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Better Planners Podcast
The 15-Minute City Conspiracy Theory
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We're back!! Shelley and Mary are back in full force with a new episode all about the 15-Minute City Conspiracy Theory.
We'll dive into the details surrounding the 15-Minute City theory and the conspiracy theories surrounding it, including clips from demonstrations in the United Kingdom. Included are our takes on what this all means for urban and rural planners in the United States. This podcast episode gets very interesting!
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Mary, how are you?
Mary Heberling-CreightonI'm doing good, Shelly. How are you?
Shelley DenisonI am fantastic. Uh, Mary, in 10 words or less, what is the most exciting planning related thing that you have done recently?
Mary Heberling-CreightonThe state finally gave us money.
Shelley DenisonOh, that is exciting. That is really exciting. Congratulations
Mary Heberling-Creightonand I did that in six words. [Theme music plays] we are gonna talk to you all about. 15 minute cities and in particular, some conspiracy theories about them that you may have heard about in the news recently. And what does that mean for us as planners?
Shelley DenisonYeah. You know, researching for this episode was, uh, simultaneously very interesting, very fascinating, and also in raging. Which I think that will become clear as we, as we have this conversation. So a couple of things to mention, a little bit of housekeeping. The Better Planners Podcast is affiliated with the Oregon chapter of the American Planning Association. Yeah. And you can also follow us on Instagram at Better Planners and. We have an upcoming episode where we're gonna be talking about workplace dynamics in the world of planning, public sector, private sector, nonprofit sector. So we wanna hear what. Issues you've had, what questions you've had, what experiences that you've had around your workplace dynamics. Uh, we got a really fantastic voicemail a little while back from, from somebody who works out on the coast in Oregon who had a great question about how to manage a particular workplace situation. So we wanna. Build off of that and we need, we need to hear from you. So
Mary Heberling-Creightonyes.
Shelley DenisonCall us. Leave us a voicemail. 5 0 3 4 3 3 7 5 4 5. All right, so Mary, today we're talking about 15 minute cities, specifically the controversy and conspiracy theories around. 15 minute cities.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThis will be super interesting. I'm so excited to have this conversation.
Shelley DenisonMe too. I'm fascinated by conspiracy theories. I'm fascinated by the way that they spread, why people believe them, where they come from. I think it's so interesting and kind of the million dollar question that not just planners, but a lot of people in government institutions are dealing with right now, is how do we manage conspiracy theories? How do we engage with people who believe conspiracy theories?
Mary Heberling-CreightonSo let's just start off with. Kind of some background.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonI think some planners, actually, probably a lot of planners already know about this, but we'll just dive into what is a 15 minute city? What is that concept?
Shelley DenisonYeah, so kind of the main idea of a 15 minute city is that most of the places that you need to go in a city should be accessible by a walk or a bike ride. That takes no more than 15 minutes. There's a kind of a, a few key principles related to that. One is that planners should build cities around people and not cars.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonRight? So getting to kind of a more human-centric model of urbanization as opposed to a car-centric model. Another principle is that every part of a neighborhood, every building, every block, every square yard should have multiple uses.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd then finally, this idea that neighborhoods are for living, working, and playing. So it pushes back on that idea that. Of, of traditional Euclidean zoning, right?
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd, and really encourages a mixed use kind of neighborhood that also encourages the scary d word density. So the term 15 Minute City was coined originally by Carlos Moreno, who is a professor at, uh, Sobon University in Paris. He was working really closely with the. Mayor of Paris, Anna Hidalgo, to, to kind of come up with this concept, come up with a way to decrease specifically car emissions in the city of Paris. And that's when he came up with, with the idea of a 15 minute city, well, actually, let me change how I say that. So the, the, the principles behind a 15 minute city are as old as urbanism itself. Right?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes.
Shelley DenisonLike, like it's nothing new. You should be able to be close to the places that you need to go, is the principle of urbanism that we followed until the invention of the, of the vehicle. Pretty much
Mary Heberling-Creightonyes,
Shelley Denisonbut the term 15 minute city and the way that we understand that, that was coined by Carlos Moreno. There's some kind of key benefits of 15 Minute City is obviously lower car emissions, more independence across ages. Right? So children have more autonomy if they can walk home from school, if they can walk to the park or ride their bike to the park. Uh, including more independence for older folks who maybe aren't able to drive anymore.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonThey're safer. Uh, one of the major causes of injury and death in the United States are pedestrians being struck by cars and people, uh, being hurt or dying in car crashes.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThey actually just reported that pedestrian deaths have increased, I think by like 40% in the last year or two in, in, in the United States.
