The "15 Minute City"

The idea of cities where everything of importance is within a 15 minute walk or bike ride of where you live is not in itself a bad idea. It would involve a return to small local shops and services. Big malls would be out, they are failing now anyway. But huge sports stadiums would also be out - somehow I can't see that flying in our sports-obsessed society. Museums and entertainment venues would be badly hurt. People would have to travel to get to them. Public transportation would be necessary to get to things farther away like that - clean, safe, on time transportation - not at all what we have today or are likely to have when city governments refuse to enforce laws and maintain order.

Where the problem comes in is when government gets involved in "mandating" where we live. We all know the environmentalists and climate crazies are going to try to use government to force people in the country and small towns to move to and live in such cities whether they want to or not.

I have no problem at all with groups of people voluntarily trying out new methods of doing things. Most, like communes in the 1960's, will probably not work out, but some things may. The 80/20 rule almost always wins out - 20% of the people do 80% of the work, until they get sick of it and leave and the whole project falls apart.

However, special interest groups taking control of government and "passing laws", basically top down command and control, does NOT WORK. As an example, it didn't work for the Religious Right. Instead of starting at the grassroots and winning people to Christ and discipling them, they tried the "command and control" method, thus antagonizing people and losing even more influence. Plus starting movements to resist the Christian message. Before you athiests and agnostics enthusiastically agree with that statement, THINK! The Global Warming movement is no different. Instead of winning people to their cause and teaching them, they are trying the "command and control" method. They want to dictate rather than convince. It seems to be faster, and they are in a panic. The results are so far and are going to be exactly the same.

Will there be "15 minute cities"? Yes, they will be (and are being) tried, but most will probably not be very successful. Especially in the developed countries with aging populations and months of cold and snow, relying on walking and bicycles is simply not practical. There are a lot of ideas being floated at this time. Linear cities are also being proposed and Saudi Arabia is thinking of actually building one. I do not see how these could help but be a disaster for migrating wildlife (and people). They are effectively no different than border walls in their effects. They would open up agricultural land (I always said they would eventually be bulldozing suburbs to plant crops), but at present we are still destroying agricultural land by suburban development and by war - like in Ukraine.

Growing economic problems are also going to limit actually implementing these new ideas. We can't maintain what we have now. Finding people to work is a growing problem. Supply chains keep collapsing.

The best thing we can probably do is to start solving our own problems, both as individuals and small groups. Big Government is simply too corrupt and inept to solve anything.