The left wants things that are good, but what if good things were bad?

:very-intelligent:

I would rather live in a tent behind a gas station than in a 15-minute city.

Only a very pampered man-child would say this, he doesn't get that the gas station owners probably sick the cops on his ass after a couple of days.

In fact, Hidalgo, the same mayor who participates in campaigns against the bullying of fat people, claims that one of the great virtues of FMC is that it contributes to ending obesity.

This is too dumb to read

Eh, I hate myself enough to read this, I'll pick it apart piece by piece.

The purpose of the FMC is to reduce emissions, save the planet, and all that, although the idea’s promoters prefer to say simply that it improves quality of life and health.

Oh no, you got us. Fifteen minute cities will reduce emissions, what a travesty! Also, is that last part wrong? Less emissions does lead to improved healthy and quality of life shown here. There's no "muh freedumz"ing your way out of simple facts. You're doing the meme.

In fact, Hidalgo, the same mayor who participates in campaigns against the bullying of fat people, claims that one of the great virtues of FMC is that it contributes to ending obesity

Sure, NOW you lot are all about body positivity because you'd rather be fat than walk.

For one, it turns out the best way to implement such a plan is to discourage cars because there is no better way to convince the average person to cycle or walk to work. As a matter of policy, European cities are doing this by pedestrianizing large areas, taking initial steps to ban certain types of vehicles, or imposing heavy tolls for driving in city centers.

Isn't this par for the course? Yes, to promote walking you have to discourage cars. You discouraged walking to promote cars but you're getting upset when things are the other way around. Also, I already pay up the ass for the gas, repairs, and insurance on top of the vehicle I am FORCED to have because I was unlucky enough to be born in the boonies and cities are for rich people. Don't you auto fanboys love wasting money anyway?

The departures are part of a long-running trend fueled by the high cost of living and other factors, but also come as Paris prepares to ban car traffic from the city center starting next year. There’s little reason to think this will reverse the exodus.

Yes, because it's bloody Paris. Property values there are simply too high. Probably because CHUDs like you aren't in them. What's LA's excuse? It's a car dependent hellhole and property values are through the roof. Look at Montreal, one of the more affordable major cities in North America and Chicago in the US, then look at Tokyo in comparison to other major cities. This just boils down to a non-sequitur.

To achieve an FMC, public administrations must push private companies to set up shop where their urban planning determines. And the further the state gets its hands into the private sector, be it by paying or coercing, the bigger the setback for the free market; the consequences can be read in any serious history book that you won’t find in state schools.

If you like free markets so much, why are you lot usually the first to raise a stink when we talk about abolishing zoning regulations, parking minimums, and the like? Fifteen minute cities actually are the free-market at work because those scary FMC, according to Strong Towns, are usually more economically productive than sprawling shitholes in the boonies.

The FMC also envisions that neighborhoods will dedicate former offices to community co-working spaces, where teleworkers from different companies can gather to put in their hours just a few meters from home. It must be really exciting to exchange emails with the sales manager of your real-estate agency, or with the psychologist giving online therapy via Skype next to you, while another guy makes loaves of bread on the desk opposite you, frowning as he tries to jam them through the modem toward the bakery. It’s as scary as John Lennon’s “Imagine” coming true.

You do realize this is the free market that you claimed to be literally flawless a paragraph ago, right? So infallible that it's sacred? Now you want to scrap it because a hypothetical use for an empty building seems weird to you? This is completely vibes-based thinking, and is evident of how fucking boring CHUDs are.

In the end, the FMC also seeks to revive that old neighborhood pride, turning it into an identity as strong as a national one. It is paradoxical that the same people who support globalism are the promoters of such neighborhood pride. Moreno himself has pushed back on the criticism of his campaign, reportedly describing as “lies” the more conspiratorial notions that government planners would lock people in their neighborhoods or restrict movement and monitor residents. It is possible that Moreno is sincere, but it is also reasonable to assume that the politicians who must implement his plan would feel quite comfortable imposing restrictions on citizens, as they demonstrated in the pandemic.

Can you go a single sentence without a strawman? "HURR DURR MUH YEEHAW FREEDUM BURGER!" Unless you're an anarchist, this point is moot. And we know you're not an anarchist because you want the government to force white heterosexual women to be slaves for white heterosexual men, and then kill everyone else. So don't try this "live and let live" shit on me.

Even without any of that, turning cities into dozens of small, self-contained ecosystems would only worsen our own epidemic of alienation and make us even more insular in our habits. It expands your world. Again, vibes-based emotional logic. How I envy things the right can get away with that leftists can't even dream of. There's actual articles written on this such as this one.. If you don't believe that because "nothing is true unless a conservative says so", then take it from me, one of the sad sacks who grew up in a rural shithole. It's so fucking mind-numbingly boring and there is NOTHING to do. Yeah, I suppose I could watch TV in my house or something, but that's just going back to isolation.

Most of us hate driving in city traffic, but there is a societal value in having to hop in the car a couple times a week to go run an errand, or more often than that to go to work. Mingling with others in your city — or, gasp, outside of it — enriches you and increases your sense of belonging

So why do you want to add MORE drivers, you mindless idiot!?...Oh wait, he's going on. "Societal value"? Bro, I just want to fucking go from point A to point B as quickly as possible. How the hell are you interacting with people when you're twiddling your thumbs like an idiot, while waiting in line for the traffic jam to budge? I can hardly even use any studies because all of this is just vibes-based whining?

