Berkeley Wilde
Dan Wentzel 🏳️🌈
EndlessMason@danwentzel spicy
Luna@danwentzel I don't think that qualifies as a hot take on 15 minute cities, because what's being described there just isn't 15 minute cities. Isn't one of the principles of 15 minute cities that everyone can get to work within 15 minutes?
Sarah@LucaRood
The thing that happens though is that some people always seem to forget who "everyone" includes.
Many people literally aren't thinking about baristas, wait staff and other service workers as people. Like, they it doesn't occur to them to include them in "everyone".
@danwentzel
Sensible Crone@danwentzel The conversation assumes people live in the priciest cities. Every 2nd & 3rd tier city has neighborhoods everyone, rich, poor, in-between, can live & get places. I'm old & since college can walk to grocery, hardware, drugstore, cafe, bar, city after city, & some neighbors are servers. Boston, SF, Paris, back in shabbier days. Now strolling about in the Midwest. People be crabby they can't live reasonably in SF or NYC anymore. Well... times change. Maybe try somewhere else.
Sue@susiemagoo @danwentzel I agree, but with caveats. I was thinking as I was reading this that my hometown is a legitimate 15 minute city, but it has lost half its population since I was in high school 40 years ago. Including me. There is economic diversity, and racial diversity, but it is no place for a weird young person who doesn't fit in with societal norms.
@SueShannon These are the places one can absolutely be weird and young, or old, or whatever. I don't know your exact former place, but I haven't found an affordable, walkable city not full of weirdos being themselves. So much weirdos!! In SF in the 80s, I lived across the street from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A few months ago a neighbor in StL won the Nobel prize for 20 year old work. Again, servers at our fave restaurants live in view of our house. Weirdos go where it is affordable.. ❤️
𝓐𝓷𝓭𝔂𝓣𝓲𝓮𝓭𝔂𝓮 𓀤@susiemagoo @SueShannon Used to be able to walk to the store, then the store closed down.
@andytiedye @SueShannon That sucks. We just got a bunch of market rate apartments in our historic neighborhood, so so many more young people out and about with their money. Really keeps the businesses in business!
@susiemagoo I get it, and there are two things - 1 - I think a rust belt town can be a place where everyone has a 15 minute commute and still doesn't have that "15 minute city" feel, & the other is, my hometown (Altoona, PA) could now be a 15 minute city in the sense described but since I'm not there, I just have the bad memories of growing up there. For what its worth, the one thing I appreciated going to high school there was that it was so much more diverse than the rest of central PA.
Ciarán Ferrie@danwentzel I don't know who Gareth Klieber is but this is really succinct. Thanks for sharing
Stuart D Neilson@ccferrie @danwentzel The quote feels relevant to #Ireland, with enthusiastic expansion of pedestrianisation, active travel and on-footpath business, without any discussion of #inclusion and #accessibility. We are encouraging very skewed and unsustainable (young, single, male workers) urban demographic balances. It would be hard to start a family, become unemployed, be long-term ill, disabled, grow old and die with dignity in the same place any more.
KristinMuH@danwentzel a 30-minute walk or a 30-minute drive? Because it's pretty normal to live 30+ minutes away on foot from your job, even in walkable cities, that's just the next neighbourhood over. Agree that a 15-minute city that has to import service workers from distant suburbs feels pretty gross
wilander@KristinMuH @danwentzel ”The 15-minute city (FMC or 15mC) is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city
Gordon Fawks@danwentzel I think most people who think seriously about 15 minute cities would agree with this. The 15 minutes includes Going to Work, after all.
Chris Pitts@danwentzel I would go further and say that if your barista cannot afford to live *15 minutes* away, then you have missed the whole point of 15 minute cities entirely!
Alon@danwentzel When I lived in Vancouver, I talked to one of the baristas at my regular cafe, who told me they lived on a res and the bus-train-bus commute was around an hour and a half each way.
P.S. I'm seeing a lot of people in @-replies miss the point. Yes, in theory, the idea of the 15-minute city is that the barista's commute is 15 minutes. In practice, the cities run by people who most loudly subscribe to this view, like Paris, are theme parks.
Pierre Lebeaupin@danwentzel @Alon Exactly, and that’s why I was glad when a Paris hotel group relented after a strike by their service personnel in exactly that situation (one of which is now an M.P.).
Most of them rely in the infamous RER B, which is worse because, while never nominally long (no station is more than an hour away from Paris, on the timetables), its performance is unpredictable due to frequent failures.
@PierreLebeaupin @danwentzel The RER B isn't even bad (I reverse-commuted on it for two months). It has a bad reputation but the reliability is pretty decent, it's just less frequent than the Métro and it passes through really poor banlieues so people pile on the negative stereotypes. My current line, Berlin U8, gets the same treatment because of the neighborhoods it goes through and that too is exaggerated.