Shelley DenisonThat's, that's terrifying. And then there's also kind of like the non-measurable benefits, like the squishy benefits, so, Kind of this increased sense of community. Car-centric cities are very relatively recent in the history of humans living in cities. It's only been very. Recent that we've started kind of confining ourselves to cars, and so getting people out onto sidewalks, onto bikes, into public spaces can really help build and foster more of a sense of community. There's some like really key planning tools and planning mechanisms that go into creating 15 minute cities like prioritizing. Public transit, prioritizing pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and very importantly, zoning for mixed use. I found a blog post from Carlos Moreno on his website that kind of talks about his theory behind the 15 Minute City, and he calls it krono urbanism. Which is an approach that focuses on the temporal dimension of cities as opposed to just the spatial dimension of cities. So how time influences the design, function, and experience of urban environments.
Mary Heberling-CreightonHmm.
Shelley DenisonHe writes in this blog, About how we have this very limited perception, this very limited understanding, this very limited framework of what time actually is. And I mean, his blog gets very esoteric very quickly.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonI, I pulled this one quote that I feel like is a little bit understandable. I had to read it a couple of times to understand it, but I think it, it really illustrates kind of what the idea that he is getting at as well as. Illustrating how his ideas are backed by really profound theory. Mary, will you read this quote?
Mary Heberling-CreightonOh, yeah. It says, faced with the climatic danger, which threatens the various survival of our C civilization at the end of the century and already disrupts our lifestyles, faced with the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity and its consequences in our environment. Urban life is at the heart of the problem, and it can only be the source of the solution. Becoming aware of the existing disassociation between space and time is a key step in order to be able to question in depth our lifestyles, production and consumption, including ultimately our displacement, which are consequently large consumers of linear time. The challenge is then to understand that linear time Kronos has lost a large part of its inner soul. That of our humanity, of our vital breath, the time of Aon, which regenerates us, and of another, that of the creative flame of the moment when everything changes, when creativity is at the rendezvous of the cease opportunity, the time of Kairos. Did I say that right?
Shelley DenisonYes. And I. Here's why I love this. Here's why I wanted to pull this. I think it does a couple of things. I think it illustrates kind of what Moreno's point is about Krono urbanism, which is this. This kind of idea of we consume. A lot of time and we, we don't really take into account how much time gets consumed by the car centricity of cities and how much of that time is wasted. And I think it also illustrates how deeply into theory the 15 Minutes city concept gets. I love sort of the, the grandiosity he does here of invoking, like these mythical Greek figures like. Kronos, Aon and Kairos. I did my undergrad in philosophy, so I don't, I just, I like this stuff. Yeah. But I'm not gonna go too into depth on that. 'cause it gets, it gets real niche, real fast.
Mary Heberling-CreightonUhhuh. Yeah. I can see.
Shelley DenisonSo that's kind of, that's kind the, like the background, the overview of what a 15 minute city is.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonWhere the idea came from, all of that.
Mary Heberling-CreightonOkay. So next question, what places are trying to implement the 15 minute cities concept?
Shelley DenisonYeah, so there's um, there's kind of three, I mean there's a lot of places that are, IM trying to implement different elements of the 15 Minute City, but there's three main ones that I wanna talk about. I mentioned before Paris and the current mayor of Paris, and it Hidalgo, the 15 minute City was. One of her main sort of policy promises when she was running for mayor, um, she calls it, uh, um, I, I did take four years of French in high school. No, I will not be accepting any corrections on my pronunciation of that. Right. So it's a, this 15 minute city idea, which for a city like Paris, which is 42 square miles and a population of 2.1 million people is like, that is ambitious. That is very ambitious.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd so right now Paris is sort of the, the global epicenter of implementation of the 15 minute city Stockholm. Is actually trying to one up everybody else to implement what they call the one Minute City.
