The Sunday Story: A 15-minute climate solution attracts conspiracies
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Hey, everyone is a sunday story from up first. A major go. As you know, in P, R, has been following this breaking new story out of israel and gaza will continue to cover that story on your local epr stations, and you can visit epr that or flash media updates for more.

But today we also are going to bring you this very fascinating story on another topic. IT has some very surprising twist. Joy assignment is in the climate solutions reporter. So joy I, you've been reporting on an idea that's been taking hold around the world.

Yeah, I travelled to to two very different cities for this story.

Okay, so where we started here.

we start in the neighborhood where I used to live. Parris, here's some tape from when I was there. So I am on my old persian street, a little couple stone passage with vine covering the buildings. And I tried an experiment with my stop watch.

We going for a one or something.

No, no, not that, but, but stick with me. I'm going to start my stop watch and see where I can go by foot in fifteen minutes. Let's go.

In one minute, I made IT to the gold metal school. I made IT to a bookstore in three minutes, pharmacy and. Four minutes.

The Bakery, in a little more than five minutes, I did turn off my stop lodge for a sec at the Bakery. Okay, I just had to get a, but get, well, i'm here. Here, the crunch .

a french bg gets, you're making everyone jealous.

Y A grocery store, a park on metro mean another park and a hospital, all in a fifty minute walk.

An dishing pair. So that sounds beautiful, but I also sounds like very convenient .

and so convenient. And what I experienced, a blueprint for a global climate solution. IT has .

so many. As you had the minute.

the fifteen minute city this .

week on the sunday story, we're going along with joy assignment as he explores the fifty minute city. It's a climate solution that spreading from paris to Kevin, but joy says IT has some big obstacles, including public schools, nmb ies and conspiracy theories fueling death threats to city planners. Stay with us.

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We're back with epr climate .

solutions reported you assignment. She's been looking into the idea of the fifty minute city. So you did did someone actually come up with this idea? I mean, that seems very almost intuitive.

Yes, his name is carlo model. We net along the banks of the sand river in paris IT. Turns out he's not french origin.

Frank coco amban.

he's an urban st. He spends his time thinking about cities. He teaches at the university, paris, one panty, also bone. And he advises mayors and city planner all over the world about this idea, the fifteen minute city.

So is this basically what IT sounds like?

Yeah, it's a city where you can get the key things in your life in a 5 minute walk by ride or transit ride from your home， think things like food, schools, work, recreation. And I should say there are plenty of places around the world where fifteen minute cities have been, therefore decades, if not centuries, places like new york, paris. Obviously, morano says his idea is really about creating a blueprint or road map for mayors and city planner around the world.

And so is fifty minutes. The hard and fast rule could be longer or shorter.

You know, I actually told marino about how I was walking around paris with my stop watch said to fifteen minutes.

and he said, the number fifteen isn't so important.

IT could be ten or eighteen minutes. He's also pretty diagnostic about whether people reach these places by foot or by bike or by public transit.

This, let s see me that, but I said I had a bitias.

The important thing with this over planning idea is to have proximity to access services in many locations of the city and to reduce the carbon footprint.

So that brings me to the key question, like how does this directly relate to climate change? Uh, I mean, I guess I would think that is about uh, having people not drive to places.

exactly. Cars are nearly ten percent of all energy related carbon dioxide pollution, according to the international energy. Cy, the director of climate for paris, told me fifty minute cities can help transition cities away from cars. And their pollution plus model says there are lots of other co benefits that come with them. So co benefits.

that's a word that were hearing a lot more around climate solutions. But tell us what that means. Like to into the average person who doesn't like study this stuff.

Fifteen minute cities promote walking and biking, which also promote health. Less cars means less noise, more safety for pedestrians and bikers. More parks and urban trees pole carbon dioxide from the air, and they provide shade and cool down neighborhoods. These are co benefits.

So how has mariano's idea inspire the pair city government? Like what has the city been doing?

So the fifteen minute experience that I had in my neighborhood is not everywhere in paris. So the city of paris is really trying to make sure that people across the city can have that kind of experience that I had. And that means emphasizing proximity. They're developing multi use buildings. They're converting old military buildings, old shopping center and old parking structure into buildings with a mix of apartments, offices.

businesses. So it's a way of of taking old and revamp IT with, you know, that our new climate circumstances in line, right?

right? And paris, like many cities, needs more housing, and they're investing in amends for these neighbors. Ods, neighbor ods across the city have new parks, urban guarded, expanded hours for child care, nurseries, ies.

