that this way of planning even existed let alone that it is more common than the way we do it
Yep people thought new things must be better then old things and also Car companies and drivers associations are very creative and aggressive with their lobbying and advertising campaigns. In fact if you look at enough of Not Just Bikes stuff the Netherlands fell for it until a little more than thirty years ago when they mandated that infrastructure had to be built and behaviors encouraged to avoid the high number of pedestrian deaths.
@@timothystamm3200 make that since 1973, that is when it began. Rethinking because oil became scarce, if anything the oil embargo on Western Europe was the trigger for the Dutch. One can only hope both the Covid pandemic combined with the Ukraine war will force Europe to change. Sadly I have little hope for North America, Australia. China might be the exception because they clamp down on anything.
I'm conservative and still don't understand why this is a political issue. We had walkable cities back when the majority of the country was conservative before the 1940s.
In Utrecht the Netherlands, the aim is a 10 minute city. I live there and most things I can reach at 1 a 10 minute walk. For the DIY shop I need to bike 10 minutes.
Amazing! Really hoped to here some discussions about this because when I first saw what these people thought about 15 minute cities I lost all hope for humanity
People aren't objecting to the literal meaning, cities have been designed this way for millennia, this is nothing new. At least in the UK, they are objecting to what is being done in the name of "15 minute cities": lane closures (2 of 3 lanes closed for a cycle lane nobody uses), actual permanent road closures that started during COVID causing traffic, traffic filters (fancy word for some roads are closed at different times of the day, good lucky remembering which and when), random capricious fines for turning into a road at different times of the day making it stressful and difficult to drive legally, huge 20mph zones (including with multi lane roads), the Oxford permits that ban the use of a car with the exception of 20 days per year, with the approval of the government (you have to apply for a permit), things like ULEZ (Ultra Low Emissions Zones) that target cars that 4 years ago were meant to be the greenest ones and recommended by the government, etc. If this doesn't sound like what you are seeing, just be mindful this could be coming to a 15 minute city you are in. It has come to mine (Harold Wood, UK) and it's a terrifying. From August I will be charged £12.50 ($15.30) per day if I want to drive to a park 7 minutes away, because my walking distance one is very small. That's what I and others object to, not a grocery store being build nearby...
@@DigiDriftZone Bad implementation. Who knew the British would do such a thing. Always assuming a code instead of infrastructure will solve it. Sounds like that cycle lane doesn't go anywhere and like they don't want to rebuild roads to keep cars out of places they don't want them or slow them down where they want them slow. Plus they're doing that before they build out transit or more usable bike infrastructure I assume.
I took the train Toronto and was blown away by the number of brand new giant pickup trucks buzzing around the very large city (with no cargo or trailers as per normal). Yet more evidence that the auto manufactures and big oil have been so effective with their marketing dollar. Went down to Ohio right after and was offered a PU or minivan (I took the van) from the rental agency. Walked through the lot and it was full of PUs.
Not to sound weird but I think we as a society stand on the brink of a second enlightenment, this time regarding things like political representation, human-centric urban planning, work-life balance, and health & nutrition.
I live in southwestern Ontario as a retiree (2015) in a small city and can't afford to relocate. I chose my townhouse back in 2003 because it was near the town centre, 2 blocks away from a family-run grocery store, 4 blocks away from the hospital, and a few blocks away from my bank, a hairdresser, pharmacy, and family. Well the family had a dust up and closed the grocery store and now I have to take my pay wall 10 minutes away to buy food, a big shiny new hospital was built on the city's southern boundary and that is another 10 minute pay wall drive, the pharmacy moved from downtown, the hairdresser retired, and family has dispersed. So here I am at 68 more or less alone and if I can't or can't afford to drive, I'm fucked.
It’s my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to drive my 80,000 dollar ford F350 to Walmart 40 minutes away. So what if my car payment is more expensive than my mortgage? Those groceries won’t drive themselves.
@@carlm8892 Even ignoring the fact that what you describe as 15-minute cities are still pretty distinct from the original idea, you're conflating Oxford's 15-minute cities plans (which is the original idea i.e. better neighbourhood centres, more local amenities, etc.) with the Low/Local/Limited Traffic Neighbourhoods plans (i.e. limiting car use) and these LTNs are still a far cry from the 15-minute cities you're crying about.
Truly disheartening to know that people will oppose the idea of making sure stuff is close to where people live. Just completely divorced from reality.