Mary Heberling-CreightonHmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd one of the ways that they're doing that is holding these sort of collaborative neighborhood workshops where residents actually get to decide how empty spaces on their streets are used. The idea behind that being, you know, we want the residents who live in these blocks to have access to exactly what they need to get to in the same block. And then Portland hometown, the current comprehensive plan, the Portland plan has a goal for 90% of residents to be able to walk or bike to wherever they need to go, which I think is also pretty ambitious for a city like Portland.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes. Yeah. Yeah. But I, yeah, I mean, I'll also say beyond like the, those big major cities, well-known cities, I mean, in little communities that I've worked in, it's been a, people don't know what the 15 minute city theory is, but they gravitate towards wanting to walk or bike to places in their neighborhoods. Like we did this big visioning process in one of the places I worked at. It was a city of like just 20,000 people, and they kept saying over and over again, I wanna be able to walk to places in my neighborhood. They don't know what the concept is. They've never heard the literal term, 15 minute city, but it's something that, whether it's like a human instinct of things or just they understand, they've been able to do that in other places and they find that valuable to them. It's, it's a concept that is brought up a lot depending on their values, what they think are important. But like across, across the board, I mean, this was like younger people, older people, kids. It was, it was all, it was everyone.
Shelley DenisonYeah. That's, that's the thing is when, when we talk about the principles behind the 15 minute City, people can get really on board with that.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonLike they're, they're pretty universally popular principles. You know, if you're, if you're talking about, you know, do you want to be able to. Get to a grocery store in 10 minutes or 30 minutes, like
Mary Heberling-Creightonmm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonI think most people would say, oh yeah, 10 minutes. You know, do you want, do you want your kids to be able to ride their bike home from school, or should they have to cross, you know, six lanes of traffic?
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight.
Shelley DenisonWell, of course I want my kids to be able to ride their bike home from school. Right. So these principles are pretty universally popular.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonBut something about this concept, The 15 minute city really grew into this global conspiracy theory.
Mary Heberling-CreightonHmm. Yeah. So what is the deal with the conspiracy theories? I've seen lots of headlines, but I know you've done the research, so give it to us.
Shelley DenisonYeah. So the 15 minute. City conspiracy theories really started gaining traction about a year ago, year and a half ago. They're more prevalent among far right groups that value, you know, individual liberty and freedom and small government. There's a few key elements of these conspiracy theories. One is that they are affront. Ultimately a facade for a government plan to control or limit your ability to move around. We have to remember, you know, the context that this is happening and the context of Covid.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYep.
Shelley DenisonWhere people were being very strongly encouraged to stay home in some countries required to stay home. And so people were sort of taking that and then projecting it onto the idea of a 15 minute city.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonThere's also a lot of interesting connections to other already existing, very longstanding conspiracy theories. Right. So there's the whole like globalization thing, you know that the World Economic Forum, united Nations, the World Bank ,C 40 are, are behind this effort to centralize a single world government, a high control, high surveillance world government, which is actually like that whole ilk of conspiracy theories is grounded pretty solidly in antisemitism. Interestingly enough, uh, I'm, I'm not gonna get into the details of that, but if you research any conspiracy theory long enough, you, you will ultimately find that all of them come down to antisemitism, which is
Mary Heberling-Creightonyeah,
Shelley Denisonits own, its own beast. These, uh, these conspiracy theories also come from a lot of skepticism around the political agenda of climate change, right? A lot of these folks see climate change, again, as a facade. As a facade for this attempt for government control and, and government regulations on individual freedom. So this is kind of a global phenomenon. Um, these conspiracy theories. One place that they've gotten a lot of traction has been Britain. In the city of Oxford. The city council was proposing a fee system for what's called a low traffic neighborhood. So low traffic neighborhoods or l TNS already exist in different places in Britain. And the way that they work is that drivers from outside of the county will be identified based on their license plate using like automated surveillance systems.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd the city would levy a fee on outside drivers during high traffic periods.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd I mean, the reasoning behind that is, Why The same exact reason of why we have toll roads, right? It's to, to like lessen the demand.
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight
Shelley Denisonand thereby lessen traffic congestion.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonHowever, this approach that's already been used, the low traffic neighborhood approach really turned into this. Just nightmare conspiracy theory that the city of Oxford was going to seal off six different sections of the city. That, that the city of Oxford was gonna be divided into six sections and each one was gonna be sealed off and nobody would be allowed to leave.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm.
Shelley DenisonTheir section of the city.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonI saw this video, this really interesting video of this guy. This guy who runs a YouTube channel called Rebel News uk, which by the way, I completely screwed up my YouTube algorithm by searching for, uh, 15 Minute City Great reset 15 minute City government limitations on freedom. Because I was trying to find like videos of like people who believe these conspiracy theories talking about them. Yeah. And now, I, I screwed up my algorithm, but you, you know what, I, I do it for the podcast. I'm taking one for the team.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThat's right.
