Western Standard - August 29, 2024


There is nothing wrong with 15 minute cities


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

204.41861

Word count

879

Sentence count

45

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

15 minute cities are a concept that has been promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other authoritarian zealots who want to see densely packed urban centers with highrise buildings and strictly controlled living standards. They want to squash people into enclaves and they feel the only way to do it is to regulate movement.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I'm talking about 15-minute cities. Now bear with me, I know they trigger many people and I'm talking
00:00:05.280 about defending them in a way. The issue we have isn't 15-minute communities in themselves,
00:00:10.880 it's that we're dealing with urban density obsessed authoritarian zealots who plan cities.
00:00:17.520 The issue isn't the concept, it's with the motivation of those promoting it and how they
00:00:21.440 want to go about it. The World Economic Forum density zealots, they want to see densely packed
00:00:26.240 urban centers with high-rise buildings and strictly controlled living standards. Their motivations are
00:00:31.520 based on building a rigid socialist society with the movement and actions of people strongly
00:00:36.240 regulated. They claim their motivations are based on environmentalism of course and egalitarianism
00:00:42.080 but that's what the Soviet Union claimed as well and actually I did have the pleasure of seeing
00:00:45.520 those giant ugly row houses in Moscow back in the 80s. Not a pretty thing. Now the 15-minute city 0.99
00:00:51.520 proponents inspired by the WF, they have no interest in allowing people to exercise their individual
00:00:55.920 choice. That's why they're obsessed with public transit making individual automobile ownership
00:01:00.720 impractical if not impossible. They want to squash people into enclaves and they feel the only way to
00:01:05.520 do it is to regulate movement. This was evident in the UK where a city tried to force auto owners to
00:01:09.680 stay within certain districts and they were offering fines if they didn't do so. The WF vision of the
00:01:15.040 15-minute cities is one of virtual imprisonment. Like most authoritarian states, the elites of course would 0.88
00:01:20.320 travel and enjoy lavish lifestyle lifestyles but the commoners would be left to dull,
00:01:24.480 drudging existences. We're kind of almost there. I mean look at Canada where we send our folks
00:01:29.280 overseas to environmental conferences and they treat themselves on the taxpayers dime to nice
00:01:33.920 lavish affairs there at these shindigs. We aren't that far from the two-tiered world the WF 0.69
00:01:38.640 types want us to enjoy. So people don't trust the government to manage their lives and for very good
00:01:43.600 reasons. I mean the COVID days aren't that far in the rear view mirror and we can remember just how eager
00:01:48.160 the political class and their bureaucrats are to control us whenever possible. Unfortunately this
00:01:53.840 mistrust has led me to instinctively oppose all forms of community planning even if the planning is
00:01:59.440 good. Now think of a 15-minute city concept that's not based on authoritarianism but it's instead based
00:02:05.040 on free market capitalism, free movement and minor zoning controls. Think of a community where stores,
00:02:10.320 schools, medical centers, other services are all mostly within a 15-minute walk or at least a short drive.
00:02:15.600 Savings could be had as people don't find themselves commuting as far for worker services and we get
00:02:19.600 a tighter community bonding as people get to know each other and socialize in the community hubs.
00:02:23.840 Now what I'm describing isn't nefarious at all if living within these communities is voluntary.
00:02:28.320 In fact we have thousands of them already we call them small towns. Dense urban downtown hubs are obsolete.
00:02:34.800 It used to be essential that large businesses had to set up administrative centers nearby each other so
00:02:38.880 meetings could be held, communications and documents could be sent and so that workers could all commute to
00:02:43.520 one spot in reasonable time. The modern vehicles and communication methods businesses can and are
00:02:48.960 moving away from urban centers and they're setting up suburban campuses or heading to smaller cities and
00:02:52.720 towns. With the ability to work from home increasing many people are choosing that's the key part here
00:02:57.680 guys choice they're choosing to escape the cities and enjoying smaller town life or at least moving to
00:03:02.240 the fringes of the cities rather than being stuck in the core. New and growing communities are enjoying an
00:03:06.880 influx of new residents and they're creating local services to make the areas more appealing. They're doing it
00:03:11.760 because city planners are making them doing it they're doing it because that's what citizens want.
00:03:16.160 The irony of the whole 15-minute city issue is that 15-minute cities will form organically if
00:03:20.720 only the authoritarians would just leave citizens alone. Smaller business hubs will form on the
00:03:24.960 outskirts of cities and residential communities will surround them. The density zealots will decry this
00:03:29.600 trend of course it's urban sprawl. They claim it's environmentally harmful to let people spread out. In reality smaller
00:03:35.920 suburban communities and small towns they foster more green space than any densely packed urban downtown
00:03:41.360 and there tend to be fewer discarded syringes and less sense of piss as well. The world's changing
00:03:45.840 and we need to plan for it. Smaller communities with independent services within them are the future.
00:03:50.400 There's nothing wrong with 15-minute cities we just need to reimagine what they'll be and how we're
00:03:53.920 going to achieve them. We got to distinguish between good 15-minute cities and bad ones. It's not hard
00:03:59.520 to tell which ones with a simple rule. If the proponent of a 15-minute city says we need more government
00:04:03.840 to get there they're proposing the wrong kind. So I guess to use a cheesy statement you know let's not throw out the
00:04:09.520 baby with the bath water. 15-minute cities aren't all that bad. Just let us choose them.