Whenever they say "15 minute cities are a prison" or some other nonsense, I like to show them pictures of classic American cities. Their brains are fried once they realize that the America of old that they claimed to admire so much, lived more densely than they did.
Adding to this, my parents shame me for walking 12 minutes just to get groceries when i can just drive there while mentioning the huge roads & lack of trees supporting it & my counter would be, "i ain't paying for gas, as hot as it is, it's good for my health anyways, if i disclude the fumes & noise."
@@ReySchultz121 Yeah it's so weird how people respond when you tell them you walk somewhere. I always get a weird look and people are telling me that if I'm not going to drive there that I should buy an electric scooter. It's like locomotion through ones own body for the sole purpose of transport is some kind cultural taboo.
having things within 15 minutes is fine... being fined for going outside of your section of the city is very very bad and that is what is being proposed and implemented. Pull your head out.
Almost as if it's easier for authoritarian countries to blaze rail lines through anywhere they want, as opposed to nominally-democratic countries like the US with some semblance of individual/property rights. Not to mention, Russia and China aren't delaying transportation projects for 3 years because somebody came across a rare snail habitat in the corridor.
Which is stupid on our part because we have the rail infrastructure and right of ways but we let public infrastructure investments occur through private corporations so they are owned by those companies or their successors and they refuse to let us operate a competent train network.
@@Zalis116 Yeah, it is amazing how in the USA people were actually happy to see their homes and neigbourhoods being flattened, to make room for the freeways cutting through their cities. /sarcasm off
@@Zalis116meanwhile the US blazes highways though the heart of downtown US cities flattening blocks and blocks of neighborhoods of people, while also destroying the rail and public transports and the vast rail lines that america once had post ww2...
I know a city planner of several decades who said you’d be called a communist for suggesting ways to improve city life via routing, shipping, traffic, zoning, etc basically his job was reduced to map drawing
I wish these urban planning youtubes had been a thing back in college. I would've probably been interested in majoring for it back then and going into the profession if I knew about it. Urban planning scatches my design itch and desire to improve places, but I was totally unaware of it as a profession or problem back then.
Because the current crop of people dont just want to make it convenient they also want to punish people that dont follow their vision. You have to end up forcing people to not travel out of the area or some of the shops will go under and nobody will replace them which ends up forcing you to force others into doing jobs they dont want or subsidizing those jobs and businesses. There is no magic answer here and there will always be drawbacks.
4:00 one minor correction. PragerU is funded by the Mercer brothers, not the Koch brother. The Mercers also fund the Daily Wire. They’re a lot more extremist than the Kochs (who generally stayed out of “culture war” issues). The Kochs fund more “traditional” conservative institutions like the heritage foundation and American Enterprise Institute.
It's actually the Wilks Brothers, Ferris and Dan who fund both PragerU and the Daily Wire. There are no Mercer brothers involved in far-right political influence campaigns. You are thinking of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer. They fund far-right rags like Breitbart.
That Big Oil and Big Car feel necessary to come out with these conspiracy theories clearly show that they feel threatened and that the opposition to their car-dependent dystopian ideas is growing. Keep up with the good work, all urbanists!
@@MrTaxiRob but like withdrawal and heroin substitutes it's always better than continuing hardcore heroin use, and it's a slow spiral to better Place. ofcourse the voice of public transport and urbanzing should be the loudest and or focus, but we shouldn't antagonize EV, just ignore it and focus our hate on cars, car dependency and big oil
@@joeribaars5481 I don't hate cars. I do hate car dependency and big oil though. Like, we should have car free lifestyle choices that are affordable, but still allow people to get themselves to work where public transit can't take them. I live in a walkable neighborhood, but I have to drive to work every day, there's no way around that for me and millions of people like me that need to carry tools and equipment to jobsites. And I used to drive an actual cab, which took other cars off the road. Ride apps and delivery apps don't do that because they are not dedicated paratransit vehicles. For the last 8 years people have been buying cars that they normally wouldn't have because they think they can pay them off driving for Uber or Doordash. Cabs run 24 hours a day, app cars are just regular cars. They are parked for 16 hours a day, maybe more.
@@MrTaxiRob EV's are still useful for things like a shopping run or a camping trip though. Obviously bike, tram or bus is better but I'm still waiting for my local council to finish upgrading the local bus station.
