An easy test the sanity of measures to combat "misinformation" is to mentally replace that term with "fake news"
You're talking about the "15 minute city" conspiracy theory[0,1], which posits that the design of cities such that amenities are available within a 15 minute walk from citizens (in other words, built for pedestrians rather than cars) is, in reality, an authoritarian plot to restrict freedom of movement and control people en masse, often linked with COVID conspiracy theories which implied pandemic measures were simply a pretext by a cabal of global elites to stage a world takeover.
How is that not a "far-right conspiracy theory?" It's literally every other "new world order" conspiracy theory promulgated by the far right, just applied to whatever new thing Twitter and Reddit decide is a globalist plot this week.
[0]https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-15-minute-city-conspir...
[1]https://www.wired.com/story/15-minute-city-conspiracy-uk-pol...
I'm more than 95% sure that you, a Hacker News commenter, do not have a non-compliant vehicle in the UK which you "need" to visit London, which has the best public transport in Europe. So why spread this FUD except to make it harder to enact these policies to clean the air?
Why, just why, are people against clean air? "Yes, but not like that!"
> councils implementing 15-minute city-aligned schemes which also limit movement.
Just where does this come from. If you want to visit or live in a city, then you appreciate density. Private cars are anathema to density. The logic is not hard.
"ULEZ making travel more expensive" - isn't that what people who claim to love freedom so often want, free markets which adjust things based on monetary incentives?
[1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/fuel-news/chancellor-facing...
I caveat this with the statement that, were I dictator, all cities would be 15 minute cities, and I would bulldoze all subdivisions and American-style suburbs, which I regard as ridiculous encroachments on my preferred rural home.
And for the record, I tend to agree with the majority of the proposals anyway, but I can still object to the extremely bad faith response to locals exercizing their democratic right to question them. And confused at the number of people who will openly say "fuck cars" and explicitly advocate for making driving more difficult (as a primary goal), then claim it's a conspiracy to say they ever supported that
Those people don’t necessarily believe in COVID vaccine chips and whatnot; their logic, pretty straightforwardly, is that it makes you depend on the government for movement.
Even though I am a staunch opponent of sprawling suburbia and I love a dense walkable city with functioning transport, I have to admit that they have a point.
It’s true that I can’t recall any relevant examples that align with their opinion. Plenty well-planned walkable cities with in democratic regions, and plenty sprawl and chaotic traffic jam hells in dictatorships. Yet I can think of a few recent examples where control over public transportation was used to suppress protests.
To dismiss their argument out of hand and refuse to empathise is to unnecessarily expand an already deep gap.
You already depend on the government for building and maintaining the roads and the traffic lights and all accoutrements, the government can already close roads and restrict you. Public transport doesn't need to be government provided, it can be privatised (although this works badly in the UK). You also depend on the government in various ways for food and water and electricity - from land use and transport to crime prevention to upholding trade and food safety requirements and the value of currency; everyone in a city does, at least. Picking the car as the important thing for "freedom" is a ... weird one. And doesn't address the idea of "freedom from having to have a car".
> "Yet I can think of a few recent examples where control over public transportation was used to suppress protests."
"The PMLN-led federal and Punjab governments have closed several roads leading to Islamabad from various Punjab cities and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in an effort to stop PTI activists from marching on Islamabad."[3] - there's control over the roads used to suppress something or other (I don't know what PTI activists are, but I'm assuming this isn't in the middle of a war because that probably wouldn't be using shipping containers and talking of 'activists').
What about the COVID lockdowns preventing people from going outside at all? Having a car didn't give you freedom then, and public transport wasn't involved. What about The UK[2] making it legal for the police to shut down protests because the protestors might walk slowly down roads - no control over public transport needed to stop the protest (and on the flip side, car drivers depending on the government to keep cars moving).
In Paris: "Every first Sunday of the month is the new car-free day in Paris. It's an initiative appreciated by many Parisians, who have fallen under the spell of a capital free of motorized vehicles and noise pollution. The capital's first four arrondissements are closed to car traffic on one Sunday a month."[1] - more showing that governments can shut roads and therefore car drivers are dependent on the government for freedom of movement, as well as public transport users are.
[1] https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-paris/articles/17562... -
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/15/police-to-get-...
[3] https://dailytimes.com.pk/940632/govt-closes-all-roads-leadi...
That is absolutely correct. I use the fact that a car owner would still rely on the government to plan and maintain private road infrastructure as my main counter-argument to those people, with varying success.
This "consequently" is quite a jump and doing a lot of heavy lifting in jumping from policies that are completely neutral to "authoritarianism" to something where a discussion about the implications makes sense
There's nothing benefiting authoritarianism in having efficient public transport and walkable cities. And I fail to see how decrying these policies as authoritarian will help anything.
Especially since the end result seems to be (in the UK's case) the central government planning (or at least posturing) to crack down on local governments' ability to develop their own urban policy. If I had to choose between "being able to walk to the dentist" and "central government threatening the independence of local governments" I'd go with the latter as being more worthy of worry about authoritarianism
A separate conversation can be had about restricting private vehicles should such a restriction occur.
