How 15-Minute City fears came to Canada — and how one politician is trying to walk people through them

EDMONTON—The woman in the puffy jacket in the back row had waited over an hour to speak, sitting patiently through discussions of new trains, of heritage planning and traffic. When it’s finally her turn to address the community meeting, she looks a bit uneasy.

But she’s brought notes.

She has come to raise a question about “15-minute cities,” an urban philosophy that imagines walkable communities that are close to all amenities, lowering emissions and avoiding the stress of traffic gridlock.

It’s a concept that has been massively distorted online and falsely linked to COVID-style lockdowns.

And it’s clear the speaker this night believes a hidden agenda is at play.

“When you’re under the microscope for being associated with the 15-minute city thing, and the restrictions and the boundaries,” the woman says, addressing the city councillor standing at the front of the room.

“I’m sorry, but if that were your plan, and you say that it’s not ... Would you advertise it? Of course you wouldn’t.”

By this point, Edmonton city Coun. Andrew Knack has been talking for more than an hour, pacing gently in front of the shaky child-drawn fish in the mural behind him, taking audience questions and chuckling with the upbeat energy of a high-school coach.

He’d skipped dinner in anticipation of this meeting ending on time, but suddenly things appear to be heating up.

“Maybe the question I’d pose to you is,” he says, speaking carefully, “how do I, as an elected representative, help alleviate that fear? How do you—”

“Transparency,” she interrupts as she drops her hands on the table in front of her, her frustration evident. “In a word.”

It’s a small scene — an ember from a fire that started burning months ago, thousands of kilometres away.

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The conspiracy theories seem to have ignited when a few British towns put forward proposals last fall to reduce traffic congestion by restricting where people could drive. Canterbury, for example, proposed splitting the city into zones, with drivers only allowed to go between them via a surrounding ring road. But what was seen as limits on movement merged online with the idea of the 15-minute city knitted together by lingering fears of more COVID-style lockdowns.

Some claimed such lockdowns would eventually be used to corral residents into defined districts, a misinterpretation of the original idea that has largely bewildered the urban planners behind it.

Thanks to the internet, the conspiracy theories were projected to the various corners of the English-speaking world.

In October, former British politician Nigel Farage tweeted a story that raised questions about the cost of Canterbury’s plan, writing, “The climate change lockdowns are coming.” Just before the New Year, Jordan Peterson retweeted maps of Oxford and Canterbury, writing that while walkability was “lovely,” letting bureaucrats can dictate where you drive was a “perversion of the idea,” part of a “well-documented plan.”

A month later, Calgary businessperson Brett Wilson shared a photo of Canterbury with the words “Edmonton 15 minute cities” scrawled across the top, thus bringing the issue home: “The Edmonton based eco-alarmists have gone off the deep end.”

To be clear, officials in multiple municipalities have rejected the idea that the 15-minute city is linked to pandemic-style lockdowns and serious restrictions of movement. Measures to reduce traffic gridlock are not uncommon in municipal planning.

But the fact that those officials have been unable to debunk the idea — in fact, their protests are often framed as further evidence of government manipulation — shows how hard it can be to uproot misinformation, notes Tim Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta who studies misinformation.

“It’s a really good example of how conspiracy theories are self-sealing. Once it becomes a conspiracy theory, every refutation of it, every bit of evidence that shows that the conspiracy theory is wrong becomes part of the conspiracy theory.”

The controversy has brought fire down upon anyone who has supported the original notion. (As one British lecturer who wrote a positive story about the idea told CNN: “My inbox died.”) In Edmonton, like elsewhere, it has forced city officials to confront questions about planning but also the fact that there are people who increasingly just don’t trust them.

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A city built on Prairie sprawl that has made no bones about pushing for densification, Edmonton saw the country’s first protest against the 15-minute city concept. On a recent Friday afternoon, a small crowd of people, worried their freedoms were under threat, gathered near a main thoroughfare in the Alberta capital, to hoist banners and demand answers from city employees.

In Canada, perhaps the person most associated with the 15-minute city is Knack. A veteran on council despite not yet being 40 years old, he is known locally for his statement glasses and seemingly unassailable optimism. A longtime advocate for biking and active transportation, he included the idea of the 15-minute city when he last ran for office in 2021. Now, those who have boughtinto the conspiracy theory fear he’s pushing something darker.