@Alon @danwentzel Some of it is bad reputation, but some of it is attested, for instance the situation of child minding: https://web.archive.org/web/20120210094319/http://sucyenbrie.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/02/06/les-musso-le-rer-et-la-nounou-en-or/ (via https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/transports/2013/02/05/ces-details-qui-expliquent-les-retards-du-rer-b/ by the invaluable @OlivierRazemon ). The RER A has improved since then (new trains in particular), but the B much less. And there’s the infamous CdG express…
Ehproque has moved@danwentzel have you been to Monaco? I don't think it takes all the service economy workers *only* 30 minutes to get in there
Stefan Midjich ꙮ҄@danwentzel this is why travel broadens the mind. I've seen people who live outside of Udon Thani or Bangkok get on their cousins scooter at 6 in the morning, just to get a ride into their job selling chicken kebabs on the street. and then hope they can get a ride home after 12 hours. people live in a bubble where they walk down to starbucks and feel like everything is so convenient.
Dwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦@danwentzel This is entirely fair to say.
John Brownlow@danwentzel 'hot' as in 'soundbitey but dumb'
PCI live a couple miles from the center of Sacramento in a tiny bungalow among $$ neighborhoods. Love being near so much.
The Bay Area drove our housing prices to unreachable levels, but rents and leases are still somewhat affordable. Will rent controls eventually happen here? We have pockets of mixed use and government supported housing.
I’ve bought houses a few times and had good jobs. All I know is I couldn’t today afford any of the houses I once owned.
Warmth Highest@danwentzel i can make my own coffee - if any of you big city folks need help with this hmu
Texty the Bard@danwentzel Honestly, I just wish all these urban Utopia planners would remember that disabled people exist, and that not all disabilities involve wheelchairs or qualify for accommodations such as parking permits. Forcing people to live/work in high rise buildings (in which we die if evacuations are needed) and rely on transit excludes a *lot* of people from those "walkable" cities. If I can't have a car and the closest bus stop is five blocks away, I'm housebound.
@danwentzel In other words, until we solve underlying injustice problems, there can be no equitable urban planning.
mnemonicoverload@textualdeviance
Not sure where you're getting the idea that 15 minute cities equals "can't have a car", but it's probably worth repeating that some 60%+ of disabled people (a majority) can't legally drive at all.
@mnemonicoverload @danwentzel Depends on how you're defining "disabled." Official definitions tend to stick to the very narrow parameters set for qualifying for accommodations, but that excludes millions. And even if that number is accurate, the 40% still should be considered. Increasing density, transit and walking/biking options shouldn't mean making urban areas completely hostile to cars and people who aren't safe in high rises.
@danwentzel @textualdeviance That's fair but there's nothing inherent to 15 minute cities that entails active hostility towards cars. Deprioritizing cars doesn't mean eliminating them, or even not accommodating them adequately. Rather improving infrastructure for walking, bikes, and transit and reducing the need to commute long distances daily typically makes driving a measurably *better* (and safer) experience.
@mnemonicoverload @danwentzel OK. And what about the high-rise issue? Increased density--building up--is a core part of almost every urban planning Utopia, but it is flat-out dangerous for people with limited mobility. Every time I bring stuff like this up, I usually get some half-assed handwaving about accommodations and special cases, and frankly it's bullshit. Disabled people are almost always excluded from being involved in these plans, as if we don't exist or aren't important.
@mnemonicoverload @danwentzel But things are already changing. Dense urban cores are based in the rapidly fading standard of white-collar workers being concentrated in office buildings. But despite what micromanagers want, working from home or otherwise remotely is so widespread now, especially in some industries, it's impossible to stop. What that means is a new urban planning standard needs to be drawn up...
@mnemonicoverload @danwentzel Instead of shoving a million people in a metro area into a single urban core, the far more logical and equitable plan should be multiple hubs, each with their own mini core and surrounded by a variety of housing types. Connect the hubs with both roads and rail.
@mnemonicoverload @danwentzel @textualdeviance In high-rise world, anyone who can't walk down 25 flights of stairs is disabled.
@andytiedye
Have you ever even lived in a big city? I think you have some serious misconceptions about what dense urban living actually looks like. "Downtown" is not the entity of city life nor the only model for density.
What People Get Wrong About Dense Urban Living
Faye@danwentzel (*affected, pearl clutching tone*) What? Do you mean that that providing a healthy environment for the under-class is important too? But think of the share-holders!
Sean Lynch@danwentzel
A good theme park would have underground tunnels with trams for the worker bees to scurry through to get you your coffee.