And, besides, some of us just like to drive, to give full throttle before the stoplight closes and curse each other in traffic jams as a form of release; why do they always come after us? Why don’t they tax those who de-stress by going to Pilates?

As an LGBT Jew. Cry moar. I get judged all the time, and when I say to "live and let live". I get laughed at. You don't have a right to consumption, especially something that requires a hefty amount of tax dollars to maintain such as driving.

And call me paranoid, but I don’t trust that the technocrats devising these systems will resist the urge to go Big Brother.

Yet you trust that very government to get involved with your religion? Yet you also trust that very government to break up labor uprisings in the global south for your precious billionaires here? You love big government, you just so happen to want to replace the government with corporations.

Be that as it may, today, walking through the center of old European capitals reveals what FMC supporters do not want to admit: that, without the car-commuter traffic and the pull of people from other neighborhoods, the old city centers have become impoverished, stores have had to close, residents have left, and the extreme loneliness of their streets has turned them into a hotbed of crime.

Finally, it took almost 75% of the bloody article for you to get to a point where you are claiming why cars are superior. Okay, well here's a study claiming the opposite of the impoverished part., so much so that car infrastructure takes away from the city.. Also, yeah, residents have left, because cities are just so popular that they cost so much to live in. For a guy who claims to be a genius in economics, you sure seem to forget about supply and demand. Regardless, people are leaving cities? that shit is not true.. Also, I wouldn't be so smug about crime in the city..

I ran out of space but the guy adds one less "muh freedumz" paragraph claiming that FMCs are bad because they dare to question porky. :amerikkka: is a Wall-E dystopia that's an embarassment to western civilization.

Also, the boonies needs cities, but NOT vice versa

"It’s as scary as John Lennon’s “Imagine” coming true"

I'd never use the phrase because of the WEF association being toxic, but yeah the entire opposition discourse to the term is... really special.

Most of the comments are just word salad:

The curse is all these people in senior administrative positions who think they can re-design the whole world and there will be no unintended consequences: everything will go like clockwork, and they will provide for everything anyone might need or reasonably want. In a world where so many (including most progressives) do not believe in God, they somehow believe that not only can they play at being God, they can do it better than the original. They have learned nothing from the collapse of Communism, the disastrous consequences of re-creating Ancient Rome or of a 1,000-year Empire. . . . This time, they assure us, they will do it "right." And there are many prepared to believe them. Why? And why now??

(ignores that automobiles have only been remotely viable as means of transit for less than 100 years, that previous administrators have re-designed the whole world around them and the unintended consequences have been tremendous)

Another one, from someone who could conceivably continue to live in the "sticks" so long as the cost of services to their property are sustainable or not dependent on public subsidies like trillion dollar bailouts every decade:

I didn't know there was a name for this "movement". Of course, I live in the sticks, so being able to see one's neighbor through a properly-mounted rifle scope often feels too close for comfort.

From someone whose potential countryside real estate's value possibly trends towards 0 as the public services like roads/sewer/water etc become increasingly poorly maintained and eventually discontinued as international competition and shrinking profits lead to smaller and smaller bailouts over time

The fact that ideas like "FMC" are getting traction is just another compelling reason for me to move to the countryside, away from the critical mass of altruistic, "progressive" do-gooders trying to save us from ourselves. Please stay in your cities, altruists!

Brain rot:

Paranoid? No. You're just aware and intelligent. As for cities, I commute sixty miles into Dallas five days a week for work, and each day I can't get back out of there fast enough. I retire in eight years (dumpster fire of the economy permitting), and after that, if I never again set foot in another city, it'll be one damn day too soon.

Someone who articulates the reason why WEF probably attached their name to this to tank it:

If the technocrats who run the world were serious about ending global warming, they would ban all private jets for NGO executives tomorrow.

So close and yet so far (emphasis mine, I guess people just do not understand that "everything is planned", just the quality of planning differs by time & place):

My husband and I lived in Paris about 50 years ago. We had young children. We walked almost everywhere or, if the distance was great enough, we took the Metro. Yes, Paris was full of cars, but it was and is also a very walkable city and has a fantastic public transportation system, although this may have deteriorated. And the city was full of neighborhoods; you could do your shopping and take your kids to school or to the park and go to church within a pretty small area. But you were not confined there. Why do we need to be forced to do what the "planners" want? Someone once said that all good Americans go to Paris when they die. I may want to rethink that.

Someone missing the fact that reduced options for addressing strife is a feature of subsidizing sprawl:

I work in Boston and can agree with most of what is said here. Many restaurants and stores have closed, South Station routinely blocks doors because homeless people are sleeping in front of them, and most days there are 20% as many people in the city as there used to be.

:matt-jokerfied: :

The idea of the FMC is perfectly fine and even appealing, provided that it develops organically and does not come with heavy handed restrictions on what one or may not do. However I think we can see that it’s just another front in the War against Cars.

how is this Utopia? a lot of small town with less than 200 people already are 15 min cities with one main arteries.

what is a 20 stories high densities block with stores and a gym in it is?

Having goods and services within walking distance is bad, actually.

I hadn't heard of 15 minute cities until earlier today. Are they the new conservative bete noire of the week?

Utopia? It's perfectly achievable you idiot.

20 years from now: The problem with the concept of being paid for your labor

I've said it before and I'll say it again: these people get the 15-minute gulag.