I think this is mostly confusing the 15 minute city with a 15 minute district surrounded by spread out bullshit, which is what we have now and is what the 15 minute city concept proposes to fix. I'm not saying there isn't nuances here as per no true scotsman or cases where it works out like that but I don't think it's good analysis.
I disagree it's what we have now in the US. The downtown core is generally just office buildings with not too many street-level amenities or even housing. Places that have started to convert parts of the spread-out bullshit into 15 minute cities (which is how the process will occur, we have to deal with existing city design and cannot start fresh) see astonishing levels of gentrification in those parts.
The first time I visited a ski-town as a part of a hiking adventure, I realized that despite how cool the city was, it was basically just a private reservation for rich people. All the workers drove from about 45 minutes out. It was so strange, but this sums it up.
Thus, everywhere in Disneyland the objective profile of America, down to the morphology of
individuals and of the crowd, is drawn. All its values are exalted by the miniature and the comic
strip. Embalmed and pacified. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland
(L. Marin did it very well in Utopiques, jeux d'espace [Utopias, play of space]): digest of the
American way of life, panegyric of American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory
reality. Certainly. But this masks something else and this "ideological" blanket functions as a
cover for a simulation of the third order: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real"
country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is
the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as
imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the
America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order
of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of
concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.
The imaginary of Disneyland is neither true nor false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order
to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp. Whence the debility of this imaginary,
its infantile degeneration. This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the
adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is
everywhere - that it is that of the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to
foster illusions as to their real childishness
I agree with the overall sentiment, but the commute time needed to avoid theme park status is more variable. Like, a 30 minute commute would be well under average for NYC and that’s not a theme park (outside of Times Square).
To an extent, it’s an inevitability when you’re talking about a tourism heavy city plus large swaths that exist almost entirely for day job commuters. But that also means that the white collar worker coming in from New Jersey often has a longer commute than the service worker coming in from low income housing in the outer boroughs so the dynamic isn’t always the same as what the tweet is getting at.
Ideally the workers would live in a 15 minute range of their job as well. They should be able to walk to work the same way you can walk there to get a coffee.
idk about your city/country but its not even what I want from urban spaces lol
barely any grocery stores, everything except some hyper-overpriced bars and restaurants closes at like 6pm because of the scary homeless or whatever, unforgiving concrete steel and glass skyscrapers full of offices and the most bland housing options you've ever seen (unless maybe if you have tons of money, then there might be a penthouse.)
Its rough. Around the edges of downtown you might get some older neighborhoods with mixed land use and smaller more affordable housing buildings, if you're lucky (if you're not lucky they fully ringed the CBD with interstate highways and demolished these), but some of the other issues remain
Okay sorry folks but since the comments keep adding up: Imagine if WFH was reserved to CEOs only (I mean, imagine!) and then conclude from that that WFH is bad
The barista would live in the affordable commie block apartments above the coffee shop?
Like isn't the idea of "commie block" style buildings that your shopping is all on the ground floor and everyone lives above? Like the furthest you'd have to walk is maybe the next building over?
I know I'm simplifying a bit but basically if you think a "15 minute city" is just what the States have now but with a few more buses, well you are probably an idiot for starters. Like why bother engaging in the conversation if you won't even pretend to understand it?