On the Nasty Origin of Conspiracy-based Criticism of Walkable Neighborhoods

In the last week or so you may have seen a story at NPR on 15 minute cities, "It's a global climate solution — if it can get past conspiracy theories and NIMBYs."

at NPR

Willamette University historian Seth Cotlar picked up on it, and wrote about subtexts and maintexts for a great proportion of the criticism, commenting on "The 55 year history behind the conspiracy theories dogging today's advocates of 15-minute cities."

via Rightlandia

His research, which he was documenting on twitter, before it was eMuskulated, and now is sharing on substack, focuses on Walter Huss, who managed to become Chair of the Oregon GOP for a brief period on the late 70s.

August 13th, 1978 and March 13th, 1984

At the time Huss was regarded as a fringey nutjob, but his temperament and interests have become mainstreamed now. He was forerunner, not fringe.

In public he presented as a "common-sense conservative," an ostensibly reasonable White Christian Nationalist, and in private he was much, much worse.

August 10th, 1978

The conspiracy-based criticism of 15 minute cities has not been terribly active here. During "Bike and Walk Salem," the update to the Transportation System Plan a decade ago, there was some criticism offered by Tea Party sorts that alluded to the "Agenda 21" conspiracy theory. The Climate Action Plan, "Our Salem" update to the Comprehensive Plan, and now Climate-Friendly Area/Walkable Mixed-use Area designation do not seem to have elicited any significant amount of conspiracy-based criticism. There are sometimes free-floating assertions about forcing people out of their cars, but these do not seem to be embedded in a larger conspiracy theory. Criticism has not seemed — yet anyway — to have morphed into this new form and become very prevalent.

Fingers crossed!

But if it rears up and some citizens start framing criticism in these terms, it is worth knowing more about the history and context for this particular frame.

Check out Cotlar's piece and the rest of his writing. Though he's often writing for a national audience, using Oregon as an example of national trends, it's also fascinating as purely local history, often involving beloved figures like Mark Hatfield and using texts from the SJ and the two papers before the merger.

Sen. Hatfield on the far right - twitter