There are differing interpretations about whether more walkable cities make sense, are worth the cost or are achievable somewhere like Edmonton. But this controversy signals a more fundamental breakdown in how a minority of people see government institutions and the people who lead them, and how willing they are to subscribe to nefarious ideas not supported by facts.

At a time when society feels more fractured than ever, when bridging the divide feels increasingly impossible, Knack has become the local face of a global conflagration that has sparked protests, online fights and calls for emergency political debates.

Against that backdrop, he’s chosen an approach that feels deceptively simple and perhaps, in some lights, a tad Pollyanna-ish.

He wants to talk it out.

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It all started innocently on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago, when he made a video, posted it to TikTok and went to bed. The short clip shows Knack walking down an Edmonton sidewalk on a sunny winter day explaining what a 15-minute city is to him: “It’s something that’s so convenient, everything is going to be within 15 minutes of you,” he says cheerfully.

He woke up the next morning to a flood of notifications. The video, which has now been viewed more than 10,000 times — “I don’t know what the definition of viral is, but that’s probably the only thing I’ve ever done that’s got that much traction,” he says — was shared widely and generated hundreds of comments. He spent much of that day responding to comments (“Isn’t that a prison,” read one comment. “Thanks for the question,” Knack responds. “No.”)

In the days since, he’s spent hours on the phone and wading into the online discourse. For the first time in his decade in office, he started scheduling time for calls and emails. He acknowledges that it can be slightly bewildering to some, to sound off on Instagram and have the city councillor involved earnestly respond.

“Maybe some weren’t interested in the genuine conversation, they weren’t expecting to actually have engagement,” he says, “But I wanted to take that time.”

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Even as the pandemic begins, hopefully, to fade in the rearview mirror, it has become increasingly clear that much of the anger sparked by vaccine mandates and public health restrictions continues to bubble and foam.

“I think a lot of the folks who oppose those COVID measures are seeing this (15-minute city), very wrongly so, in a way that is very COVID-centric,” says Marco Zenone, a research associate at the University of Alberta and PhD student who studies social media and misinformation.

“It’s kind of like the next stage of the COVID plan.”

The majority of Canadians are vaccinated and supported the public health restrictions that helped curb the spread of an unknown virus. Those who spoke out against them, and those who are wary of the 15-minute city now are a small minority. Still, Zenone points out that they’re increasingly vocal.

As the schism created by the pandemic has opened wider, many people have struggled with how to approach the divide.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has received criticism for a seeming inability to understand the hordes of people angry enough about vaccine mandates and public health restrictions to set up camp in the streets of Ottawa last year. Trudeau’s comments about anti-vaccination protesters in particular — he called them “often misogynistic and racist” in an election interview — spurred claims, even from his own MPs, that he was dividing Canadians.

Of course, the recent public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act found it was a two-way street, noting the “lack of empathy” displayed by the organizers at the hearings over the harassment and honking endured by Ottawa residents, “even with the benefit of hindsight.”

The problem with using language such as Trudeau did is that it can be used as a rallying cry for the very people the prime minister was referring to, says Ahmed Al-Rawi, an associate professor of news, social media and public communication at Simon Fraser University.

“It reminds me of Hillary Clinton when she talked about ‘deplorables,’ if you remember that one 2016 election, and it became a mobilizing term. It got appropriated and used by Trump’s followers in order to recruit other people,” he says.

At a time when politicians need to be building trust, they should be careful about the words they use, he adds. “With the issue of the 15-minute city, I think the same kind of discussion needs to happen, politicians and public figures need to talk in a clear way and explain things calmly, without, let’s say, accusing them of being a conspiracy theorist just because they have doubts about this policy.”

Less publicly, many regular Canadians are struggling with family members with divisive beliefs of their own.

So when society is divided over a basic interpretation of facts, then what?

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It’s not been the winter Knack planned, as more of his time has been taken up with phone calls and meetings about the 15-minute city, trying to make people see that if we could all just walk to do our errands, we’d collectively be better off.

First elected a decade ago, some questioned the qualifications of a then-29-year-old who had, until attaining public office, managed an electronics store at West Edmonton Mall.

“It’s silly,” he says with a chuckle. “But, retail, honestly, for me, is probably still the best preparation for this role, because you deal with all sorts of people with different attitudes and opinions and perspectives.

“And especially when you run a store, you have to spend time with everyone.”

His win had, in fact, been years in the making. As a business marketing student at university, he’d always expected to go work for a major company and make a lot of money. But when he saw how few young people were involved in the municipal election in 2007, he says, he figured he’d pay the $100 it cost to put his hat into the ring. He’d go on to lose “horribly,” as he puts it, but he says it opened up his eyes to the potential of public service.

