No, 15-minute districts are not a plot to imprison you

The Internet controversy machine is fired up again and this one, like all good Canadian controversies, stems from a misunderstanding of the separation of powers. Ah, the comfort of home. 

In this case, some people are all in a tizzy about the concept of 15-minute districts in a municipal planning document, passed into law several years ago, that is mostly for that profession of people who design roads and buildings and then make sure the thing they’ve designed is within the rules.

In Canada’s Constitution, two different orders of government are provided with specific powers: the Parliament of Canada, and the provincial legislature. All Canadian provinces are given responsibility for “municipal institutions in the province,” such as the City of Edmonton. In Alberta, the province’s Municipal Government Act provides the legal framework for the City of Edmonton to exist as a municipal corporation, and the guide to how all Alberta municipalities operate. Constitutionally, the City of Edmonton is a “creature of the province,” as the saying goes.

The Municipal Government Act requires that all municipalities create a municipal development plan (MDP). Municipal development plans identify future development patterns within municipal boundaries, and facilitate local planning and economic growth. They provide citizens and businesses information on how the municipality will address the current and future needs of the community, including land use, transportation systems, and municipal services. Traditionally, this has not been a controversial concept.

The City of Edmonton, like all Alberta municipalities, has a municipal development plan. They call it the City Plan, which just sounds nicer. The most recent update to the City Plan was approved by Edmonton city council on Dec. 7, 2020. You can learn all about it and download a complete copy of the City Plan here. 

The City Plan posits that people want access to the services and amenities that are important in their lives within easy reach — in other words, within 15 minutes of home, or within “15-minute districts.” The idea of a 15-minute district can reduce environmental strain, facilitate local community building, and make it easier for each of us to attend to the details in our busy lives. The goal is to ensure Edmonton is an enjoyable, welcoming, and affordable place to live.

There is nothing at all about a 15-minute district that would prevent anyone from leaving one. In fact, you can’t actually tell when you move from one to the next — the lines on the map are mostly for the building and development industry to refer to when considering things like density targets. You’re welcome to drive all the way across town to buy groceries if you’d like, though it turns out that most people would rather not have to. If anyone tells you that a 15-minute district in the City of Edmonton’s municipal development plan is a plot to restrict your freedom of movement, they are misinformed, or perhaps even misleading you.

However, this has not stopped the 24/7 online outrage brigade from spreading all kinds of wild theories and accusations about what’s really at play here. A quick search will uncover allegations that this is the first step in a plot to keep us all under lockdown in our own districts, hatched by some combination of the UN, George Soros, the World Economic Forum, Joseph Stalin and Bigfoot. Protests are planned. Placards are being stencilled at this very moment.

The trouble here is that the more people get upset about something that’s plainly not a threat in reality, the trickier it gets to discern what is and isn’t worthy of our concern. For those in the part of the online ecosystem where this non-issue feels like a legitimate concern, participation in this protest brings them further from measurable reality, and perhaps makes it just a little bit harder to make it back.

A 15-minute district is not a plot to imprison you. It is simply shorthand to describe a way of planning our city to accommodate future growth in a human-scale way. And in my view, not a bad idea at all.

(This article previously appeared in The Edmonton Journal.)