Here's how I interpret their reactions:
Conservatives tend to have much larger amygdalas, which makes sense, as their worldview is based around fear. The brain/ amygdala treats threats to personal identity with the same fear response as physical threats.
A 15-minute city means you don't need a car, and it's far less convenient to have one. But for a lot of people, especially the conservative folks, their car (or bro-dozer) is their identity, or at least a huge part of it. Their identity is fragile enough already, it can't withstand removing a big chunk of it. (How would a man know he's a man without a truck to perform masculinity in?)
Therefore, a walkable city is s threat to their vehicle, which is a threat to their identity, which is just as frightening as a physical threat, like being hunted for sport.
In the sense of all politics is sexual pathology I'd argue these people would to just like to fuck their car. It's an object kink or however that's called. I ain't shaming anybody over it, it's not like the car is going to care, but it makes for terrible transportation planning
You ever see how much car-people describe cars as sexy or go like weirdly overboard with the curves? It's because they all want to fuck cars. We should just allow that, hell, build infrastructure for it.
I wish I could find it and share the actual quote, but someone on Twitter (iirc) posted something like, "the best way to approach urbanism and biking to conservatives is to say 'I'm for traditional neighborhoods that use independent transportation methods without government overreach' or 'I want fiscally responsible transportation methods'."
To no one's surprise, these refer to walkable cities, using walking or biking, and include buses with the second quote.
you may get them to agree to it in a conversation or two, but they're going to forget after 10 seconds of FoxNews or a Facebook rant. They certainly won't do anything like organize or boycott oil money, or even something as small as voting for city council measures to increase public transportation
This but not sarcastically. I'm politically conservative, and for the same reasons that I'm an environmental conservationist. Framing things in a way that makes sense to the listener is just good messaging.
yeah except the problem isn't messaging to the sensibilities of individual conservative people, the 15 minute city concept is offensive to oil and automotive money. The private car industry has had a strangle on urban planning since the 1950s and they're not going to release it just because some words get swapped around. They'll only change it through destroying their power, and that's the part that politically conservative people aren't going to fathom nor support.
Also the messaging of "get anywhere you need to go through 15 minutes of walking or cycling" is already as good of messaging as it's going to get. That sounds like absolute utopia on its face. Conservatives have somehow twisted that already perfect message to mean no one would be allowed to leave a grid or that people are going to be shot in the street for thoughtcrimes. They think it means cars will be outright illegal, or I've even seem some claim the concept means parents and children will belong to different sectors and won't be allowed to see one another.
They'll also point to crime rates in large cities and cherry-pick statistics that suit their arguments without doing any in depth analysis. Especially when they can parrot irresponsible politicians. They don't care that cities like Baltimore and St. Louis have it really bad right now because all they every hear about is Chicago. And as with other topics, the problematic ones will reject any new information you present that doesn't match their pre-determined conclusions.
If you try to discuss what "per-capita" means, it doesn't matter. They'll point to the fact that there were 100 murders without any regard to the fact that it may be out of a half million people or more. They won't acknowledge the different kinds of drug crimes that happen in their own towns like meth production.
The problematic people refuse to accept the fact that poor economic conditions lead to higher crime rates. They'll give the "get an education, get a better job, people flipping burgers shouldn't earn $15 / hour." arguments. They don't care because often they haven't experienced it, and even those who have lack the empathy to see that the impoverished people in the country aren't so different from the impoverished people in big cities.
I could continue this rant but I think I'll end here. I'm trying to be cautious about using the word "they" as a blanket statement. Not all people who are conservatives believe these things, but you can't deny that a fair portion do. It's hard for us all to find a common ground and speak the same language.
i mean I'm gonna be honest, I think conservatives at their core have an underlying belief in misogyny, transphobia, or racism that informs all their subsequent beliefs. It's their starting point. So when you try to get into very complicated things like how to set up urban planning to facilitate better transportation, conservatives are gonna come at that with their underlying biases on which humans are inherently better than others.
So that's gonna be a main reason for why discussing this stuff isn't going to seem like the same language. They start every thought with "but how does this help rich white people?"
I've even seem some claim the concept means parents and children will belong to different sectors and won't be allowed to see one another.
The conservative mind is a wild place
The only halfway good argument against 15 minute cities is that kids aren't safe on their own. Which is true in terms of how cities are currently set up where kids might have to cross a six lane highway to get to school. Or they might be forced to walk across someone's yard and the house could belong to a deranged racist with a gun just waiting to start trouble with whoever walks by.
But these types of problems are remedied by having more dense urban areas to begin with. I've been to Japan and China and one of the most striking differences over there are how you'll see kids walking around unaccompanied by adults. Kids exercising more independence and autonomy at a younger age is a good thing. Not to sound too boomer, but I think it instills a sense of community and responsibility into kids if they're not always reliant on their parents driving them everywhere until the age of 16.
First paragraph is spot on. It's business propaganda, through and through.
They think it means cars will be outright illegal
I wish cars were illegal
How is "15 minute city" bad messaging? Like how does that term lead other conservatives to leap to complete dystopia where no one can leave there zone and they will be hunted for sport?
Because imposing Draconian border regimes and terrorising violence on those deemed inferior is exactly what they themselves would do.
Honestly, for a lot of rural dwellers and exurbanites, "city" is a scare word all on its own.
They're not who need to be convinced, though, it's the urbanites and suburbanites. There are more conservatives in cities than our in the country, it's just that in the country we're in the majority and in the city we're not. The urban conservatives are the target audience for this message.
yeah that's another bucket of worms onto itself. "City" is already charged in conservative language to mean something bad. It's like how "urban" is sometimes used to mean "black" in a negative way.
It's great messaging that has no real reason against it. This is a problem for people who have power and money based on urban sprawl, and so they need some kind of argument. If they can't find one even halfway reasonable, then they must create a strawman version of the original idea. Conservatives are already primed to believe that leftists want to control every aspect of your life, and so it's a simple leap to believe this is yet another attempt at control. In turn, this reinforces that same belief for next time. It's the cycle of bullshit.
This is a fool's errand, because it will just make them think cars should be regulated less
Libs (and a lot of leftists) are always looking for the magical incantation. The thing they can utter that will make conservatives realize how ignorant their views are. It's at once a cynical and cruel belief (that conservatives are sub-human) and completely naive. Convincing conservatives they are wrong is often impossible, but there are two ways to do it when it is possible. 1) spend a long time in honest and empathetic interaction, and 2) take power and show them. The second way is exemplified by the ACA (despite its many flaws): conservatives threw an absolute tantrum and made it extremely unpopular. Democrats passed it, and now it's popular to the point that Republicans couldn't repeal it despite campaigning on it for 7 years.
Oddly enough, Ellis Hedican (the voice of Stormy) was a Fox News contributor and overall conservative back when the show first ran.