Shelley DenisonSo I'm gonna send you a link. So what I just sent you is a, a link to a video from this guy interviewing people. There are about 4,000 people at this protest interviewing people at this protest about why they are against. 15 minute cities. Uh, and this one particular clip is a woman talking about w what she believes about 15 minute cities and what she thinks it's going to lead to.
Rebel News InterviewerSo why is it important for you to come to this protest today?
ProtesterBecause ultimately we have not been given a choice. So, um, this is the start of our freedoms being taken away. Um, we should be able to move as we please. We shouldn't be fined. Uh, and restricted to, to what they want us to do basically.
Rebel News InterviewerAnd do you think it stops at 15 minute cities?
ProtesterAbsolutely not. This is just the start. Once they start, they will keep on going and keep on taking away from us.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAlright. That, yeah, that was interesting. This parallels very closely though, with a lot of conversations around tolls.
Shelley DenisonYes, it absolutely does. And it makes me wonder. Obviously there's, there's a lot of political controversy around taxing and taxes in general. Why don't people get this worked up about, uh, like fines for overstaying street parking. Right. For like staying longer than your meter allows. It's the same exact thing. You, you are limited to how and where you can use your personal vehicle.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd if you don't follow those limitations, you are required to pay a fine. It's interesting that there are some areas where it's not a big deal, where we understand it, and then other areas where it's like, This is a facade for government control.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah, I mean, I think the interesting part is in that clip, her concerns about freedom and being able to move the way that she wants to is definitely valid concerns where it gets into the conspiracy theory of like the government trying to take away any sort of ability for you to go anywhere. Um, that it's like this big, you know, like one, one worldwide government controls where it gets a little bit too far for, for me personally,
Shelley Denisonright yeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonBut with being a planner for over seven years, talking to a lot of different folks, like I could totally see how this idea of surveillance through license plates and then fees on top of that can really trigger some people into getting really worried and concerned. And I don't think that those are unvalid concerns at all.
Shelley DenisonYeah, that's the, that's my thing with conspiracy theories is that yes, governments have done horrible things.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYep.
Shelley DenisonHave done incomprehensible. Things to violate people's individual rights and civil liberties. Absolutely. That is 100% true. This is not one of them. Right? Where's, where's all of the concern around the things for which there is actually evidence of governments doing horrible things, right? Yeah. So something that I've noticed is a reason why planners react to this with such incredulity.
Mary Heberling-CreightonHmm.
Shelley DenisonWhy planners are so confused about this. And I think it, it largely has to do with the fact that when we're talking about 15 minute cities, We're speaking two different languages.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes.
Shelley DenisonBecause as planners, we think of 15 minute cities as encouraging people to want to live in these kinds of spaces.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonRight. It's a push pull. Sort of conversation. Planners see it as, we want to pull people into these spaces, we wanna make them desirable. We want to, we want to create spaces in such a way that people want to voluntarily live in 15 minute cities. Whereas kind of the conspiracy theory side sees it more as, no, you're trying to force us, this is a push situation. You're trying to force us to live in these kinds of cities. And I think that that's kind of a bigger conversation that planners need to really think about is how do we message kind of our ideals of what we think a utopian city looks like?
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonTo, to help people understand. That ultimately our goal is to create spaces that are attractive, that, to create spaces that, that people want to, that people choose to live in.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd that we're not interested in forcing people to live a certain way. We're not interested in using the leverage of government regulations, of laws to require. That people live a certain way. That's not the goal of planning. Right?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah. Well, and I think in my opinion, the role of the planner is to really navigate the well-documented fact-based principles and the desires of a community, and navigating that into some sort of plan for the future. Right. So,
Shelley Denisonmm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonLike when I mentioned earlier about having this big visioning process in this city of about 20,000 people, and I kept hearing over and over again, we weren't telling them, Hey, this 15 minute city idea is really great.
Shelley DenisonMm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYou guys should have more coffee shops that you can walk to. You guys should, you know, blah, blah, blah. All this sort of stuff. It came out of those discussions. Mm-hmm. That people wanted places that they could walk and bike to. They wanted the coffee shop in their neighborhood. They wanted the little hub of mixed use buildings that they could have a way to gather together to create community. And this was pre Covid. This is even before we knew what Covid was. And it was something that they valued and desired as a community together. They wanted to be able to have spaces that they could connect with each other. And when we hear those things, we as planners are like, oh yeah, that's that 15 minute city theory. Like we just, we know what the theory is, right. It's really finding that balance between understanding what the people's values and needs are and how can we put that into implementation versus using scary, big theory based kind of terms and ideas that really will just go over people's heads and it will cause anxiety and confusion.