Some of the Chinese upper class still like American style suburbs - you’ll see some on the outskirts of the coastal cities. They’re very tasteless nouveau riche-core
You’re point on how domestic car industries effect people’s perceptions is so spot on. My dad’s family come from an auto manufacturing town in Northern Michigan and my great-great grandfather was one of the og mechanics at the Dearborn Ford plant when the Model T was in production. Cars are borderline scared in my family; even my relatively pro-urbanist, suburb-skeptic dad will fight tooth and nail against public transit and for car ownership. He’s a pretty intelligent and relatively reasonable guy most of the time, but he goes schizo on cars, government regulation and guns which is ironic because he commutes to his job in Manhattan by train, where he works as federal bank examiner.
Sweden is also structured in a similar way. Each neighborhood has a center and they generally have grocery stores, restaurants, etc. You are never to far away from basic necessities, and if you need more stuff take the bus to the city center.
But malls are taking over, has for twenty years now. Just at the end of town with a ICA maxi, Elgiganten and exactly the same shops as every town in Sweden.
@@johanj3674 yep! It's incredible how the Nordic countries have a vastly superior system in almost every way, yet they somehow cannot help following the American way and often even out-american America. The huge emergence of car-centered malls and urban sprawls is just one example.
It really does feel like anything can now be turned into a conspiracy. Even something as banal as "let's drive our cars less and set up some bikes lanes". This is one of the more hilarious ones of recent times. Though this makes me wonder now if were gonna start seeing car nuts try to rip up bike lanes and the like, because they think they're going to be locked into a stupider version of a City 17 scenario. Which is worrying when that's literally the best infrastructure approach to deal with climate change.
Also consider now that Vulkan Files came out, a lot of alternative media is apparently FSB astroturf designed to also create this agitation against western governments too. It really feels like there is insanely intense pressure to gaslight the public into falling into these information silos designed to make them feel scared, hopeless, and impotently angry at imaginary problems.
Just because the environmentalists don't mean for government overreach to be apart of 15 minute cities doesn't mean that it isn't a real and current issue. This is the same problem that the podcasters have, just because that isn't your intention doesnt mean that isn't the current reality of the situation. You can't just say "I didn't mean it" doesnt mean that you magically erase the reality of the situation.
Even heard some people in my city complain about "the 15 minute city" conspiracy and that is in the city that basically started the "15 minute city" almost 50 years ago (Groningen, the Netherlands) but of course those people did not (want to) understand that.
@@Marco_Onyxheart rotterdam. At least compared to the rest of the country. Then you have some 20 cities in which you can't walk from one side to the other in half an hour
i used to live 2.5 blocks from 2 convenience stores 3 blocks from a local grocery store 3-5 blocks from several parks less than a block from 2 local bakeries a local brewery less than 5 blocks from cafes and restaurants my kiddo could walk to school it was about a mile she would have been able to walk all the way through high school but we got priced out and had to move basically to the suburbs if i had realized what we were giving up i would have fought harder to keep it but we would have had to move eventually
It's almost like the housing market recognizes that walk able neighborhoods are desirable and rare then jacks up the prices! (often destroying the neighborhood in the process too)
3:30 I always get unreasonably happy when I hear that its only one Koch brother now. Same applies for Thatcher. Maggie's in a box, in a box, Maggie's inna box :)
You mention how the Netherlands doesn't have a car industry. Fun fact: there are 3 sportscar companies (not just Spyker), 2 doing kit-cars, 3 doing specialist vehicles and 4 truck companies (not just DAF).
I think it is really important to implement better infrastruktur like 15 minute cities, public transport etc. before taking legislative action against cars. The cars are most peoples current solution to the problem "how do I get to anywhere?" and taking that solution away before giving them a alternative is going to make them rightfully angry and uncooperative with the city transformation plan. I see that problem in Germany, where they are currently implementing all those bans and deadlines while investment in public transit has been lacking and privatisation has lead to a almost criminal money extraction from our once great public transit infrastructure
21:50 "this is by no means, like, 'learn to code', trying to teach miners how to code or something" - actually they are teaching some miners how to code. There's a very good documentary from 2020 about a 45-year-old ex-miner and his journey to become a programmer, it's called "A New Shift".
