Cities work by agglomeration. Lots of folk all over each other:
“Berlin has lots of space and barely any commuters – a lot of people live close to where they work,” said Prof Andreas Knie, a mobility researcher at the WZB Social Science Center that will supervise the Gräfekiez project. “In theory, it has all the right conditions in place to become a model ‘city of short distances’,” he added, citing the concept of compact living spaces that urban planners have championed for more than a decade.
Why are they trying to kill cities and replace them with interconnected small towns? Villages even?
Why are cities best when their smog is viewed from a safe distance, upon a mountaintop?
“Why are they trying to kill cities and replace them with interconnected small towns? Villages even”?
Our compassionate overlords at the WEF are definitely not trying to do anything like that Tim.
The grief being visited upon the Dutch farmers, the most efficient on the planet allegedly (which is obviously a problem for the WEFers’, concerned as they are with the amount of food being produced – they think there is too much of it), is due to “TriState City”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s45OeHX5veM
Berlin might be a good place to try out a wall to restrict movement.
Peasants should always walk.
Berlin has lots of space and barely any commuters – a lot of people live close to where they work,
I’m not sure either of those statements are true. Berlin has been substantially rebuilt especially since 2000. A lot of the old DDR blocks are still there, but have been refurbished, it is almost impossible for new residents to find a flat in town. It has a large public transport system and lots of satellite towns. In fact it is like every other German city.
I find it an ugly place. Although it has lots of spaces rather than space, I think.
Amazing what one can do with a city when it’s been bombed to rubble. I’m sure we can all think of future candidates could benefit.
Personally I preferred Berlin when there were two of them.
It’s the eco thing, innit? Walk, take a bike to places.
I think there’s a bit of a Chesterton’s Fence thing to all of this, that some people don’t realise the attraction of cars or a good bus service (but particularly cars). It meant more competition. No need to use that crappy little Spar or VG shop, you could go to the huge Tesco instead.
Thankfully, Oxford is running this experiment for all of us. And the people there are going to get the results, good and hard.
Why are they trying to kill cities and replace them with interconnected small towns? Villages even?
Because they love you, and want you to be free and happy?
Try viewing 15 minute cities from the perspective of those already living the lifestyle. They know that people (like them) who cycle to work, walk to the shops, take mass transit to the theatre, football matches etc tend to be healthier than those who cleave to their cars.
Then there is the opportunity cost angle. Car ownership is expensive, living sans car leaves either a greater surplus or reduces the hours of work necessary to fund your chosen lifestyle.
The end result could be a populace who are healthier, wealthier and consequently far less dependent on the services of the state. Who would not want that?
@BillG… I suspect that the vast majority of working people aren’t “already living the lifestyle”. All of us peasants living in the sticks aren’t anyway – and there’s quite a lot of us. Going “car free” can become a tad tricky, it’s not just the cost that’s involved, there’s also the time element. Before I retired I examined the possibilities of getting to my place of work by public transport – and discovered that if I didn’t wish to live in the office I would have to catch the bus to get home from work 30 minutes before the bus I was using to get to work actually arrived. Not being in possession of a Tardis it became an impractical option.
@Bill G
My experience of the “better without a car” mob is how happy they are to rely on other people having one. And how it’s so often much more convenient for someone to pick them up & take them wherever they want to go. And they’ve no objection to the driver having to negotiate their way the traffic restrictions to do so at the risk of a fine. ie a bunch of f**king hypocrites.
A lot of the old DDR blocks are still there, but have been refurbished, it is almost impossible for new residents to find a flat in town.
Not least because there’s rent controls and the if the SPD stay in power after today’s rerun elections they’re talking about nationalising all private landlords.
@Bill G
I doubt very much that those advocating khmer 2.0 are living “the lifestyle”
If I didn’t have a car, my freedom to travel where and when I want (and the sort of employment available) would be massively reduced and my quality of life accordingly. Why do you think personalised transport is such a focus for these infantilized, narcissistic control freaks?
A populace with no real access to personalised transport less dependent on the state!!!?
Yes, technically a pushbike is personalised transport, but so are your feet!