Shelley DenisonYeah. Yeah. I think that that's part of kind of the bigger conversation of how much of planning should be top down.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonVersus bottom up, you know? Yeah. And I think that kind of brings us into our next part of this conversation, which is I. As planners, what do we do about this? How can we sort of combat these conspiracy theories about 15 minute cities? And I think that the first thing we need to do in order to answer that question is to really understand. Why people believe conspiracy theories and I, I think this is my opinion, it's backed up by, I think, pretty good research. People believe conspiracy theories because of two, two main things that converge. One is a lot of anxiety around feeling powerless, around feeling uncertain. And a lot of anxiety around just needing, needing some kind of certainty in a, in a world that is incredibly complex and incredibly messy. So there's that anxiety combined with the fact that our brains have some like very hardwired cognitive biases. And there's a few kind of. Key biases that show up in, in conspiracy theory thinking confirmation bias. Right? So only paying attention to, or only acknowledging the evidence that already agrees
Mary Heberling-Creightonmm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonWith what you already believe. Pattern recognition, which is a big one. Seeing patterns where there are no patterns, and then proportionality bias. So seeing something and thinking that it's a much bigger deal than it actually is.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonThe example of that being, oh, this low traffic neighborhood scheme.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonTo try to limit traffic during high traffic periods is ultimately about government control and limiting freedom of movement. So when we understand why people believe conspiracy theories, that they're largely emotion based and not based in reason or evidence or logic, you know, that really kind of gets us to ask the question of then how do we, how do we talk to them? How do we engage with them?
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonBecause as planners, our tools are things like, Well, we should be really transparent about decision making and about outcomes and about goals. We should be, you know, always prioritizing public engagement. We should be prioritizing education, right? Explaining to people how things work, explaining to people why decisions are made the way that they're made. But none of those things really address. That kind of core anxiety that that conspiracy theorists experience. And so it kind of brings in this question of like, how do we speak to that as planners? How do we speak to that when our tools are not the right tools to do it?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah. And are we as planners, the right people to be addressing those issues too?
Shelley DenisonRight. Is that even our job,
Mary Heberling-Creightonright.
Shelley DenisonIs that even our job as planners to fight conspiracy theories?
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd I, I mean, there's not really a, like, we don't have a right answer for you.
Shelley DenisonYeah. That's the thing is like, as I was researching all of this as I was looking into this, what I ultimately wanted to have was like a list of, these are the actions, these are the tools, these are the things that you can do to change people's minds. And it turns out that's kind of the million dollar question.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAcross, mm-hmm. Social sciences right now is how do we get people to change their minds when they are so heavily invested, so emotionally invested in conspiracy theories? How do we actually change their minds and nobody knows. Nobody knows how to actually meaningfully effectively change somebody's mind.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonAnd I think, I think we've all kind of had those just. Endlessly frustrating conversations with people who just clearly are not interested in factual information, are not interested in any kind of evidence, are not interested even in like principle, because something that's really interesting, this really interesting phenomenon right now is that I feel like even if you disagree with somebody about what the facts are or what the facts mean. If they have some kind of like fundamental principle that is driving why they believe what they believe, then you can at least like speak to that principle and explain why a different position than the one that they hold upholds, whatever principles they have. But when you're trying to talk to people who have no principles, who are not at all worried about or concerned with the internal consistency of facts of reality of like a personal, ethical system, how do you even have those conversations? Like it's, it's laughable. It is laughable to me to think that we can change people's minds by saying, oh, cars kill a lot of people, and they're bad for the environment. Like, they don't care. I feel like I'm getting a little spicy.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah, I, I mean, it's really hard when you try and have a conversation with somebody who ultimately does not trust anything that you're gonna say to them.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd this is like even beyond, I mean, this is not just conspiracy theories. I mean, this is just like distrust in government in general, which I mean
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonIn the United States, I, I think can be fairly prevalent. It's not even a conspiracy theory. It's like there are some valid reasons for that for sure.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd there are just, you know, the idea of small government, individual liberties, that sort of thing, that also, you know, are, are other people's morals and opinions.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd it's, it's ultimately where is there a stopping point of like, this conversation isn't gonna go anywhere.
