“Woven City” sounds better, perhaps than “15 Minute Freedom City” – but both terms refer to the same kind of city. It’s a planned place, where the people walk or avail themselves of what’s styled “public” transportation – by which is actually meant forms of transportation owned and controlled by the government and corporations, such as the bus and trains and – going forward – automated vehicles that you have no control over.
But you’ll be so happy when you own nothing!
Your place of residence will be where you reside, but it will not really be your place – in the ownership (and so, control) sense. No apartment or condo can ever be that because it is not a separate piece of property that you – and you alone – legally own and so have control over. You’ll be allowed to live there. Just the same as you’ll be allowed to use “transportation.” And to eat – maybe – depending on your good (or bad) behavior. That latter to be defined by the ones who own everything – including you.
It’s not packaged that way, of course. And the packaging is important.
Akio Toyoda – the grandson of the company’s founder – describes the Woven City, which is a real place, as “the prototype town of the future.” It is interesting that this is assumed, taken as given. In other words, it is a future predetermined rather than organically arising via voluntary free association.
But predetermined by whom?
Akio does not answer directly. But he does answer: He invites the audience to join in “our quest to imagine and improve how all of us live in the future.”
“Our” quest? Did someone take a vote? Convey proxy power to the creators and managers of the “town of the future?” Who made – who is making – the determination as to how “all of us live in the future”? It’s all assumed. Or rather, presumed. “All of us” will presumably be herded into the “town of the future” – our very own 15 minute freedom city – which presumes we will not be allowed the freedom to choose not to live there. This, too, is implicit as there are already “freedom cities” such as New York and Tokyo – where people are free to live without a personal car or much in the way of personal freedom, because they are still free to not live there. The World Controllers – to borrow a Huxleyism – plan to engineer things such that you won’t be free to not live there. Perhaps by making it so costly to live anywhere else, as by rendering car ownership economically untenable for most of us, thereby forcing (effectively) most of us to move into the . . . “town of the future.”
If you can’t drive anywhere, it is hard to get anywhere. Hence the “15 minutes,” which is your walking/bicycling range. So you’ll be where you’re stuck – and under their control.
Naturally, they do not say this. Does a cattle farmer tell the steers – assuming they could understand – where they’re ultimately headed? O course not. H wants the cows to be content – until the meet their end.
And what will living in the “town of the future” be like?
Well, to begin with, “all transportation in Woven City will be low to zero emissions,” Akio explains. Italics added. Toyota and other car companies – Ford is another – are in the process of rebranding themselves as providers of transportation rather than manufacturers of privately owned cars. Transportation means such things a busses and trains – no car for you.
“Sustainability is one of our major priorities.”
More italics added. It is a measure of just how deep the rot goes that Akio Toyoda speaks of “sustainability,” an ideological word invented by the greens who are just rebranded reds. It means diminishment and enserfment. For you and I and the rest of the general population. The World Controllers will still have their private estates, private jets and private fleets of cars, too. Recall that Stalin did not live in a proletarian apartment or ride the government bus.
Of course, Woven City – as presented by Akio – does not look like that. In the “prototype,” we see nicely terraced apartments and green spaces and lots of glass and sleek modernity. The inevitably reality will of course be something more like Victory Mansions in Orwell’s 1984.
But – good news! – there will be drones to walk you home and maybe even wheelchair race cars, as well as robot companions for the elderly.
It’ll be great!
“Video and data analysis,” explains Akio will help the Controllers (he doesn’t actually say that) “better understand the movement of people and objects.” That is to say, your every move – perhaps even your every thought – will be scrutinized, recorded, aggregated. To what end?
“As a global citizen, I believe Toyota has a responsibility to invest in our collective future,” Akio says. Italics added.
Come again, Kemo Sabe?
What is this “global citizen” business? Well, it’s exactly what the World Controllers have in mind for us. We are no longer to be citizens of our separate nations. That’s nationalism, that dreadful, implicitly racist thing. The “globe” is our home now – or soon to be. Of course, it always has been. But Akio and the controllers mean in a political sense.
Our citizenship is to be blended with everyone else’s, into one great polyglot “community” that is the antithesis – the negation – of that. In a community, you have a say – one that actually matters, as opposed to a construct – because a community is small enough for you to have one that matters. You know the people in your community and they know you. At the least it is possible to know them and for them to know you. 