In fact cities (and in my rather limited experience especially London) are always a collection of villages, or ‘manors’- in the argot of the Londoner in times BK (Before Khan). I grew up in North London and going ‘sarf of the river’ was always a bit tricky. Funny people lived their. I knew all about the manor in which I lived and a lot of the people, but I could also easily move to another ‘manor’ to go see a mate (or more pleasurably a ‘little mystery’). Plus one could always go ‘up west’ for a night out.
What these arrogant gits like Khan and his urban planners are doing is creating open prisons which they can ‘manage’, that is make life easy for bureaucrats.
What they have no clue about, and even if they did they’d ignore it, is that cities are organic. It’s people that make cities, not planners.
BillG,
“Try viewing 15 minute cities from the perspective of those already living the lifestyle. They know that people (like them) who cycle to work, walk to the shops, take mass transit to the theatre, football matches etc tend to be healthier than those who cleave to their cars.”
Also poorer and childless.
“Then there is the opportunity cost angle. Car ownership is expensive, living sans car leaves either a greater surplus or reduces the hours of work necessary to fund your chosen lifestyle.”
Barely. I ditched my old banger as I was barely using it and it is cheaper to use public transport instead of a car, but it doesn’t make much difference. But that was a second car, and I work remote, and I live in a town with good rail connections.
New cars are a colossal waste of money for mugs. An 8 year old Toyota will cost you about £6K and run for another 10 years. That’s a per year cost of about £600/year.
And you then lose out on savings opportunities. You have to (and I did) price in that I walk to the local shop that costs more for things. That I’ve had to pay for hotels after gigs because the last train has gone etc.
Why are they doing this?
Because you know only what you want, they know what you need. It’s for your own good, now just listen to nanny and everything will be fine.
Look at it from their angle: if you can afford to live in a nice part of town, you don’t want to share it with the riffraff living further out.
Why are they doing this?
The answer is simply because they can. Because you gave them the power to do so. God help you now. Nobody else is going to.
Anyone with a model for such a dynamic organism such as a city is a prize twat who most likely also has a model for arranging his sock drawer. If we are all to be herded in to these 15 minute fiefdoms then the road to serfdom is running out. You would hope the partition of Oxford will teach them but I think it unlikely. Some positive statistics will be cherry picked and all the other jumped up council supreme leaders will fancy the same powers.
BillG: “and consequently far less dependent on the services of the state. Who would not want that?”
I think you make a slight error in estimating that dependency there….
“Berlin has lots of space and barely any commuters – a lot of people live close to where they work,” said Prof
So if you change jobs you also have to move house. Great for labour mobility, eh?
Those advocating ‘walk or cycle, you don’t need a car’ are invariably young and fit.
Smash a hip or knee, or have 2 toddlers in tow, and you will find why a car is essential.
@Baron Jackfield
I have similar problems with the bus between my village and the local town 3 miles away. The bus going there departs on Tuesdays or Thursdays at 3PM and the one coming back departs at 9:30 AM the following Thursday or Tuesday. It also costs £9 each day so any return trip would be £18.
I drive a car.
Who would not want that?
Suburbs, small towns and villages are full of people who don’t want that. People have been escaping modern cities and city planning cunts for almost as long as people started moving into modern cities.
The sort of people who used to whinge “Oh, think of the old, think of the disabled, think of the Mums with babies and toddlers” now say “Fuck ’em all, let ’em stay at home”. Rum, innit?
@ Tim the Coder
Among the people I know who are seriously fit, not one wants to make other people give up their cars. Encourage them to walk or cycle – sure: but we realise that not everyone can run/walk as fast/far as we do.
“. Car ownership is expensive, living sans car leaves either a greater surplus or reduces the hours of work necessary to fund your chosen lifestyle”
Bill, bullshit.
Car ownership is trivial. I paid 4 grand for a truck 4 years ago. It’s less than 500/yr to insure three vehicles. Maintenance is nil.
Now imagine the costs of a cab everytime I want to go across town – or the two hour each way time on a bus.
And the opportunity cost of being restricted to a small slice of the city or having to time my activities to a bus schedule.
The cost of a POV is trivial when laid out against that.
Also, I love how you throw in ‘less dependent on the services of the state’.