They've built six hundred miles of protected bike lanes. And now across the city, streets in front of schools have banned cars. They call them school streets.

I can just see, you know, all the kids is walking to score. That seems like very safe and like a very good idea.

IT does. But I wanted to see how this fifteen minute city idea is springing. So I called up this guy.

I remember a marcha, twenty, twenty. I was living downtown and everything was shut down.

This is Justin bp, who's now the mayor of cleveland. At the time, he was working at a bank in downtown cleveland, staying in his apartment, avoiding corona virus.

I saw a news article about this big phenomenon being created in paris around the fifteen minute city. And I read up on IT and like that, that are connecting for me. now. I thought about my childhood growing up in cleveland, and how I related in a fifty minute city neighborhood. The time I thought about my experience and living in london, where I walk to school or walk to the restaurant, our walk to catch a bus to get a haircut.

And he thought, I want more of this for cleveland.

So how was he putting this into place?

So baby's new in office, he came in last year. And what his office first did is look at their city and make this fifty minute city index. They found that there are lots of places in cleveland where you might technically have a fifty minute city, but the walk isn't so nice.

The sidewalks are terrible. There might be buses, but they don't run frequently. There are grocery resource, but they don't have good food options.

There's been a lot of disinvestment in cleveland and other us. cities. But as they started to do this work, they began to face other obstacles. Uh, so.

so what are these obstacles?

I spoke to researchers, and they talk about four main obstacles for fifty minute cities. The first is conspiracy theories. And to understand IT, we're going going to start in west oxy ure in the U.

K. My name is duncan and right and I am uh county councillor on auto county council and he's .

basically trying to make new bus lanes downtown oxford can be really car congested and .

also we know we face a client ency air pollution terrible about a year .

ago he's at this community meeting. He recognizes some faces. There are a lot of people he doesn't recognize though anywhere .

to sit point point in the meeting. One of them stood up up inside. What about fifteen minutes? Cities and to be honest, first i've never heard of that phrase and so IT became a bit, uh, agitated. So we had to suspend the meeting. And I went over in tour to these people, and they were explaining all about this theory, about the world's economic forum, trying to institute this policy everywhere of fifteen minute cities, by which they meant you would only be able to travel fifteen minutes .

from your home oh okay um okay so that's that's taken A A dark turn so so the conspiracy y theory is that fifteen minutes cities are away for the world economic forum to somehow um do some type of control or something like what exactly is the conserving theory yeah the accusation completely .

unsubstantial is that a cabal of global needs are using or will use 的 ten minute cities to sneakily implement states or revealing to limit people's freedom of movement and to keep people in a position of subservience to the government。 Here's and right explaining his conversation with these conspiracy minded folks.

I couldn't work out and I asked them, and they didn't have an idea why anybody would be stupid enough to try to do something lights. And I explained to them that my job is to make travel easier so people can go wherever they like, to find opportunity, jobs, education. That's my jobs, is to make IT easier together around, not to stop people going more than fifty minutes. So is a real surprise that this came up almost diametrically opposite. So everything I stand for.

what I mean, basically he was just proposing creating bus lanes, right?

right? He's really about promoting buses, reducing cars and oxford and and write was surprised that this got sucked into the of this conspiracy theory, about fifteen minutes cities. But people who steady misinformation aren't surprised.

really. Fifty minute cities is the latest victim in a broader trend that we have seen spiring over the past five years or so.

This is Jenny king, head of climate research and policy at the institute for strategic blague in london. He says, while climate misinformation used to deny the global warming is happening now, SHE says attacks often focus on climate solutions. And he says they often pit back to these big, over arching.

conspiring things that, at a fundamental level, unsubstantial, but also impossible to disprove, because they are built on imagined futures and kind of fantasized womans.

This all sounds very familiar to the things that we hear and so many other areas of this information.

right? And the conspiracy around fifty minute cities, as this waited trap people in opener prisons, is getting some pretty big loudspeakers. IT made IT onto the joe rogan show last month.

I essentially be contained in the less you .

get permission to leave the .

idea they're starting to roll out in europe.