In a global collective, your say matters like a drop of water matters to the volume of the ocean. Like the ocean, you are carried along by the current. Unlike the ocean, the current is not a natural one; it is a directed one. A planned one. One not planned by you but by the controllers of the “town of the future.”
We’ll be woven into this, if we allow it. It will be just like what happens when a spider is allowed to weave its web. Do some poor cricket a favor and get a broom, knock that web down before the spider finishes it.
Maybe we’ll be able to do the same for ourselves – before we’re trapped in the strands of “our collective future.”
. . .
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AP: Former New York Gov. Cuomo apologizes to Jewish community for his COVID-19 response
https://apnews.com/article/cuomo-mamdani-jewish-nyc-mayor-a046d4a050dac37d61014062f60a5f31
What about us goyim, though?
Fucking disgusting panderer… sickening.
Hell, I wouldn’t even allow myself to be herded into the cattle chutes they set up at Lowe’s during the pandemic. Good luck getting me to participate in your big plans for humanity, assholes!
Maybe in a couple more generations, they might have a strong enough hold on the kids to scrub their little brains clean of the concepts of freedom.
Imagine the twisted, deluded thought processes of a person like Akio. Born into riches, completely out of touch with the realities of the world, inherited a position of power where he feels comfortable dictating the future, bending it to his will whether you like it or not. Fuck him.
What a man thinks inside his mind does not necessarily match the words coming out of his mouth.
I think TPTB got to him.
This is the guy who called out the electric car BS, and then a few months later stepped down from the board of the company with his name on it, and now this. He’s saying the things, all right. Toe jammed right up to the line, just as directed.
I think it’s far more likely that they’ve got some serious dirt on him, or they credibly threatened him or his family, or they assassinated him & replaced him with a body double.
Morning, Publius!
When I saw the presentation made by Akio Toyoda, I was saddened. – for the reasons you lay out. Toyoda was the only major car company CEO to publicly criticize the EV push. Now he’s all-aboard. Remember that scene in the movie adaptation of 1984 with Joh Hurt and Richard Burton? Winston is in jail; the door opens. O’Brien comes in. They got you, too! Winston exclaims. They got me a long time ago, O’Brien replies.
“What a man thinks inside his mind does not necessarily match the words coming out of his mouth.”
Well it should, at all times. It should match his actions too. It’s what people with principles and morals do. No excuses. I believe, besides raising of your offspring, it’s what we were put here to do.
That’s much easier to say — let alone do — when it isn’t your ass on the line.
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” — well maybe not quite, but pretty close.
It takes a VERY strong person to buck that trend.
It’s a choice to be made by every individual. Strong men are not forged by a life of leisure and luxury and taking the easy path. Tales as old as time of heroes fighting dragons and choosing the path not often taken abound throughout human history for a reason.
Not everyone can willingly choose submission to whatever torture or death they threatened for a vague sense of doing the right thing in the eyes of random Internet commenter they’ll never know.
There is also a very fine line between caving in under pressure on the one hand, and choosing your battles or living to fight another day on the other hand. From the outside, it looks the same.
Think about Aesop’s grass, vs. the oak tree in the windstorm.
“doing the right thing in the eyes of random Internet commenter they’ll never know”
In the eyes of God.
Does anybody here remember the old Star Trek episode from the late 1960s titled “The Tholian Web”? What these technocrats and central planners are trying to erect worldwide remind me of that old episode.
The reason Japan functions (at least up till now) is its Japanese, not a “multi culture” mistake of hoards of third world invaders. They still seem to embrace civilized behavior and culture. Sorry Germany, France, G Britain too late for you. And us, ha! Where I am in state of WA they’re working overtime to protect the illegal invaders.
Here in Nova Scotia , the ruling cunts are dragging the snake charmers here like there’s no tomorrow . Multicultural shit hole here we go. A doubleplusgood is they bring their nutty religion with them. The greasy fucks will live 30 to an apartment Take a number to have a shower, oh wait that’s not a big deal.
I’d give Toyoda a little benefit of the doubt because the Japanese have lived on top of each other for centuries, a little like eastern mega urbanites in the U.S. and Europe, so the idea this is genetic. If you’ve been to Tokyo you’d understand that this is not a big leap for a lot of people.