I can maybe see the point when talking about limited traffic zones. But the discussion here was about: 1. Reducing the need (not opportunity or freedom, need) to travel 2. Making public transport more effective
Neither of those is a restriction on cars. Nothing stops you from owning a car even though you don't need it and nothing stops you from using it even if it's inconvenient or unnecessary
I didn't see the point in answering to this comment earlier but since we're here:
> real estate is limited, so the choice between 7-lane road sprawl and walkable 1 or 2 lane streets—sometimes bus-only, sometimes shared with pedestrians, inevitably with heavy restrictions on speed and plenty of traffic lights—is binary
1. Traffic lights or speed bumps do not restrict cars, they restrict their convenience maybe, and they definitely restrict their ability to cause property damage and maimings around them. But you can still own and use your car, you're just not being subsidized as much by the rest of the community in doing so 2. Real estate is indeed limited. In the space you wasted for a 7 lane street plus the parking required you could have had a 2 lane street and an extra building used for apartments, offices, shops or an extra park or both. If making it mildly more uncomfortable to drive a car is a restriction on freedom on movement (your logic, not mine) then making it more expensive to have an apartment (because of reduced supply) and increasing the chance of getting injured by exposure to exhaust fumes or directly by car crashes is an infringement on the right to life itself
Obviously both of those statements are moronic. Making life better for those who don't want to own a car (or can't afford to) is not a restrictions on cars. If people decide that owning a car isn't worth it anymore for them then that's not coercion, it's showing that people were being "forced" into owning a car before when they didn't need to need it
The same government that issues you your driving license in the first place, and sets the standards for examining folks with a provisional license, and determining when licenses are revoked?
It's a bizarre argument in any case given many areas in the UK have public transport provided by private companies.
The very same indeed! Their logic is that license indicates your ability to use roads safely, and is not the means for preventing you from using the roads or owning cars. Presumably, they trust the government on that.
> It's a bizarre argument in any case given many areas in the UK have public transport provided by private companies.
I suspect those companies have to work with local governments—or can you, as a private company, just go around unilaterally setting up bus lanes, bus stops, railways and so on?
I know smart, very adequate people who point out that the automobile, and the planning and building it requires, is a device that benefits authoritarianism. Without it, people are free to walk or ride a horse wherever they feel like, but the automobile makes them dependent on government to be able to get around. And any government that lets them get around could stop them getting around, whenever they feel like it.Good luck walking or riding a horse hundreds of kilometres in one day—or, in fact, just daily commuting to the other side of a typical modern city that was planned for cars almost exclusively.
Sorry could you point to the referenced passage?
> After the worst of the pandemic was over, those same falsehoods fed into other conspiracy theories that continue to disrupt society. The original white paper that was the bill’s foundation included proposals for compelling platforms to tackle this kind of content—which individually might not be illegal but which en masse creates dangers. That’s not in the final legislation, although the act does create a new offense of “false communications,” criminalizing deliberately causing harm by communicating something the sender knows to be untrue. [...] The act includes strict rules forcing platforms to move swiftly to remove any illegal post—such as terrorist content or child sexual abuse material—but not on disinformation campaigns comprised of a drip-drip of misleading content, failing to understand that “when that turns into things going viral and spreading, then the harm can occur cumulatively.”
In the article, "other conspiracy theories" is a link to an article discussing people who oppose 15-minute cities, apparently because they regard that level of city planning as excessively authoritarian. It definitely seems to be true that the "opposition" here is complaining this bill did not yet give the government remit to ban "misinformation" and "disinformation", which is indeed depressing. I often wonder whether most such people really believe broad categories like this, which historically encompass everything from legitimately insane conspiracy theories to true facts about the world that the ruling class finds annoying, are something the government should be cracking down on...are they not aware "public order" is the excuse every regime has used to suppress speech?
There are very valid criticisms of the "15 minute city" including the widespread surveillance required to enforce certain proposed traffic restrictions (by personally identifying drivers and only allowing access to some areas at certain times). Councils and national governments in the UK have long abused data gathering to the detriment of its citizens. Unfortunately the Guardian and its ilk have derided critics of these plans as far right extremists and conspiracy theories.
If you have valid criticisms of the traffic filter trial in Oxford then that's fair enough, although I imagine Oxonians won't be particularly interested in hearing it unless you're a local resident.
But 15-minutes cities aren't about traffic restrictions. I might be wrong but this seems like people are conflating low traffic zones (which can involve the kind of automated system to limit traffic that you seem to refer to) with 15 minutes cities, which is an idea in urban planning to decentralize services (the "15 minutes" is intended as "you can reach anything you need every day with 15 minutes of walk", not "you won't be allowed to travel more than 15 minutes")
It has absolutely nothing to do with traffic filtering or traffic restrictions, and this is simply misinformation (sadly, misinformation perpetuated by the political party with a majority in the United Kingdom). Nobody is going to be confined to a distance-based-radius of their home, and anyone stupid enough to believe this is a damning indictment of the UK's education system.