Like the eloi and morlocks had.
The Lichtenbergian
Michael Bacon@danwentzel That is not a hot take at all. That is a very, very good take.
Workforce housing is essential!
Mandy Mac@danwentzel
Our son had leave a job he loved in Breckenridge, CO because there was no affordable housing within a 45 minute drive.
@malcircuit
Our son had leave a job he loved in Breckenridge, CO because there was no affordable housing within a 45 minute drive.
@malcircuit
T Y Beaulieu@danwentzel
BTW
There are ways to get services to people in rural areas, and having 15 minute cities, also known as towns, scattered around was common.
The demise of the model is attributed to the shiny malls, and the big box stores that killed small business
BTW
There are ways to get services to people in rural areas, and having 15 minute cities, also known as towns, scattered around was common.
The demise of the model is attributed to the shiny malls, and the big box stores that killed small business
Joe™@danwentzel wink wink mayors of big cities of France
AlicePaulHey everyone, this post is not about living in a small enough town to reach everything you need in 15 minutes, it’s about inclusion—a community that provides housing and opportunity for people of all levels of income and career choices.
Kevin Karhan 
@danwentzel *noods in agreement*
If a place doesn't pay enough for the workers to live close-by, it's paying way too little!
@danwentzel All the shopkeepers who sell essential goods for daily living say they can't recruit new staff, because there is no accomodation they can afford in the city. Trying to buy things like a kettle, fuse, bucket, ball of string or candle are getting harder. We have a great choice of southern hemisphere fruit and vegetables (but no local carrots or apples).
Darwin Woodka@danwentzel "Lifestyle center"
Local Dad, Ben Hamill@danwentzel @celesteh Huh. Like, I agree with this take, but also... I don't feel like it's that hot? Are there advocates for "15 minute cities" that are against lowering housing costs? Those things seem to go hand-in-hand to me. Maybe it's just the urbanists that I pay attention to.
Murph.@benhamill @danwentzel @celesteh it's fun seeing the replies break between "well obviously that's a theme park and not a 15 min city by definition" and "well obviously 15 min cities are theme parks and therefore a bad idea". Some confusion of the term there.
I'm at least heartened that the replies I'm seeing aren't taking the third option of rushing to defend unaffordable places.
@benhamill @danwentzel @celesteh or maybe the divide is less of definition and more attitudinal. Some are aspirational enough to think we can and should have places that offer inclusive access, and others think we can't possibly achieve inclusion and so the 15mc must only be elite/exclusive.
Kinetic Fox@danwentzel This is what ruined Seattle for me. I called it the gentrification blast radius; the area surrounding a city where the working class literally cannot afford to live and is required to drive or bus for 45+ minutes in order to serve the people who get to live comfortably in their pay-to-win ecosystem.
Wade Wainio@danwentzel Fuck "affordable housing," I want to see more free housing. #housingpolicies
Marcos M. 🚲@danwentzel Hi, Dan, I am unable to find this quote. Is it from a book or interview? Thanks! =)
@euklidiadas No, it is a quote from someone in a Facebook group of Urbanists. I wanted to attribute it to the person who posted.
@danwentzel Thank you.
@danwentzel I mean, socialize housing, unionize renters, fight evictions, abandom suburba. I thought that was a given.
🐚 Undo Influence 🐚The local "sensitive" pols always overlook this and it makes me want to scream.
Looking good means nothing if you don't also DO good. :/
highly principled invertebrate@danwentzel That's what most of these are really, theme parks, or
if/when "enforced" prisons, as the fines used are only having it as further penalties for being economically poor and/or disabled, with rich people still not getting any real restrictions, as they can both afford the fines and to pay for rotating staff to travel more. Poor can't afford the fines, so with some areas having unpaid fines turning into regular jail/prison sentences, it's just showing a plan for more mass incarceration.
I don't have a problem with adding services and stores everywhere they'd be needed to actually allow #15MinuteCities, (or really 30 minute ones,as disabled people often need more time whatever the modality of travel), to exist with at least a little improvement in quality of life for everyone, but that's really not what's happening, instead further cuts are happening or at best the same messes are continuing.
* Telemedicine & other distance "services" not being equal to in person service, and that is so far what's being pushed as if they're interchangeable.
Jay States@danwentzel I understand your point, but in reality how many people are able to live within 15 minutes from their place of employment. With the proliferation of vehicles and the scarcity of “affordable”housing, this makes it virtually impossible for the average person to do. In essence, what you’re saying is North America is one large theme park.
Ampelios@danwentzel I use a similar metric all the time! "How does the bus driver get to work?"
If they can't afford a car and insurance and a reasonable commute, your city is a joke.