I’m not excusing it and there’s very lovely rural areas in Japan. But they lost the concept of elbow space for the majority of people tens of generations ago. The same is true in China or India and many Asian countries as they urbanized and were Westernized (and that, too, wasn’t -always- by force of colonization).
I agree, Kydo –
With a caveat. I am leery about the fact that this stuff is being organized from the top down. In other words, that it is someone else’s “plan” for us. I much prefer that we each make our own plans!
Not quite the Stalin-era “Wedding Cake” apartment buildings of dubious quality and comfort (to be fair, they were structurally quite sound, as is most everything those Russkies build, and many, having been properly renovated starting in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR (Russian Federation UN delegate: “The Sowiet (Soviet) Union will be happy to grand asylum to your wayward wessel (vessel, in reference to the misguided US submarine that Homer Simpson is misguiding)…US UN delegate: “Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up!” (Russian delegate changes his placard to ‘USSR’)…”Yes! Dat’s vot we vanted you to ‘tink!” (laughs manically, parade in Moscow’s Red Square see tanks and marching infantry come out of children’s-toy-themed floats, Berlin Wall springs back into position, complete with barbed wire and guards…), still remain today, and they retain a sort of “ugly chic” as compared to better-styled buildings that sprang up about Moscow since.
It’s more like the corporate cities and governments from the 1975 film “Rollerball” (the 2002 remake was crap, and deserved to be a “box-office bomb” that it was), who dictate where even a superstar of the violent game “Rollerball” lives, and whom he screws, taking his wife, Ella (Maud Adams) from his as a corporate big shot wanted her for himself. Yes, the Toyota “company town” may be quite “nice”, if you like being cloistered like that, but it’ll still be a COMPANY TOWN.
However, thanks to that awful “Kelo” decision some years back, one’s property is NEVER truly one’s own, never mind the perpetual “rent” one must pay to the County Assessor, as indeed, an entire industry of bottom feeders has sprung up over tax seizures, often of befuddled oldsters whose homes were supposedly “free and clear” years ago. And it doesn’t have to be some corporate big shots that want your property at a bargain-basement price, bribing the local officials to steal it. In many instances, one’s property isn’t “sezied” insofar as the deed is forcibly taken, but simply such restrictions are placed as to render the property useless for what the owner intended.
The insanity of the utopian crowd, keep trying even though it never works.
Like watching a cult in action
Woven City is for those who vote hard, pay their taxes, and maintain a squeaky-clean social media profile.
Gaza City is for those who don’t.
Have you praised the Party today, comrade?
Gaza City is ARTILLERY and BOMBING TRAINING for the IDF.
I’m betting a lot of people actually think this is a great idea. Some sort of perfection where everything they want is at their fingertips.
People are pack animals – to a point. Once you get overcrowded, things start to get nasty. Instills a sort of competition instinct and a target rich environment for the more dastardly among us.
But to the millions who have already been born into this type of life, they see it as no longer needing to take a taxi across town or walk to the train station to ride the tube to work.
To them, this is an upgrade.
To those not inculcated into this type of smashed humanity, we find it a loathsome idea that would erase the joy of life.
In October 1966, Walt Disney produced a film pitching his vision of a planned city down in a Florida swamp. Called “Disney World,” the crown jewel of the project was EPCOT: The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. A place where people would live in some fever dream of designers and urban planners. I wonder how many people watched this film and were inspired to get into urban planning? After all, two generations of children decided animals are equals of man (or even superior) thanks to his animated films.
Watch the film. The Disney World amusement park is a quick mention while over half the film is about EPCOT.
From the film: “Here The Pedestrian will be king free to walk and browse without fear of motorized vehicles. Only electric powered vehicles will travel above the streets of EPCOT’s central city.”
Same dream, different year.
epcot really went down hill…they replaced the cool flying car future part with a lame screen showing you living in a tree taking a bicycle everywhere. At least that was around 2010 when I saw it last
Your example is metaphorical for everything thats been degraded by computer networks > personal portable telephone dog tags.
A stupid drug induced utopian brain fart rotted into “amused to death”.
Good work mr sparky.
Hmmm…?
