Watch for your city council to discuss recreating your city into a 15-minute city.
“The 15-Minute City
“where you can walk, bike, or take public transportation, ride, and get there in 15 minutes”
No Mention of cars. That’s the huge red flag.
“Reduce commute time and relieve traffic congestion…”
Well, they have already screwed this up with all the removed lanes and closed streets.
But they are clearly declaring there will be “Greater Building Heights” and mixed architectural design, including “Pocket Parks,” and “Community Gathering Places.”
Downtown revitalization. We keep asking where are the jobs downtown? Downtown is restaurants and hotels, fewer and fewer retail outlets. Who makes a living wage downtown?”
From AP, “The goal is for you to live, work, buy groceries within a 15 minute boundary. ““BREAKING: England is on the verge of giving up on the WEF agenda 15 min city after almost 100% of the cameras have been destroyed & 50k people refuse to pay the fines,” wrote one Instagram user in a widely shared post, using the acronym for the nongovernmental group the World Economic Forum. “Cameras cannot be protected as they Defunded the Police. Courts cannot prosecute that number of people.”
The posts draw on existing far-right tropes that the WEF and other global-minded organizations are plotting to impose “15-minute” cities where their freedoms will be severely curtailed by advanced technologies.
But the urban design principle emphasizes building more compact communities where everyday needs can be found within a 15-minute walk. It’s not meant to restrict people’s movements or freedoms.”
Yup, they have cameras to monitor the people—and the people destroyed the camera’s, not wanting to be spied on by government. This is going to happen in the U.S.
Introducing The 15 Minute City
by Bonnie Donovan, Santa Barbara Current, 2/15/24 https://www.sbcurrent.com/p/introducing-the-15-minute-city
DID YOU KNOW? …
The Community Environmental Council (CEC) reports to the Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) on Wednesday… Funny, no mention of El Pueblo Viejo here…
Just who are these people on the CEC, anyway?
Are they environmentalists?
Do they work for the state or for the local government?
What is their ground of being, their motivation?
We don’t know, and no one we ask seems to know either.
Continued HLC discussion of the State Street Advisory Committee (SSAC). Is Anthony Grumbine, of HLC, trying to finesse this process? He’s working ad hoc with a few select architects (who?) to quietly provide the SSAC with the plan they couldn’t get out of MIG (the company that our City Council paid upwards of $800,000 to either re-design the promenade, or to tell us that it ultimately wouldn’t work). In doing so, he’s probably working well over the line of ethical behavior since the committee he chairs is being largely (and probably legally) cut out of the State Street planning process by Staff and Council.
This quiet process reminds us of the Traffic Circulation Committee, which claims to have notified the public in 2015 of the plans to change up the streets of Santa Barbara, which we’re now seeing implemented, i.e., Sola, Alisos, Gillespie, etc., extracted lanes, bollards… No one we’ve talked to remembers any such notification… or justification.
Those of us who are now alerted to what is really going on, watch out… More changes coming to Modoc-Las Positas bikeway, Castillo Street, Cliff Drive up on the Mesa, and upper State Street.
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Back to the February 14 CEC Presentation
Community Environmental Council presents “Bold Climate Action”
State Street is now named State Street Revitalizing, “An Ecological Framework for revitalizing the Santa Barbara City Core”
Could we be so bold as to ask if it would it include a name change for State Street, maybe Deep State Street?
Preamble
“The SB Community has long nurtured an environmental etc. Previous generations… have sought to preserve and protect its Natural Environment as well as its Historic Beauty… blah, blah, blah…”
We ask then why there is no mention of El Pueblo Viejo. Why is the city allowing all this massive housing (and hotels) without Environmental Impact Reports?
The 15-Minute City
“where you can walk, bike, or take public transportation, ride, and get there in 15 minutes”
No Mention of cars. That’s the huge red flag.
“Reduce commute time and relieve traffic congestion…”
Well, they have already screwed this up with all the removed lanes and closed streets.
But they are clearly declaring there will be “Greater Building Heights” and mixed architectural design, including “Pocket Parks,” and “Community Gathering Places.”
Downtown revitalization. We keep asking where are the jobs downtown? Downtown is restaurants and hotels, fewer and fewer retail outlets. Who makes a living wage downtown?
“Workforce” Housing for Imaginary Families
Yes, County and City employees work downtown. Are we supplying housing for that work force? If that’s the case, be transparent. Because we’re not seeing transparency in any of these projects. Downtown density threatens to change the heart of Santa Barbara into something more resembling downtown Oakland.
Let’s take a look at what we already experience in the downtown corridor for young people trying to live there. Because, let’s face it, that’s all it’s being designed for… certainly not families, but for young students, professionals, people who are not community-minded, who care little for Santa Barbara traditions.
That said, this young man was born and raised in Santa Barbara. A reader reports that this son recently moved from home to a downtown locale. He got so fed up with dodging the homeless to get from his car to his apartment that he gave notice after a month and moved elsewhere. We’ll spare you some of the details that he endured during that month, but let’s just say that drugs destroy human dignity and decency in sadly consistent manners.
When added to the myriad complexities of the present homeless condition, we’re seeing human beings behave in ways that none of us ever witnessed until this era of homelessness driven mostly by drug proliferation that society refuses to get handled. We suppose that this young Santa Barbaran broke the main rule about living efficiently downtown. He must use a car to get to his job on the Mesa.
Why? Why? Why?
We ask this question repeatedly… who doesn’t need an automobile to get to work? A fraction of the workforce, that’s who. What family can function without one? Clearly, the plan for downtown excludes and sidelines traditional lifestyles. The environmental impact report keeps mentioning multi-use, including pocket parks for children downtown. For what children? How do families live downtown in efficiency studio apartments with no accommodation for parking?
They talk about mixing up the style of architecture… Yes, Spanish architecture is beautiful; it’s expensive. What they have planned to “mix it up” looks very much like what one sees in any new building in San Jose or Ventura, or even in our own backyard. Just try and avoid that monstrosity of a building right alongside the railroad tracks facing the freeway in Goleta.
Pushing Back is Required
What we wonder is why the City of Santa Barbara doesn’t wake up and pay attention to the policies being quietly put into place and by whom. The City and County government – elected and unelected alike – continue to implement and approve these projects, unchecked, unnoticed…
So, let’s face it, this is a well-organized global attempt to usurp the world order. But we’re simply at a place where we can still push back, at least locally. We don’t have to succumb like we see others doing in cities around our nation, in towns and cities in various pockets of Europe.
For myriad reasons, little to do with freedom, we continue to see masses of people clamoring to get into this country and being let in by the millions by the feckless Biden administration. Once here, many complain loudly, demanding handouts and lower academic standards, with absolutely no idea how that all works out economically.
Who foots that bill? Who pays the price for an undereducated society?
In the meantime, back here in Santa Barbara, apparently – right under our noses – its beauty, its traditions, its decency is being taken away one chess move at a time. So why are they so determined to make us follow what they are doing?