And earlier this month, the transport secretary of the U. K. Talked about fifty minutes cities in a big speech, using language very similar to the conspiracy theory.

He talked about how we don't want local governments in the U. K. Limit ting, how often people go to the shops, which isn't happening. Pure technologies, a company that monitors misinformation, pull data for M, P, R. IT, showed thousands of posts, about fifty minutes, cities that Spike during events like the August fires and mary and the february derail. Man of a training ohio, with people writing falsely that these were planned events to kick people off their land and into fifty minute cities. Some online posts attacked the cleveland mayor's office.

Fact that mayor bit wants to lack down cleveland in an open their prison .

and and we should be clear that they're not rolled in this out in in the europe to restrict people's movement to fifteen minutes. So we should be clear about .

that important fact, important fact check.

Yes, yes. But like I would imagine that like with everything else, these conspiracy theories can have an effect on policy. And the rolling out of these fifty minutes, cities like car.

are they having an impact? Yeah, big one is these threats of violence for urban planners and politicians. Dungan and write that local politician in oxford after he went to that meeting and heard how his bus lin was getting mixed up in fifteen minute cities, he started getting these weird messages, phone calls. In february, thousands of people marched in oxford against fifteen minute cities, and right, and some of his colleagues started getting death rats.

The police became involved so IT rapidly especially.

and the upper and oxford LED to a lot more notoriety for the man behind the idea, Carlos moi o around this time of the oxford protest, moderna was getting a lot of death threats .

too from me in, and they were violent. People .

accused him of wanting to trap people in concentration camps.

They, he han moro .

says IT was difficult to bear psychologically because IT wasn't just him getting threats. IT was his wife, his daughters, he said IT was really heavy and modern, says, while the death rats are now subsiding for him, he says he knows other people working on climate solutions who continue to get threats of violence.

Is these attacks give his colleagues, other .

researchers, scientists are reluctance to publish articles about their work. And he says, this is what the conspiracy mongers want to silence us and miss information can also mix in or drown out actual, legitimate policy criticisms of climate solutions, making IT really muddied and difficult to have these conversations. Jenny king at the institute for strategic dialogue says this .

is deliberate. In the end, IT actually doesn't matter if ninety nine percent of the public believing climate change, if they are still confused about the viable pathways forward, or you're able to, in bed, real fear and seeds of doubt about the solutions that are on the table, you end up with the same outcome, which is no legislative agenda, no meaningful policy proposals, no local action. So trying to slow down that process of policy making.

So conspiracy there is as the first obsta, this seems like a big obstacle. Um what's obstacle?

Number two, zoning don't zone out. I promise it's important OK to understand that I visited another city, one a lot closer to my home based in the bay area. San, hi, are you Michael? Yes, hi, nice to Michael.

Brio works in city planning for san haz. We met at the floor for driving in a very car oriented neighborhood in the city. Can we cross here? We have to jay walk.

Oh, okay.

we had to jay walk. I on the news cross was so far.

oh my god, here to.

yes, we made IT. We made IT. When we finally cross the street, bro got talking about single family zoning, which is very dominant in santa.

So single family zoning that that really means that for big areas of cities or suburbs, people can only build one house on one lot for one family. Right here is JoNathan levine.

professor of urban origin, inal planning at university michigan.

I say that it's a problem, but I say that it's big. It's enormous. The single family zone absolutely dominates residential land in all of our metropolitan areas.

levine says. This is not some accident of history. There is a drag through line to the dominance of single family zoning and policies of segregation, federal statist for a single family home ownership, or fundamentally restricted to White.

Its roots are in racial exclusion, and to this day we can show that exclusionary zoning and single family zoning tend to exacerbate racial segregation.

In sanai, a guy like Michael rio has this problem. P. N. S. Colleagues are trying to build more low income and market rate apartments for sanayi.

I mean, I hear about this all over um because there is a housing crisis and like there's just not enough homes for people in this country.

And san hose has climate goals in single family is owning. You can establish retail businesses near homes. People end up playing on cars which increases emissions, but in parts, and say, there are these zones, they call them mixed, makes you scored doors.

And rio is using them to make what he calls urban villages. He says it's his version of fifteen minute cities, is a park, a little, a little playground. He took me there.