Because the roads are still there – have to be to get the goods to the corner shop. And you’re even more dependent on both ‘just in time’ logistics (you can’t easily get to another store), have fewer options, and are more dependent on public transport.
And now you have to cut into those savings because everything costs more – more small shops, more staff, more overhead, less competition all equal higher prices.
And thus private transport still comes out ahead.
Owning a car in _any_ German city, not just Berlin (which is special in all sorts of ways) is something for fanatics or those with very high or specific mobility needs. I say, as not-Berliner coming up on 10 years of non car ownership.
Trying to abolish the car though is daft for all manner of reasons. What do you do when you move house? Use a cart? Actually the greens would probably support that, and if their will be done you will in any case own nothing.
My own road has been closed to vehicles for years and while that solves some problems, it creates a bunch of new ones. Getting permission to bring a vehicle to your property the once in every few years yo need it is basically impossible, so one relies on the limited number of well-connected contractors, or the frequent vandalisation of the gates.
Boddicker,
“Anyone with a model for such a dynamic organism such as a city is a prize twat who most likely also has a model for arranging his sock drawer.”
One of the reasons I’m so against trams and trains, and generally think buses and coaches are a better thing is how rapidly they can shift with demand. Rail and trams assume perfect planning can be done, that we can design a model that will work for the next 25 years. Buses and coaches are flexible, adaptive. Do a route, and it’s not perfect, so change it. The Honda factory closes? We don’t need to stop at Honda now. Amazon opens a place? Buy another bus and hire a few more drivers.
Lots of activities where a car is handy, I was out kayaking yesterday for a start. Even the fold up light weight kayaks (which are great fun) you want to throw them in a car, just means you can use a small car, I can fit 2 in a Fiat 500
Of course only the Graun could be sufficiently ignorant about the meaning of authentic Japanese tattoos as to suggest one might have cause to need access to one within one’s 15 minute internal passport radius.
Does the same parlour do finger amputations, one wonders.
@ Bill Gates
Very good…..
BiFR
Indeed, when I lived in Munich, I had no desire or space to have a car. Muc is not very big and I lived near the Ubahn. In fact it took me longer to walk through the company’s campus to my office than the tube journey there.
In Duesseldorf was pretty funny – I rented a flat specifically because it was near the tram terminus, which they then moved and I had to catch a bus to it instead !
In Vienna, because we actually owned a flat, we needed a car to go to the dump or the DIY store etc etc. But generally we used the tram, which was at the top of the road.
In the sticks in Austria, there was a bus to the next town with a railway – but there only were three a day to transport the kiddies to and from school. I worked out a modus operandi, but only after the missus died and I didn’t want to leave the motor at the ParkandRide for days on end.
It is possible to live in a 15 minute type zone. Like Khant, I’m from Tooting and there were a lot of shops in walking distance. But trips to the dump, DIY store, hypermarket etc etc needed a car and I made those trips frequently.
I live in hope that people will eventually move on from trivial Potemkin economic arguments and see the world as it really is and, worse, as it is becoming if we don’t stop it.
Trying arguing about the money supply, Murphy’s latest inanity and input costs when all money is digital and whatever shade of cunts in power are frowning about how you spend it – and can control your movement contingent on your ‘carbon emissions’ and your ‘vaccination status’.
@Ottokring
‘Indeed, when I lived in Munich, I had no desire or space to have a car. Muc is not very big and I lived near the Ubahn. In fact it took me longer to walk through the company’s campus to my office than the tube journey there.’
Try it now, and especially if you’re pretty, leggy and blonde, and in your late teens/early twenties, like my daughters.
They have both spent a lot of time in München and elsewhere in Der Fatherland (for education purposes) and find the comments and other attention from young male ‘Germans’ anywhere from offputting to terrifying.
Interested
I can quite see that. I won’t go to Munich anymore. The people are ruder (if that is possible), the new buildings ugly and the service even worse ( if that also is possible). At the weekend, at a shopping centre near to where I used to live, a gang of 50 yoofs attacked a couple of guys who had been complaining about the noise tht they had been making.
It’s terrible. But it’s apparently unstoppable.