I was checking the headlines in the local news media yesterday (18.7), and found this piece relating to the controversy over the east Bristol 'Liveable Neighbourhood': Hope that plans to close off east Bristol roads could reduce speeding and prevent crashes
It's more like an unlivable prison. The idea of these ideas is to take away your freedom of movement and control your life...nothing else. The wack-o-nuts have no life, no hope and no reason to live other than to serve some unknown master.
There's worse, far worse to come for Bristol than this 'liveable neighbourhood scheme'... Namely, building up into the sky with a rash of apartment blocks. Ones aimed at young professionals, a fair number of who will will work from home. The kind of people who supported lockdowns in 2020/21. Voting for their own imprisonment. An imprisonment that telecome and 'entertainment' provider, BT, are trying to soften with their 'winning at staying in' advertising campaign. There is opposition to the towers but, that's mainly on aesthetic grounds. I'm working on a post which will look at the social impact of what will be vertical prisons where the inhabitants won't think they're imprisoned. It is...grim...
Have you ever read Billenium by JG Ballard? It is a short science fiction story that is available free online that is very germane to the potential dystopia you are describing.
Sounds like you have it really bad in Britain due to a combination of dense population and an overbearing nanny state. Here in the U.S. there are truly rural areas where it is tens of miles between towns, and even those towns are often just a post office, a bar, a church, and a store if you are lucky. So Americans are NEVER going to give up our cars, and from this vantage point the sniveling compliance looks appalling.
To be honest, some people will never understand until they get hit in the face with it.
When they want to drive down to the pub, or out to the country and they can't get there, or if they want to get to the market and it's raining, then they'll wonder why they can't drive there.
Maybe it won't even hit them until the government shows up to take away their cars and they can't get around.
A smart person would invest in about a dozen carriages, horses, and drivers. I see handsome carriages making a comeback.
Although I live in a town between the cities of Bristol to the west and Bath to the east, not far to the north and south are a fair number of farming villages where there never has been much of a bus service and people have always had to drive. I'm thinking that if we move into a situation where vehicle movements are restricted regardless of location, it will be the countryside that will kick off against it. They could well be joined by the inhabitants of the peripheral overspill estates on the edge of both cities that have been neglected by the authorities for decades. Estates where the bus services have been slashed and people have no option but to drive, even it it's in an old banger that has seen better days. That will be a potent combination, one that the 'woke' element in Bristol will hate and fear. Fun times await...life will not be dull:)
Let's make the whole topic of smart cities personal, from the point of view of an old person with failing health.
I attended a session yesterday about the adequacy of health services in the area in which I live, a coastal village 40 minutes drive from the closest regional centre. A few issues emerged. There were not enough competent primary medical care givers in the area. Local medical providers are located for car access, and specialist services have to be accessed 40 minutes drive away or 2 hours drive away. So why not take public transport to access these services? The local busses run every two hours, with a 1 hour 50 minute turnaround - that is, wherever you go, you have to wait 1 hour 50 minutes for the return bus. Add to this that the town has few footpaths - only the main street, and the grassed road edges in the rest of the village are rough and pitted, so no wheeled vehicle like a wheel chair or a "walker", or even a wheeled shopping bag can be driven or pulled along them, and you have your prison. For old people, in the town where I live, which is very very "un-smart", the aged and infirm are already living in a prison.
At the session I was attending yesterday I found myself advocating for much smarter cities than we have, despite my ideological fear of them. My very un-smart location is already a prison for the physically challenged. It can't get much worse.
But why do smart cities have to be forced on us? Fix the infrastructure and will the problem look after itself?
Personally, I would not need to be forced to give up my car if I had alternatives. The public transport system has to be re-designed with flexibility and age friendly characteristics like buses with decent suspension, no steep steps, and shelters and benches at bus stops. Then the medical system has to be re-designed so that telephone consultations or home visits are possible for those unable to get to the clinics, and there is some kind of prescription delivery service. Pathology services have to be made accessible to all in their own locality. Local shopping has to be redesigned and actually become local again (In my village every "local" shop has been replaced by a tourist shop, mostly cafes and gift shops with no adequate grocer, no green grocer, no butcher, no delicatessen.) (We do have a bakery and a chemist.)
Now WHEN this re-design is all done, and funded at great expense by the tax payer, then and only then will I consider getting rid of my car. My car IS my safety blanket. It is the only key I have that opens my cell door. Without it I would be a permanent prisoner of the one bedroom flat I live in, unable to access the services I need when I need them. Those of you afraid that you will become a prisoner of the smart cities, if you live long enough you might just find that you are even more a prisoner of the stupid cities we are currently living in. It's not that hard. It just has to be paid for. Build the infrastructure and we will use it! There will be no need for force.
Many thanks for your comment:) I always find people talking about their personal experiences in moving around, or trying to move around, informative and useful. Namely because it adds a much needed level of nuance and complexity to a debate that is getting too polarised...
Why do you feel like you need to get rid of your car at all? As an American I say, "fuck these assholes." Our revealed preference outside of all the virtue signaling is we like the fast personal mobility only cars currently provide. Who is the state to tell us what to prefer?
Hmm yeah, well I can relate to that having an over 20 year old car that rattles as it goes down the road. I suspect your nanny state wouldn't allow my car on the road.