How will the 15-minute city work for Islam? Could work. If the 15-minute city is run by Islam all we non-believers have to do is like in that Star Trek episode and report to the destruction chamber to record our deaths. Otherwise, peace and harmony will exist.
No, sadly, there would not be any peace and harmony to speak of, because then the Sunni’s and Shiites would fight with each other (after killing the rest of us infidels) over who is going to be Top Dog. For there can only be one, when you get right down to it.
After reading that piece, I can’t help but wonder if Toyota has been taken over by technocrats, who are pushing such insane things like “15 minute cities”, Digital ID, AI, “vaccines”, CBDCs, Net Zero, UBI, etc. Why the biggest pushers of this crap are billionaires is beyond me, unless they think they can make even MORE MONEY off this crap, they wish to have TOTAL CONTROL over the masses, or they have an insane desire to try to play God.
Unfortunately, it also appears technocracy is being implemented in the U.S. under the Trump 2.0 administration, which should concern ANY American (regardless of their political beliefs) who hasn’t lost their minds the past 5+ years.
Hi John,
All of the large corporations have been taken over. What they refuse to see is by stifling one’s independence they crash any type of capitalist society. There is no money to be made because people will have no money to spend. So by preaching this as “the new world order” they end up deteriorating their own lifestyles.
They are so narcissistic that even history and Hollywood movies can’t change their mind. This has one outcome and it isn’t good for them.
John B, dozens of cities have signed on to smart cities. You can find it on their website under sustainable development goals(SDG). They claim you can walk or bike to everything but there is no provision for the elderly or the disabled. I wonder where they will put them?
Carrousel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/
Thanks for the “Logan’s Run” reference, was a great movie, have to watch it again sometime.
Well wow how cool is this? I mean who doesn’t want some insanely rich guy telling us all how we are going to live. Strange what they refer to as “the future” is always cramped apartment style living with people riding busses and eating bug sandwiches. To save the environment. The most green oriented people I know still don’t live that way. Sure they may drag a stainless steel water cup around and have an electric vehicle in the garage but they also live in single family houses that they (gasp) own. I personally don’t know anyone over the age of 25 who wants to live in multifamily style housing. Or is willing to eat bugs. So people will need to be forced to live this way. All I can say is good luck rich people. I don’t know what is going to happen here in the US but I do know it isn’t going to be this fake future.
OT: Is anyone still alive? Or are the 7 or 8 people who have commented so far the last people on Earth? After all, the government has been “shut down”, and therefore everyone must be dead.
Hi Horst,
I am certain this site is being back-watered in some way I have not been able to put my finger on. But I am certain it is happening because I know the site experiences wild fluctuations in traffic, often back to back (i.e., in close time proximity). This makes no sense. Traffic ought to be relatively consistent or consistently increasing or decreasing. Instead, it is as if a water spigot is turned on and then off, somehow – by parties unknown. I have noticed the same phenomenon over at Xcrement (and others I know who are relatively big fish in media) have as well. The game is rigged.
It’s still coffee time out west. Still too early to be drinking, perhaps later it’ll be time to raise a glass in hopes the Government shutdown becomes permanent.
Ha ha, we could never hope to get that lucky, Norman, although it is a nice thought. And besides, even if it was, you know Con-Gress would screw us over some more. That is, force the rest of us (try) to pay for their eternal pay checks and taxpayer paid freebies and health insurance and retirement even when they are permanently shut down. Hell, they get paid now even with the shut down, however temporary. They see we get screwed no matter what. Well hey, at least they are not passing bills they cannot bother to read ahead of time, so there is that….
So then, we each obtain a white, partially rusty Hilux, and go all Houthis on them and their interwoven shitholes. Remember that the “pursuit of happiness” was grounded I the concept of pursuit of property. So it will be their property that we pursue, and that will bring many of us great happiness.
How ironic would that be if Akio met his end at the hand of a Hilux driving Houthi?
The whole “global citizen” thing, like communism, has failed in multiple test cases just in my lifetime:
-Jews and Muslims in Israel/Palestine
-Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland
-Serbs, Croats, etc. in Yugoslavia
-Blacks and Arabs in Sudan
-Blacks and whites in South Africa
-Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda
-Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq
-Russians and Ukrainians in the Donbas and Crimea
None of these peoples think of themselves as “global citizens.”
