Livable Cities Becoming A Culture War Issue Wasn’t On My 2023 Dystopian Bingo Card
Imagine if I told you that people being able to walk and bike to most of the things they need to do day-to-day was an Orwellian left-wing plot to take away people’s freedom and rights. Imagine if I told you that this was believed at the highest level of the UK government, where it’s considered a Stalinist plot, and attacks on it were included in official Transport Ministry documents? What would you say?
Well, start saying it, because this is where we are in 2023. Attacking livable cities and the people who want to enable them is now the official party line of the UK government. What was once just another loony right-wing conspiracy theory has become mainstream. If it weren’t for the past 15 years of dealing with conspiracy ideation in climate change denial, anti-renewables nonsense, and COVID denial, I would be struggling to believe this myself.
Let’s start with the basics. What specifically is under attack? Well, it’s the 15-minute city concept attributed to Carlos Moreno, a professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. It’s simply the concept of urban planning that enables most people to have the option of shopping for groceries, going to a library, getting some exercise, having a coffee, working or dining out most of the time in places that they can get to on foot or by bike in 15 minutes or less. Cars become choices, not requirements.
How the heck does anyone get from that to Stalinist totalitarianism? The usual ways. The biggest one, of course, is tribalism. The politicians, regulators and academics promoting this remarkably sensible idea aren’t flag waving Conservatives with well-thumbed copies of Atlas Shrugged on their bedside tables, so by definition anything that they say must be reviled.
A few years ago, when I finally made it a priority to talk with John Cook, cognitive scientist, founder of skepticalscience.com, author of Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change and generally great Australian, a point we discussed was tribalism. He ruefully admitted that his PhD thesis, Closing the “consensus gap” by communicating the scientific consensus on climate change and countering misinformation, had turned out to be pretty inadequate. It was about changing people’s minds with logic to reverse their belief in conspiracy theories and logical fallacies. Unfortunately, he’d subsequently realized he had significantly undervalued the power of tribalism to overcome pretty much every logical argument.
And right now we’re seeing very significant tribalism in a couple of the biggest economies in the world, the USA and the UK, with lesser extents present in other developed countries. That’s deeply problematic for climate action, of course, because at least in the USA the tribe on the right doesn’t want to accept that climate change is real or that it needs action or that it needs action now or that anything proposed is the right action.
Years ago I created this continuum of beliefs, and when I discuss changing people’s minds to move them along it to rational and empirical positions to the right side of this chart, I break down what’s required into a few chunks. The first of those is that whoever is trying to change someone’s mind has to be in one of their big tribes, whether that’s their church, the Republican Party, or their favorite sports team. Next, they have to have a position of authority, whether that’s pastor, PhD, CEO, or head coach. They have to be good communicators. They have to know what they are talking about on the subject, including sensible counterpoints for pretty much every inane argument. And they have to have time to move people one notch at a time over multiple discussions and patience for the inevitable backsliding.
Yeah, retail changing of conspiracy ideation-laden nonsense like white supremacy, climate change denial, 911 trutherism, Birtherism, and anti-vaxx takes a remarkable person a remarkable amount of time and energy. Katherine Hayhoe succeeds at this, at least a bit, with evangelical Christians. She’s one herself, as well as a PhD climate scientist, and an awesome and down to earth communicator. She’s pretty rare.
The rest of the time, whatever the tribe thinks prevails for pretty much everyone in the tribe. If the tribe thinks that members are independent thinkers and researchers, then everyone in the tribe is convinced that they personally are an independent thinker and researcher.
And so with this latest nonsense about 15-minute cities. Conservatives in the UK have become convinced that efforts to make cities more livable are actually about preventing people from leaving their 15-minute bubbles, erecting barriers within the city, taking away people’s cars and, bizarrely, even monitoring and eliminating their meat consumption.
The current Prime Minister of the UK attacked this weird strawman in an interview with the right-wing biased and mixed credibility The Sun media outlet. The current temporary bobble-head precariously perched atop the UK government is lending credence to this nonsense. Of course, his government just gave permits to a bunch more oil and gas exploration and extraction schemes in the North Sea and pushed back the elimination of internal combustion car sales by five years, something even the automobile manufacturers think is a terrible idea.
Per Wired Magazine’s history of the idea, this nonsense started bubbling up in social media channels in 2020. The overlap with COVID-19 lockdown conspiracy ideation on the right is clear. It’s taken as an article of faith on the right these days that there’s a war on cars, and that they are valiant crusaders for the right of people to get in gas-guzzlers and drive absurd distances because they can’t buy anything closer.
Absolutely none of the urban planning actions being taken globally under 15-minute city efforts have anything to do with this, of course. It’s about zoning areas for mixed commercial and residential uses. It’s about encouraging communities and neighborhoods to have local amenities. It’s about making sure people can get across or around things like expressways or stadiums on foot or on bike reasonably conveniently.
Giving people the freedom to choose to walk or ride their bikes has somehow become, in the bizarro world of UK right-wing politics, the removal of their right to drive wherever they damned well please. So far it doesn’t appear to have spread to the highest levels of other governments, but where one group of frothing English-speaking right-wing senior politicians go, it’s probable that others will follow.
After all, they are the exemplars of their tribe, and as such have to say what the tribe is thinking, no matter how nutty, in order to continue to be at the top of the heap. Expect this to be coming from the mouths of senior US Republicans, Canadian Conservatives, and Australian Liberals in the coming years.
Good urban planning that’s climate- and people-friendly is going to be attacked and sidelined because of this conspiracy theory. It’s remarkable. Who even knew this was on the 2023 card for dystopian bingo?
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