There was a scandal in West Virginia a couple years back where a guy took about a million dollars of government funds saying that he would train miners to code, then he under delivered just vanished. I don't really think that miners cant learn to code, but the pitch includes too many buzzwords and the US really doesn't give oversight to these retraining programs, especially if the government just outsources it. Cool annecdote though.
The Netherlands DOES have a car industry. There is a vehicle manufacturing plant in Born, and there are many businesses who supply parts to German auto makers. We also move a lot of raw material through the Rotterdam seaport to German industries, including the automotive industry. So while the main focus of the Dutch auto industry is trucks (as in HGVs) there most certainly is a car industry here as well.
This was great. It boggles the mind how dependence (on cars and oil and government sponsored road infrastructure) is seen as freedom and rugged individualism. And walking using one's own legs is... oppression?
This episode reinforces my passion for media literacy and requiring it from kindergarten to 12th grade, or throughout compulsory education. Also, how funny would it be to teach kids to make fun of truck owners like NJB said in his latest video?
@@soundscape26 Of course you didn't watch NJB's video on SUVs and trucks because, if you did, then you would've known I made a fucking joke. Thank you for reinforcing my belief in requiring media literacy so kids don't play themselves like you just did.
"Organic farming" is another example of what we used to call "farming" before the same corporate interests responsible for jacking urban planning also jacked farming for their benefit.
@10:50 There are a lot people are unhappy with their lives Today, because they’re not living as well as they did back then. But I think a lot of that rage comes from the lack of social fulfillment and regular close human contact. A “15 minute city” Can alleviate this by putting you in proximity to a lot of people in a smaller footprint. A lot of the conspiracy theorist types use cities as an example for social atomization, that they’re very impersonal and lonely places, where people disappear and fall through the cracks. But isn’t it easier to develop a community where You have people living above and below you, instead of living in a house on a 1 acre plot of land and your neighbor’s door is a five minute walk?
Not if they're all yuppies. You know, the people who move to your neighborhood and act like they owned it all along, treat you like you're a mugger just for saying "good morning," and still drive sport sedans and big SUVs they don't even need because they have no kids and work from home.
Greetings from (slightly disturbed) Paris! The term used by the city hall was "ville du quart d'heure", which means "the quarter hour city". Maybe better without the numbers. But gosh, if a number is now a conspiracy trigger, we're doomed ! Somehow, Paris has been a quarter hour city for more than a century. Maybe not for absolutely everything, but the core city of Paris (like many cities in Europe) had most of what someone needs daily in a rather small radius around his home. From groceries to bars, restaurants, doctors, entertainment, culture, schools, transportation... One would have to be an expert in trigonometry and triangulation and voluntarily do it to find oneself in a location in Paris proper more than 400 meters (quarter mile) from a metro station. Here there's really no conspirationists about the 15 minute city. Just the usual neverending complaint against the anti-car "BoBo urbanites" (BoBo means Bourgeois-Bohème, often used in a derogatory manner by those hell bent on driving their car for everything, even when there are ample alternatives). There's also the national sport of Paris bashing but that's often jealousy and an irrational attachment to their car for certain people. There's probably also a spoonful of misanthropy motivating a hatred of public transportation but more often than not, they simply chose to live in a location where there's no public transit so that they can have their energy guzzling, money pit, little box of a house. Sighs...
