The discussion a few days ago when Bloomberg addressed the conspiracy talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34966171
The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
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Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not that different from neighborhoods that ban through through truck traffic, or only allow residents to park curbside. There is a fundamental trade-off between favoring people transiting through an area and residents. As someone traveling through you want wide straight roads with high speed limits. As a resident through traffic burdens you with pedestrian danger, air pollution, noise, and more crashes. So yo…
it becomes different when there is automated, remote enforcement associated with fines
Let me introduce you to the "speed camera".
(Invented by Maurice Gatsonides many years ago as a rally training tool, of all things)
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#33Maybe it’s not such a great thing that we all have an equal voice.
Don't worry. Our democracy already ignores the voices of the bottom 40%. And mostly listens to the top 0.01%.
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not that different from neighborhoods that ban through through truck traffic, or only allow residents to park curbside. There is a fundamental trade-off between favoring people transiting through an area and residents. As someone traveling through you want wide straight roads with high speed limits. As a resident through traffic burdens you with pedestrian danger, air pollution, noise, and more crashes. So yo…
it becomes different when there is automated, remote enforcement associated with fines
That's not a very difficult technology. Thankfully, depending on your jurisdiction, that's seen as a violation of civil rights, and is illegal (unless manually operated by a police officer, in the case of Nevada, for instance).
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#35Here’s a conspiracy: car manufacturers don’t want walkable cities.
Look what's happening to car manufacturers. They're becoming "mobility" companies.
They aren't switching to EV because they want to, it makes no sense for them as businesses, in multiple ways. An EV is a commodity vehicle - that's why Apple can build a car without a hundred year history of auto building.
The car makers are being forced to do this by policy regulators. The government is essentially managing the auto industry now to force their outcome.
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#36In the most-detailed example of such initiatives described in the article, the steps taken in Oxford include ALPR-camera-triggered automated fines for driving on certain roadways at certain times of certain days to those "without a permit" (who is eligible for the special permits, how eligibility is determined, etc. is not discussed) and actual blocking of other streets using bollards (and heavy planters and other ob…
The massive headache for anyone trying to engage with this is the difference between what the actual proposals are and what has been "read into" them by people with paranoid worldviews who are drunk on culture war.
> ALPR-camera-triggered automated fines for driving on certain roadways at certain times of certain days to those "without a permit"
This is basically the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge system which has been in operation for twenty years.
> and actual blocking of other streets using bollards
Yes, this is a standard anti-"rat run" technique to prevent through traffic in residential areas to improve safety.
Yes, there are people against driving! No, it's not a globalist conspiracy, it's people who want to be able to cycle or walk safely or take their kids to school.
A road increases freedom of movement for people in cars and decreases freedom of movement for people on foot. A busy enough road is an impassable barrier.
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not that different from neighborhoods that ban through through truck traffic, or only allow residents to park curbside. There is a fundamental trade-off between favoring people transiting through an area and residents. As someone traveling through you want wide straight roads with high speed limits. As a resident through traffic burdens you with pedestrian danger, air pollution, noise, and more crashes. So yo…
it becomes different when there is automated, remote enforcement associated with fines
I think we'd be better off with 100% toll roads. Instead of feeling like you got singled out with a fine, just pay for what you use.
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automobile dependent zoning regulations favor making driving easy to the detriment to everything else. Entire neighborhoods were bulldozed to make room for highways. Preserving unlimited free parking comes at the expense of rent zooming up due to the new supply of real estate being blocked. There are other ways for people to get downtown. Parking can be pushed to the periphery of the business & entertainment district…
The root cause is the hubris to think we can "centrally plan but not really" utopia with these sorts of broad brush regulatory and carrot/stick policy changes. Suburban sprawl (though they had different words for it) was very much the "15-minute city" urban planning buzzword of its day. As an aside sidewalks are SOP these days in all but the most rural of road projects so progress is being made.
You can't not centrally plan a city. Thousands of decisions have to be made every year about roads and traffic.
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#39[flagged]
Who's they?
In New York, it was conviced monopolist GM.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
Re: The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
it becomes different when there is automated, remote enforcement associated with fines
That's not a very difficult technology. Thankfully, depending on your jurisdiction, that's seen as a violation of civil rights, and is illegal (unless manually operated by a police officer, in the case of Nevada, for instance).
Oxford is not in Nevada.
This is where the culture war comes in: there's no reason why people in Nevada should care about traffic planning in Oxford!