I mean as a very socially conservative person, I find the conservative opposition to fifteen minute cities extremely baffling.
I'm a unicorn. I often disagree with city dwellers politically, but I just cannot move to a prison suburb to be around people who agrees with me. What's even the point of living in a place with people who see eye to eye on social issues if I never actually see them??
But yeah the depression I had moving back home (briefly) after living abroad for a while really threw me over the edge in terms of knowing where I wanted to live. The car dependence alone is ... Terrifying if you think about it. What happens if your car doesn't start?
Nitpick, from what i've read from you in this thread, you're a societal conservative.
You might be a social conservative (most american are, i think the left of the left of the democrat party isn't, but even then, its clearly a huge minority), but clearly, your position on suburbia and meeting people not from your circle isn't (which is fine, you can be social conservative and still think social mixity is good for conserving the social strucure/status quo).
Liberals are often a lot more socially conservative than they say they are, and hide social issues their economic policies create by being progressive on societal issue, but even then they push their narrative. First and second wave feminism was about emancipation. Third and fourth wave feminism is about this "empowerment", which is fine, i guess, but really does not move the needle socially.
> your position on suburbia and meeting people not from your circle isn't (which is fine, you can be social conservative and still think social mixity is good for conserving the social strucure/status quo).
Given that I belong to many conservative urban clubs, I'm going to say that while urbanism tends to be a 'left-wing' issue, there's quite a lot of urbanism on the right too. More than you'd expect. For example, strong towns leans conservative (I think); the new polity podcast (traditional Catholic) has a bunch of episodes on urbanism; even Tucker carlson has gone on rants about ugly suburbia.
The truth about American politics is that random issues end up getting lumped into 'left' or 'right' and then, due to feedback cycles, become predominantly associated with one or the other. My point in bringing up my politics was (1) to show that I'm approaching this from a perhaps underrepresented viewpoint on this forum, and (2) to express my confusion as to why 15 minute cities are not a conservative issue (and like I said there are some smaller groups that have taken it up).
Finally, the reason I continue to say that I'm a conservative in these discussions is because I basically disagree with the vast majority of liberal urbanists. We agree on the results desired, but their methods are often toxic, unapproachable, and xenophobic in my viewpoint. I've directly butted heads with many at our local transit hearings. I truly don't see eye-to-eye with them on large portions of policy. One of the big issues right now in my city is the prioritization of 'diversity and equity' over actually building transit that works for everyone.
The issue is that you can be conservative or progressive on really different issues, and it does not apply 1:1 to politics (especially US politics). Most green party and ONGs are ecological conservatives (Greenpeace especially :/), despite being broadly at the left of socdems in Europe. Being societally conservative (practicing religious people are, in my experience) is orthogonal to being for closer communities, unlike pushing 'diversity and inclusion', which are an excuse to keep to social status quo, while virtue signaling.
I'm a unicorn. I often disagree with city dwellers politically, but I just cannot move to a prison suburb to be around people who agrees with me. What's even the point of living in a place with people who see eye to eye on social issues if I never actually see them??
But yeah the depression I had moving back home (briefly) after living abroad for a while really threw me over the edge in terms of knowing where I wanted to live. The car dependence alone is ... Terrifying if you think about it. What happens if your car doesn't start?