Shelley DenisonMm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonVersus where is it, where is the bridge that I can, where, where's the bridge that I can create to at least start to build that trust back? Right.
Shelley DenisonYeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. I think that it really does come back to relationships.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes.
Shelley DenisonRelationships are the only way that you can build and maintain trust. Yeah. And like you said, it's people are mistrustful not because of the way that we present information and not because of the kind of information we present. People are mistrustful because we are the government.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonRight. And people have, have already decided before we even open our mouths, this person is lying to me. I can't trust this person.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonAnd so that's kind of like the, you know, the, the big wicked question of every government employee is, uh, How do we build trust in, in government? How do we build trust in the work of planning and the work of planners?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah, it's, it's so interesting too because there, in times that I've worked in cities in Oregon here is like, there were people that pretty much disagreed with a lot of the, the things we were doing in planning. They just didn't want to, for example, maybe they didn't wanna see more density in their neighborhood, right?
Shelley DenisonMm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThey had this relationship with us that like we knew they weren't gonna agree with us, and that was fine, but they were willing to talk to us. They wanted to engage about it. And individually we had really nice relationships with them.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd then it sort of shifted, at least in the last couple of years, I don't know if other people feel this way, where it was they were unwilling to even create that relationship anymore. They were unwilling to even listen, and I'm not trying to put it on them, like, I'm not saying that it's like all on them, but there, there was this kind of shift that happened where we couldn't even create that relationship with these people. We couldn't say, you can always talk to us and you know, we'll, we'll discuss things with you. It's okay if you don't agree with what we're saying or where we're going with this, but like this is, you know, we're usually backed up by other people, a more of a majority wanting to go in this direction. Right. And so
Shelley Denisonmm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonBut it was ultimately, like they, they didn't even trust the information that we had anymore. Yeah. Like, I remember somebody asking me, like, we were given data from this, the state of Oregon, we've been getting this data for years and years and years. About in the communities what percentage of rent burden people are in your community, right? This is something that the state has been doing for quite a while now, and it wasn't even the fact that I like brought up that information or that we had that data. It was, she goes, well, do you even trust that data? And I'm like, yes. But you know, it's, it's that the mindset of like, no matter what they're giving me, Everything is twisted to be moved in the direction that they wanna go, right?
Shelley DenisonYeah. Yeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd it's like, how do you, how do you combat that? Is, is the hard part because it's like, if you don't even trust the data that I'm giving you, and like I can even appeal to your emotions a little bit and be like, well, here's the rent prices in in our community and here's the type of professions that would even be able to afford that. But it's just like, no matter what that what was coming outta my mouth, it was just like, no, you're just, you're just trying to put more housing in my neighborhood and I don't like it.
Shelley DenisonYeah. It is such an interesting thing to have to navigate and to try to figure out.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm. And i, and I, I mean, I don't have an answer per se.
Shelley DenisonYeah. Neither do I call us, leave us a voicemail. Yeah. If you, if you have. An answer to this question of how do we, how do we engage with people in this new landscape? And maybe it's not even new, but this landscape of just fundamental mistrust. Just mistrust. Mm-hmm. On principle, how do you navigate with the public on this? How do you meet people where they are, how do you speak to their interests? How do you even uncover what their interests are? And like not to, not to use like too much therapy speak, but it's almost as if this sort of like deep mistrust of government and this belief that the government is trying to undermine like my very humanity serves some kind of protective psychological need. Right. It serves some kind of emotional need. It protects something, and I, I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah, yeah. Well, I, I mean, I think a lot of it is, is fear of change. Yeah. Which we've talked about before, is people fear the unknown.
Shelley DenisonMm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYou're gonna put duplexes in my neighborhood that's going to cause this and this, and this fear that I have.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight. So, so I'm just automatically not even gonna want it. Yeah. 'cause I'm automatically going to this fear-based idea of what the future's gonna look like.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight. Yeah. And that's hard to combat if you don't, if you can't guarantee what the future is gonna be.
Shelley DenisonRight,
Mary Heberling-Creightonright. Yeah. Because yeah, we could put in in duplexes in your neighborhood, and maybe one of those fears could happen.
Shelley DenisonMm-hmm.
Mary Heberling-CreightonBut there are also other alternative futures, right?
