How did people shop for groceries when your neighborhood was originally built? Surely it was not designed to be so inconvenient: what has changed in the meantime?

One popular way of talking about building for people is the concept of a "fifteen-minute city": neighborhoods where you can get to your daily needs within that much time via walking or biking. This does not require super-towers or any unusual level of density. My neighborhood - about ten years older than yours - comes close to the ideal, and while it has its share of apartment buildings, none are taller than half a dozen stories, and there are just as many people living in townhouses or single-family homes as there are in the apartments.

We don't have a metro station, but we do have an express bus line which will get you to a metro station in fifteen minutes, and that bus comes every five minutes. Not so bad.

No, there's not a shop on every corner - but there are two grocery stores within five minutes' walk, and two more within ten. No need to carry groceries on the bus at all.

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dboreham a day ago | parent | next [-]

Groceries might have been delivered. Also there were small food shops (butcher, grocer, fishmonger, baker) in every neighborhood that don't exist any more.

	▲	cowlevel a day ago \| parent [-]
		So would it be possible to bring those back, or at least a grocery store?

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mattlondon a day ago | parent | prev [-]

"15 Minute City" ideas sound nice on paper, but I think that in reality the research shows they are net-negative in basically everything apart from encouraging active-transport.

The main issue is around equity.

15 minute cities work great for high-paid knowledge workers with flexible schedules who can chose how and where they can work (i.e. laptop + wifi ... your typical HN reader perhaps). But this is not true for everyone - you cannot expect everyone to find employment within 15 minutes of their home (e.g. healthcare workers, factory workers, maintenance workers, security guards, farmers, construction workers etc etc are unlikely to e.g. find a factory within 15 mins of their house).

Making area support more active-transport (i.e. removing road space and replacing it with pedestrian and cycling space) also has the beneficial side-effect of making it nicer for people and thus more desirable. So property value and rents go up. And again, the high-paid knowledge workers and their families are fine, but the poorer and less well paid are priced out. The lower-income families have to move further out into lower-density areas where there is not enough density of population to support smaller grocery shops, pharmacies, etc so the 15 minute rule stops working and now they need to pay to run a car. And where you do retain roads for the essential transport needs (e.g. grocery deliveries, emergency services, garbage collection etc) you end up with the lower-income families living there since they are less desirable and cheaper and it is those who suffer from that the most (pollution, noise, safety etc)

If you remove roads of block access or removing parking etc to promote active-transport you also disproportionately impact those with accessibility problems. Not just "disabled people in wheelchairs" but also people who are not officially disabled but would benefit from driving, e.g. pregnant people, or elderly people who are fine but cannot walk distances regularly etc. 15 minute cities punish people who cannot easily walk or cycle unaided. Oh and ding ding ding yes these types people who have mobility issues also tend to be the poorer and lower-income people in society too.

Starting to notice a pattern here yet?

Basically the "15 Minute City" utopia is only for rich white-collar knowledge workers. It forces lower-income families and workers out of a neighborhood. I am undecided on if this is "working as intended" or not.

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earthdeity 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I follow the argument but the conclusion feels off. If the reason white collars move in is that it's nicer and more desirable, is the solution not improving a place? Making it worse?

It seems like the solution would be making nice cities less rare, and thus less of a hot commodity, rather than preventing them. After all, nearly anything that would make an area nicer to live in, would also make it more desirable, and therefore less affordable. I can't believe letting inner cities be hideous slums is the best thing for society overall (historically, indeed quite common).

	▲	mattlondon 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The point is that it makes some bits nicer for rich people, while the poorer people are forced out of these nicer areas. As someone further up in the comments said, they pay a premium for this, while many people are having to use food banks just to feed their kids etc - they can't afford to pay a premium to live somewhere they can walk places. And anyway you can't have the entire place be 15 minutes because some people have jobs etc that are just incompatible with that, and they tend to be lower income people. It's essentially "economic cleansing" so only the nice charming rich people with interesting jobs doing something awfully smart in tech can live in the lovely areas with the nice cafes and that lovely little grocery store that does that tapenade to die for. Meanwhile the lower income folks live further out in lower density cheaper areas that need cars and have the run down high streets with the vape shops, the betting shops, the drug addicts living in derelict doorways etc.

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AmigoCharlie 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In a sense it IS "working as intended", because if you look close enough, the cycle-talibans (those who unflexibly express their maoist intent of forcing unwilling people to not use their private cars) are antisocial (at best).

	▲	jimbo456 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Cars are the most antisocial device. They truly destroy communities, they destroy connections, they are giant sinkholes of money and effort. They are dangerous prisons that trap us in a cycle of cost and physical danger.