• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    -31 year ago

    The problem is that once again people with genuine concerns get derided and insulted which pushes them deeper into these views - people have a lot of great reasons for not wanting their car taken away and fearing that the rich’s solution to population growth is going to be to force people into prison communities, that’s been a common theme in history - Australia and America only exist as they are because of the clearances, and the North of England owes most it’s population to poors getting tricked into moving to brutally compact works towns and treated like cattle.

    Instead of hearing the fears and needs of people they’re just attacked, called stupid and going by most the times I’ve seen it come up flooded by people saying things like ‘cars are bad, it would be better if we got rid of them all’ which is super unhelpful, it’s like calling a movement ‘defund the police’ and having everyone yell about how we should get rid of them all because they’re all bastard’s but not address the actual needs society has for people tasked with stopping crime - why do people supporting sensible and important things have to make their views sound so intensely unpalatable?

    We need to address all the great things that cars and suburban living have brought us, and yes I can already hear the comments from people yelling that it’s a literal hellscape and traffic and etc etc etc but what are people who are living lives they enjoy going to say when they hear that? What are people who don’t want to live the small community lifestyle going to say when told it’s the only good way of living? When people who enjoy the benefits of modern logistics get told they’ll just learn to adapt to having less?

    The dumbest bit is we could be focusing on positive additions to peoples lives and offering greater efficiency and freedom through the use of modern planning and technology - that’s what the 15 min city idea is actually about (kinda, depending who’s version you look at).

    The logistics of a 15 min lifestyle have to exceed in quality of life the current system, and people need to actually agree not just be badgerd into accepting less. I could talk for days about how this can be done, key points include integrated transport networks to facilitate travel and exploration, nationalised version of Amazon and eBay with community shipping, zoning rules based on measured impact rather than use type (e.g. you’re welcome to live in a high noise area or have shops in a low pollution and traffic area if you can accept the limitations), nationalised services for community utilities to avoid corporate monopolies, measures to improve temporary relocation and travel, investment in affordable and efficient multi-transport cargo (rather than a removal van taking your house the whole way you fill a cargo container and have it collected by a lorry to do the first mile journey to a station where it’s loaded onto a train or ship to move to a transport hub then forwarded to the final destination where it’s taken last mile to the new address by a lorry…)

    Improving logistics has to come first, the rallying cry can’t be ‘you need this and will have to try and learn to live with it’ it has to be ‘this is how we can live better lives’