Some voters have successfully pushed back against the bossiness of the new urbanists, the green technocrats enthused by 15-minute cities, bike lanes, and the war against the automobile. Naturally, they are Poles.
From Politico:
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk suffered a major setback on Sunday as voters in Kraków overwhelmingly backed a right-wing campaign to remove liberal Mayor Aleksander Miszalski — a result that could inspire similar efforts elsewhere in Poland.
Miszalski, a Civic Coalition politician and the head of the party’s regional office, was elected in 2024 on an agenda that centered on green urban policies similar to those enacted by Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
The fact that Miszalski is described as “liberal” is yet another reminder of how that word has become degraded. There is nothing “liberal,” at least in the European sense of that much abused word, about authoritarian, green (but I repeat myself) central planning:
A pre-referendum survey by pollster OGB found that more than 28 percent of voters cited the city’s Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) — a system introduced by Miszalski’s center-left predecessor Jacek Majchrowski, to limit polluting vehicles access to Kraków — as their top grievance. Even though Kraków’s residents are exempt from the zone’s rules, campaigners succeeded in presenting the scheme as an undue burden on “ordinary” citizens.