In fact, the whole “global citizen” and “woven city” concept only works where there is no diversity. Japan might pull it off for a while, because Japan isn’t diverse at all.
Japan is undergoing John B. Calhoun’s “Universe 25” experiment, writ large. It will die off in a couple of generations
Perhaps if we could send the deep state to Toyota’s Woven City it might be a could test since “they” felt it was good for us it should be good for them also. Otherwise we should endeavor to avoid this as much as possible.
Thing is, the bureaucracy would probably enjoy it. Imagine! Like being on a cruise all the time, except that you have to pretend to work for 4-6 hours a day.
Hi RK.
GovCo employees would have to be situated a 15 minute drive from “work” but would only be allowed to walk or bicycle to “work” this would insure that they were healthy and fit. It’s the caring thing to do.
“Woven City” sounds creepy. Like you are a bug trapped in a bee hive or a spider’s web. How appropriate. Really, they are modern-day ghettos, and just as deadly. Anyone trying to shove you into a sardine can is not your friend, but for whatever reason, people nowadays seem to love sardines.
Toyota’s origins are in textile machinery, beginning with Sakichi Toyoda’s 1890 invention of the Toyoda Wooden Hand Loom and culminating in the 1924 Toyoda Automatic Loom, the world’s first non-stop, high-speed automatic loom. Sakichi established Toyoda’s Loom Works, Ltd. in 1926, which later branched out to create Toyota Motor Corporation. — AI Overview
None of this contradicts your assertion that Woven City sounds creepy.
Sociopaths like Akio seem to always rise to the top. Some, like Akio, get a head start due to being members of the Lucky Sperm Club. Others must claw their way to the top. But, since they are amoral, narcissists with zero empathy, the path is wide for them.
Normal people, when their actions harm others, feel remorse. Not these cats. They get off on it. One of these folks that I worked with for years would often say, “I just love dickin’ with people.” That was in the private moments when no one else was around. He had the ability to put on a face for every situation. People loved him because he was always the “cool leader” type. Behind their backs he laughed at them.
They are sick puppies that won’t stop until they’re forced to stop.
I am always amazed on how inherently stupid the “rich” are. The likes of Fink, Ellison, Gates, Schwab, and now even Mr. Toyoda, truly believe they will not suffer for their actions. They truly believe they and their families will be spared from us “little people”. 😂
Japan’s culture is very different than America’s. The Japanese are polite, quiet, and respect authority…Americans don’t. The 15 minute city aka “woven city” will never work here. One, the city will be trashed within a month and will end up resembling downtown San Francisco, Secondly, good luck getting a cowboy from Dodge City, a Crip member from Oakland, or a Cajun from Louisiana to curtail their life and settle among autonomous buses, small condos, and whiny Karens. It will not happen.
The little robot companion that Grandma uses will end up on her door step less one arm and a fried circuit board. The woven community will look like Idiocracy in no time. Yet we have people like Musk, Altman, and Company believing they are going to change human behavior. Can human beings be rational? Of course…until they’re starving. Never ignore one’s basic instinct to survive. We too, can become animalistic. And yet, the oligarchy refuse to believe that is an alternative.
Toyoda coffee spray!
Thanx
‘the prototype town of the future’ — eric
Outside NYC, I lived in an HOA planned community which broke ground in 1928, billing itself as ‘the town for the motor age.’ It’s still there today. But the developers failed to anticipate the next hundred years of social and technological change:
1. One-car garage (who needs more than one car?)
2. One bathroom (who minds dividing up bath times?)
3. Coal boiler & steam radiators (who minds getting up at 5 am to shovel coal?)
4. Single-pane wood-frame windows
5. An inch of cellulose insulation in the attic; none in the side walls.
6. Resin-impregnated fabric wiring insulation
7. 30-amp fuse panel
8. Lead pipe plumbing
9. Lead-containing oil paint on the plaster walls
Woven City may be cutting edge in the 2020s. But by 2120, it’s a coin flip as to whether anyone will still live there — as much for demographic as for technological reasons. Planet Japan is depopulating. Hikikomori (self-isolated) youth don’t think breeding is cool.
Look to the show Life after People for what the future of thees utopias will look like.