The only problem i have with the 15 minute city plans is the combination with fees for roads. Which is one of the first and foremost reason people are against it. Especially in cities where you have to drive through most parts of town to avoid traffic jams. Some jobs cannot and will not be digitalized and a another point being people depend on trade or atleast the logistic infrastructure. Especially when people see “elitist” or whatever you call them. People with a power position making use of this extreme bureaucratic measures they tend to go for conspirator thinking especially when the government already denies or avoids fixing problems(maybe even consciously create). Another thing is mostly left wingers and liberals are totally not against this agenda and its implementation. But they are against forced zoning of cities (among racial divides) which caused slums and poor people in the first place. Let it develop with the communities over time, i don’t see why the rush is needed. Locals knows best, if the 15 minute city was a local initiative and not a lobbyist technocratic hellish policy alot of people like myself would join the initiative. Another argument is that how and where do we get the money to change our whole infrastructure in most of the world. Its utopianism not a functional idea. Trying radical societal changes while social distrust, corruption, wars, racial tensions, 2 polarized big groups are very very high it will create space for a civil war. Especially when policies already destroyed the lives of alot. 15 minutes essentially already exist in Europa till some extent, me i’m dutch and i wished my city was more like 15 minute city. (Less cars, more busses, more walkable areas on certain roads, more greenery, its already there almost but not everywhere in places where it could be) But again, how is someone going to implement this in a short time without coming across as a communist within the USA and canada. Will this system be exploited by ruthless capitalism? Will the left-liberals enforce these policies by sheer force, totalitarianism? Because like always they will naively follow everything that lobbyist sell which sounds good and lovely in their naive eyes. This is the biggest reason why i see this fail everywhere around the world. The 15 minute city becomes politicized, the left shall be fully in favor of these concepts while the right might fully disregard it because they don’t want to be seen as a commie. The left shall be naive for lobbying ending up with the 15 minute cities being a disaster ending up with the conservatives using this as political win. This is basically what always happens with ideas like these. Same with the climate agenda being hijacked by left wing extremist making it possible that the whole Dutch energy grid being destroyed making lives for the average person miserable. Now they caused half of the USA and atleast 1/3 of Europa to deny climate change, you cant blame the person believing in climate change denial and promoting big oil companies lies. But maybe making them avoid getting those ideas in the first place by not making a fuckup policy and implementing it by force. You know how expensive it is for a person who does a blue color job to stay around in times like these?This is why people believe in conspiracies of communist nwo, because of the sheer incompetence of the left and liberal alliances. Because everything the left and the liberals gets their hands on become a ideological invested mess without any rational thinking involved making me dislike the idea of 15 minute cities atleast in the present form.
Misanthropist here and I have to inform you that, if I have to choose between dealing with people on PT or in the cars, I prefer PT. I just hate driving among people I hate and despise. At least, without two-ton tin armor, the damage they can cause is less. (Of course, the best solution for me is biking on safe lanes).
What an amazing podcast, wish Jason did it with facecams & uploaded on YT too but anyways, this was great. And Adam deserves an award for the Zizek impression 😂
When Oxford tried implementing something like this… conspiracy theorists literally say you won’t be able to leave so called “districts”… what they forget is that’s it’s literally the same thing as a superblock, travel by CAR is limited.
Listening to your two was really enjoyable. I feel the car dependency rearing it's head now that I'm looking for a job in the manufacturing industry and I don't have a driver's license.
Good thing they're not in control of our US government. If your elected representitive does things to upset their base they'll be replaced. That's how it works.
My town in the Netherlands has actually expanded the town centre for cars and it doesn't work. Cars just driving through at walking speed because they're too big to go faster. And me on my bike can't pass those slow monstrosities.
“Numbers are communism. especially when they disagree with them, then that’s Jewish” I’ve never heard the right wing summed up so concisely before. Seriously though, this was a great podcast. I loved what you said about diverting auto manufacturing in your “dream” because ironically it’s the auto industry that shows the potential that could have. Both Japan and Germany became the worlds largest auto manufacturers after WWII when they were forced to divert their aviation and military industries to other tasks. Hopefully food for thought.
It is bizarre how often these conspiracies line up with monied interests. I just don't understand how these people can feel that they are against big money whilst also desperately defending the oil industry (for example). Surely they can seen the contradiction there?
It goes both ways because both sides consist of idiot humpers. Pharmaceutical Industry for example is in everyone's pocket, Big Industrial Rail, Big Energy (not just oil), and yes Big Finance for the United States. Seriously and it's not just in the U.S. it's in Europe too, why is FRA raising the retirement age despite huge corporate profits that can be taxable? It's about hoarding money and influence period.
@@rodimcgeesums633 Exactly,. And that is the reason that going on about big oil influencing the climate discussion. Then turning around and making wise cracks about concerns over vac injury is hypocritical. A case of pick your monster based on political wing.
Maybe they just want to stick it to the "other side." I mean all kinds of people on twitter and big corporations were calling themselves "the resistance" for opposing Trump, even though he was about as anti establishment as any president in living memory. Twitter under its new owner, has pulled the curtain on how they used their influence to censor things on behalf of government agencies and it was never to help Trump. (see Government Truth Cops - ShoeOnHead)
As a car lover myself I for one hate living in car dependent society I’d like some public transportation instead of spending 30 dollars to go anywhere in an Uber when my shit breaks down lol to my understanding nobody is tryna take my car away it just don’t make sense that I have to drive for everything in the suburbs I love driving ofc and the less of y’all with cars the emptier the roads are for me lol