It's more like an unlivable prison. The idea of these ideas is to take away your freedom of movement and control your life...nothing else. The wack-o-nuts have no life, no hope and no reason to live other than to serve some unknown master.
There's worse, far worse to come for Bristol than this 'liveable neighbourhood scheme'... Namely, building up into the sky with a rash of apartment blocks. Ones aimed at young professionals, a fair number of who will will work from home. The kind of people who supported lockdowns in 2020/21. Voting for their own imprisonment. An imprisonment that telecome and 'entertainment' provider, BT, are trying to soften with their 'winning at staying in' advertising campaign. There is opposition to the towers but, that's mainly on aesthetic grounds. I'm working on a post which will look at the social impact of what will be vertical prisons where the inhabitants won't think they're imprisoned. It is...grim...
Have you ever read Billenium by JG Ballard? It is a short science fiction story that is available free online that is very germane to the potential dystopia you are describing.
Sounds like you have it really bad in Britain due to a combination of dense population and an overbearing nanny state. Here in the U.S. there are truly rural areas where it is tens of miles between towns, and even those towns are often just a post office, a bar, a church, and a store if you are lucky. So Americans are NEVER going to give up our cars, and from this vantage point the sniveling compliance looks appalling.
To be honest, some people will never understand until they get hit in the face with it.
When they want to drive down to the pub, or out to the country and they can't get there, or if they want to get to the market and it's raining, then they'll wonder why they can't drive there.
Maybe it won't even hit them until the government shows up to take away their cars and they can't get around.
A smart person would invest in about a dozen carriages, horses, and drivers. I see handsome carriages making a comeback.
Although I live in a town between the cities of Bristol to the west and Bath to the east, not far to the north and south are a fair number of farming villages where there never has been much of a bus service and people have always had to drive. I'm thinking that if we move into a situation where vehicle movements are restricted regardless of location, it will be the countryside that will kick off against it. They could well be joined by the inhabitants of the peripheral overspill estates on the edge of both cities that have been neglected by the authorities for decades. Estates where the bus services have been slashed and people have no option but to drive, even it it's in an old banger that has seen better days. That will be a potent combination, one that the 'woke' element in Bristol will hate and fear. Fun times await...life will not be dull:)
As am American where we have much more sparsely populated rural areas I would say that's 100 percent correct.
Let's make the whole topic of smart cities personal, from the point of view of an old person with failing health.
I attended a session yesterday about the adequacy of health services in the area in which I live, a coastal village 40 minutes drive from the closest regional centre. A few issues emerged. There were not enough competent primary medical care givers in the area. Local medical providers are located for car access, and specialist services have to be accessed 40 minutes drive away or 2 hours drive away. So why not take public transport to access these services? The local busses run every two hours, with a 1 hour 50 minute turnaround - that is, wherever you go, you have to wait 1 hour 50 minutes for the return bus. Add to this that the town has few footpaths - only the main street, and the grassed road edges in the rest of the village are rough and pitted, so no wheeled vehicle like a wheel chair or a "walker", or even a wheeled shopping bag can be driven or pulled along them, and you have your prison. For old people, in the town where I live, which is very very "un-smart", the aged and infirm are already living in a prison.
At the session I was attending yesterday I found myself advocating for much smarter cities than we have, despite my ideological fear of them. My very un-smart location is already a prison for the physically challenged. It can't get much worse.
But why do smart cities have to be forced on us? Fix the infrastructure and will the problem look after itself?
Personally, I would not need to be forced to give up my car if I had alternatives. The public transport system has to be re-designed with flexibility and age friendly characteristics like buses with decent suspension, no steep steps, and shelters and benches at bus stops. Then the medical system has to be re-designed so that telephone consultations or home visits are possible for those unable to get to the clinics, and there is some kind of prescription delivery service. Pathology services have to be made accessible to all in their own locality. Local shopping has to be redesigned and actually become local again (In my village every "local" shop has been replaced by a tourist shop, mostly cafes and gift shops with no adequate grocer, no green grocer, no butcher, no delicatessen.) (We do have a bakery and a chemist.)
Now WHEN this re-design is all done, and funded at great expense by the tax payer, then and only then will I consider getting rid of my car. My car IS my safety blanket. It is the only key I have that opens my cell door. Without it I would be a permanent prisoner of the one bedroom flat I live in, unable to access the services I need when I need them. Those of you afraid that you will become a prisoner of the smart cities, if you live long enough you might just find that you are even more a prisoner of the stupid cities we are currently living in. It's not that hard. It just has to be paid for. Build the infrastructure and we will use it! There will be no need for force.
Many thanks for your comment:) I always find people talking about their personal experiences in moving around, or trying to move around, informative and useful. Namely because it adds a much needed level of nuance and complexity to a debate that is getting too polarised...
Why do you feel like you need to get rid of your car at all? As an American I say, "fuck these assholes." Our revealed preference outside of all the virtue signaling is we like the fast personal mobility only cars currently provide. Who is the state to tell us what to prefer?
Poverty. I can't afford to keep it roadworthy.
Hmm yeah, well I can relate to that having an over 20 year old car that rattles as it goes down the road. I suspect your nanny state wouldn't allow my car on the road.
Social engineering schemes NEVER work.