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd it's really hard to convince people though, that like there's other alternative
Shelley Denisonright
Mary Heberling-Creightonfutures when when they're, they're set on like, no, it's gonna, it's gonna cause
Shelley Denisonyeah,
Mary Heberling-Creightonthis and this and this in my neighborhood. I heard from one person
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThat they got this duplex in the neighborhood and this is what happened to them.
Shelley DenisonYeah. I, I think like what it fundamentally comes down to is that I. As humans, we don't like change.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes.
Shelley DenisonWe, we don't like things to change. We don't like unpredictability. And to believe that whatever change happens is going to be bad, at least that provides some kind of certainty. At least that provides some kind of predictability.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonYou know?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonYeah. Uh, and then there's like one last topic in this that I, I think is worth unpacking, which is, should we even take them seriously?
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonShould we even engage with these conspiracy theories? You know, like, are we legitimizing them? Are we giving them a platform by engaging with them at all?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah. I mean, that, it's a, it's a super fine line in my opinion, because Yeah, you don't want to make the, their idea more than it, than it needs to be sometimes. But at the same time, like this idea is coming from somewhere, right?
Shelley DenisonYeah. And it's like if we don't engage with it, is it just gonna keep snowballing into something bigger?
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm. You know, like you're not listening to me.
Shelley DenisonYeah, exactly. Exactly. Is it gonna show up? Is that mistrust gonna show up in some other area? I also think about like what is the most sort of salient interest. We're trying to serve as planners right now because public engagement is obvious, obviously, like one of the most important elements of our job as planners, right? Getting buy-in, understanding what people want, understanding what people's values are is so important. And one of the main principles of a 15 minute city is to combat the effects, is to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonAnd we, we no longer have the luxury to make climate reacting to climate change a secondary or tertiary priority.
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight.
Shelley DenisonRight. Like we, we can't do that anymore. Like it's, it's, it's not even that climate change is on our doorstep. It is. It has hung up its coat and taken off its shoes and it's raiding the fridge for snacks like it's here. And we like, are, are we, are we wasting precious time trying to engage with people who think that, oh no, this is all a facade for, for, you know, a nefarious government control agenda. You know what I mean?
Mary Heberling-CreightonRight. Yeah. There's difference between like the conspiracy theory side of climate change versus maybe somebody who just doesn't, doesn't like the idea of having to recycle.
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonOr you know, like, right. It's, it's, there's a difference. There's a difference between the conspiracy theory side of climate change and the like, people who are having a hard time with potential personal changes that they need to make in their lives. And, and the recycling one is maybe I can appeal to a little bit more. Maybe I can try and, and incentivize some things
Shelley DenisonYeah.
Mary Heberling-CreightonOn that. Right?
Shelley DenisonAnd I, I think that that kind of like also speaks to like, there are legitimately valid criticisms of the 15 minute city.
Mary Heberling-CreightonMm-hmm.
Shelley DenisonLike any sort of new urbanist concept when we see it in practice, who benefits from it? Typically affluent white people, young, affluent, white people, it, it almost never benefits the people who could, who who could benefit from it the most. And, and it, it also sort of centers this idea that climate change is going to be combated by changing individual behavior. I. Ignoring the bigger systemic issues. The fact that like, yeah, like most of the world's carbon emissions, uh, are generated by the decisions of like 30 old billionaires. You know what I mean?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonYeah. And so it's shifting the responsibility to, to individuals to change their driving habits, to change, to, to change individual behavior as opposed to, Systemic level changes opposed to like addressing the people whose behavior has the biggest impact on global carbon emissions. So there are actual valid reasons to be critical of the 15 minute city model. It just so happens that the, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum are in cahoots to create the new world order is not one of them. I wish we had answers.
Mary Heberling-CreightonAnd I think most people that work in government are just like, I worked in government. There's no way they've coordinated this altogether.
Shelley DenisonI have had that thought so many times. Do you know how hard it is to
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonGet more than four government employees on the same page about something it is next to impossible?
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonYeah. I think conspiracy theorists. In their defense, you know, something I appreciate about them. They're really giving me a lot of credit.
Mary Heberling-CreightonThat is, yes! They really are.
Shelley DenisonFor believing that I am much more powerful and influential and good at my job than I actually am.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYeah.
Shelley DenisonYeah. Thank you. Thank you conspiracy theorists. It's very flattering.
Mary Heberling-CreightonYes.