Nick Fletcher, a Conservative member who represents part of Yorkshire, in northern England, called for a debate about “the international socialist concept” of 15-minute cities, which, he said, “would take away your personal freedoms.”

Yeah right, like the freedom to have people, places and stuff u need out of reach.

Nice read OP, thanks.

Everyone who is confused by why conservatives are opposed to 15-minute cities, there's one simple thing to understand:

Conservatives think that city=scary ethnic people, and suburb=nice white people.

Anything that appears to disrupt the urban/suburban divide, they see as another attempt to de-segregate, which they hate.

Doesn’t seem like the author really offers any possible reasons for the rights reaction to responsible urban planning, so perhaps I will offer some.

Conservatism isn’t solely a political philosophy that a person decides to adopt. There are personally traits that feed into a person’s susceptibility to right wing thought. People who have low openness tend to be conservative. To paraphrase Buckley, their brains wired up to tell them to stand athwart history and yell STOP.

These people all grew up in a car centric world, where dad commuted in to the city from the suburbs and mom drove them to the school everyday. That, to them is the comfortable, natural order of things. Their psychology begs them to preserve that order at all costs.

Even though that model of planning is really new, only going back about 70 or 80 yrs, to them it is the natural way. Any alternative looks like change and progress, which they are psychologically predisposed to be suspicious of. All change to them, can be reduced to something that is being taken away from them. Something that disrespects their forefathers.

Not all change is good and some conservative thought is useful when a society is planning its future. But, it’s really dangerous when we have made mistakes.

In our modern political landscape, there are charlatans like Peterson and Jones who know how to pick at their audience’s psychology and pull dollars out of it. They cynically use the fears of their audience and package up any “new” ideas as existential threats.

The key when discussing progress with conservatives is to opening them up to the idea that we are going back. In this case specifically, 15min cities sounds scary but “returning to the urban planning ideas that motivated our great grandparents” might sound great. Same change different reaction.

Conservative cruelty cannot be accepted or forgiven but the psychology that drives it must be understood and accounted for when developing communication strategies.

One thing I noticed when travelling through the states is how many American cities have no city centre with just pedestrian traffic. Everything is made with cars in mind, everything is a thoroughfare. In the city where I live in the Netherlands, I can get on my bike and be in the city centre within fifteen minutes. It's faster to get there by bike, than it is by car. and the city is better for it.

I like going to the market on foot, visiting the city centre on foot, going to pubs, and restaurants, and everything you want out of a city on foot, bike or public transit. You guys would like it too if you convinced city planners to give it a try.

The right wing is afraid of a totalitarian dystopia? Uhhhh what? Republicans have become more and more authoritarian, but the line being drawn is...letting people walk to places instead of drive?

Baffling.

This is the first time I've heard of this concept. lemme check

EDIT: I'm confused, this sounds like a normal city? Like, there's a school, residential areas, convenience stores, a mall, a hospital, a forest, and green grocers just surrounding my workplace right now.

EDIT2: Browsing the thread made me realize that this is about US cities. Now it makes sense. But it's still confusing why this is a debate, life is much more fulfilling, more eventful with this kind of city.

I love transit and I live less than 15-minutes from a bus stop, but last night it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to get home by the bus that would have been around 30 minutes of a drive. Just having a bus stop isn't enough to make people consider switching. It needs to be at least reasonably competitive in time or price.

Also car advocates always are sure to bring up their disgust with sharing their commute with nasty people or the homeless. That's a tried and true method to drum up fear against a working, affordable transportation system.

i didn't know there was objections to this, i read about this concept about 4/5 years ago and i've been obsessed with the idea ever since. i even moved to a sort-of 30 minute city. i was doing some searches online after reading this and without adding anything inflammatory to my search terms i saw a predominantly negative response to this in the UK. im baffled. british MP Mark Dolan called this a "socialist" and "dystopian" idea and said it would create "a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious".

15 minute cities don't make an enemy out of anyone. being afraid of this is baffling to me.

I think most people who object to 15-minute cities also object to cities themselves, so it’s easy to convince them that anything that happens in urban areas (and especially anything that benefits city-dwellers) is evil.

I can only imagine how awesome it would be to live in an area like they describe towards the beginning where it's easily walkable and you can get to almost everything you need easily, safely, and without a vehicle. I'm so jealous of people who live anything close to being like that!

P.S. I always love seeing your posts here. You share such great articles! You've been killin' it for quite a while now. I appreciate you!

I mean, in the US there's an entire movement of people whose sole driving ideology is objecting to everything that a different group of people is for in order to "own" them