In front of us was a live of apartment buildings, this pedestrian walkway, trees with purple flowers. This reminds me of when I was a kid, I used to play sim city. Oh yes, yeah. On the other side was a nail salon. Across the street was a safe way, also a very popular um breakfast place i'd never been there called the breakfast club is super popular.

What I mean, this all seems like really nice and lovely. What is the issue?

The problem is only so much land zone for multiple uses. And santos with both apartments and a breakfast spot. We came out of the urban village and we were surrounded by single family homes.

Rio says they'll eventually have to think about converting neighborhoods full of single family properties into more dense developments like duplexes and four plexus. But sometimes there are chAllenges to changes like this. They come from the communities themselves, which brings us to our next obstacle.

Um I would guess that is the not a backyard folks .

limb is that .

is correct. There is this bain of named ism in the american psyche, arguably which has to do with certain imagine aries, the single family home, you know, uh, being able to access things with your car. You know, this, this is part of our .

culture for nano. Borda is a professor of urban planning at university in soda, and his city mini apps made big news in twenty eighteen by being the first big city to outlasting le families ing. But right now, the city's plan is seeing a legal chAllenge coming primarily from environmental. They see new apartments posing a threat to wildlife migration.

Well, I mean, that's you know that's that's really tRicky because more than urban living in the big picture, I can be Better for the environment for lime by reducing car emissions. But then you worried about, you know wildlife and an animals and and all of that.

It's complicated. And there are different type of nibs. Neighbourhood fenders is whatever you want to call them. Some are environmentally, some are not.

Some are in White neighborhoods, some are in historically disadvantaged igher hoods that have been paved over by freeways, morga says some this trust for U. S. Planners is understandable.

I would be remiss in demo ized imiss. I can have my reasons why I don't agree with them, but I think it's more productive to bring them to a conversation.

And a lot of climate solutions, whether it's fifteen minute cities or new renovations, they're gonna require reimagining land. So researchers say bringing neighbors to the table is key.

So what's the fourth obstacle we're talking about with fifteen minute cities?

This one surprise me a bit, but it's actually public schools. I talk to Carry mccarroll age urban planning professor at university, color orado denver. And he says her researchers found when urban U.

S. Couples have kids, they often leave cities for suburbs, which they think have Better schools. They kind of opt out of more sustainable urban living that we want regional .

sustainability. We have to look to these urban places and wire people staying in them and driving in them. And a lot of IT come back down.

这个 二分。 It's it's all about the schools. I mean, I always .

about the schools.

I definitely get that. But do you spend all this time thinking about fifty minutes? Cities and in the last few months and in all of these obstacles for them.

So are are you hopeful that the U. S. And other countries around the world can actually achieve this?

There's something that JoNathan levine said that really stuck with me when we travel to paris or answer dam. You can feel like the fifty minute cities are just inevitable in europe, because europeans have just never been as car crazy as americans. And levine says, no, actually, europeans loved cars after our war. Two, the difference is that these cities decided to move away from cars.

What that demonstrates is, is the result that many americans find desirable. Wow is in a wonderful, we go to europe, we can walk, we can take the bus. We can take the train at etra is a policy choice. It's not prior date.

So mexico city, that cities around the world have made policies to promote public transit. walking. We saw in the pandemic, cities can move away from cars and transform streets quickly.

Of course. I mean this seems like this would be harder in some places and others like I mean you have some cities that are more dense, but others you know are are are very spread out um you know so they they are starting from very different places .

in spread out. Car centric san hose reel says he sees the work he's doing as a planner in terms of decades, he says it's going to be a generational shift. But ultimately, morano says this question of how fast we move comes .

down to politicians and communities is there's no a.

there's no magic one to prove. Transform cities.

transforming .

cities, he says, comes down to a question, political will.

joy. Thank you so much for this reporting.

Thank you so much. asia.

This episode of the sunday store was produced by Andrew mambo and edited by genie t in milla energy, our engineer for this episode with magnetic d thanks to gene denby jenner er ladon also, are you reading homes and everyone who helped to make in p rs first climate week you can check out more stories about climate solutions that in P R 到 or flash climate week the Sunny story is made by in P R S enterprise story telling unit viana symptom is our supervising producer and I read the gucci is our executive producer i'm my sharston at first， is back tomorrow with all the mission. Need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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