He took advantage of living on the boundary of two community leagues to volunteer for both at different times, got comfortable hitting the streets and knocked on 25,000 doors in the eight months leading up to the election in 2013 in which he finally — on his third try — won a seat on council. He’s now the longest serving member of council and has developed a reputation for talking to everyone, part of a dogged belief that with enough context, people will see his side of things.

Being at odds with people isn’t new. It’s an issue that hits home for Knack. He grew up in a staunchly conservative household in a bedroom community in Edmonton only to veer more progressive as he got older.

He remembers standing at a food truck with his family when his dad offhandedly mentioned that he supported former U.S. president Donald Trump’s election campaign. At this point, Knack’s cheerful demeanour cracks slightly.

“I don’t blow up, but I blew up,” he says, looking distressed. “I was yelling as much as I yell, like, are you kidding me? You see what this person stands for morally?”

He soon realized that this wasn’t helping him find common ground. “I realized I didn’t make a connection. He was on the defensive because I was attacking,” he says. He took a step back, and he and his father were able to have more conversations about what they valued and how that was, or wasn’t, being reflected by politicians. His father, who has started his own Twitter account, has since become more open about questioning politicians on both sides of the aisle, Knack says.

Having met so many people struggling with family members whose views have become more extreme, Knack still wonders about where his dad might have ended up, had he not been met with some understanding. “That sits a lot on my mind, what could have been.”

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Back in the community hall in Edmonton, the small crowd has begun to dwindle on an evening where the temperature is projected to plunge below -30 C. The volunteer in charge of locking up the hall is looking increasingly concerned as the meeting goes into overtime.

Zoning regulations is a topic that tends to put most people to sleep, but Knack seems genuinely interested, rattling off intersections and overlays and proposed new developments. He addresses the specific worries raised — that walkable infrastructure will take money away from roads, that historical buildings aren’t being valued, or residents who felt they have no say.

For a while he seems to be making progress, his audience nodding along, until the woman in the puffy jacket raises another question about the limits of what he is and isn’t saying. (The woman declined to be interviewed by the Star.)

“The insistence that there’s no plans or restrictions,” she says, “you know what? Politicians have promised us so many things, particularly in the past three years, and they flip on it so fast, you get whiplash, right?”

“Our own premier said no vaccine passports, three months later, here they are! The prime minister said the same thing,” she said. (Both former Alberta premier Jason Kenney and Trudeau would express early opposition to the idea of vaccine passports — Trudeau called them divisive — before introducing some form of vaccine proof to access public spaces or travel in the hopes of easing burdens on hospitals.)

The mayor or another councillor had been on a recent TV segment talking about the 15-minute idea, and had called those who had questions conspiracy theorists, she said with exasperation.

“I mean, this is not how you engage with your constituency.”

Speaking before the meeting, Knack stressed that there is a difference between those who spread misinformation for profit or influence, and those who genuinely have questions about how things such as development work.

Where it gets particularly challenging is when people start asking why he hasn’t explicitly stated that he wouldn’t lock people in their districts; he counters that if he started listing all the things he wasn’t going to do, he wouldn’t have time for anything else.

He says he knows there are people who will be skeptical, even dismissive, of attempts to engage with ideas that aren’t based on evidence. Earlier in the pandemic, he himself was more hardline with people who didn’t believe in vaccines or public health measures, he says. Given all the people he’d met who’d lost loved ones to COVID, he was short with those who weren’t taking it seriously. But after three years, he wonders, what did being tough on those people accomplish?

“I was far more in that dismissive camp and, and I’m reflecting back and I’m just like, I’m not sure that helps,” he says. “I know I’m naive at times. I know I’m a bit idealistic at times. But I’d rather at least give this a shot and a real shot at trying to connect with folks.”

It’s important to listen, to hear people’s values and what they’re concerned about, Caulfield, the misinformation expert, says.

But he adds, “I think it’s true that those things can be effective, but it can be exhausting.

“Especially when you’re talking about people who have really bought into the conspiracy theory, it is much more difficult to change their mind.

“My general advice is, when it’s a hardcore conspiracy theory, save your energy for another day.”

The crowd begins to lose patience and most get up to leave. But the people who had questions about the 15-minute city gather around Knack, who perches on the edge of a table.

A staffer packs up the extra doughnuts. The guy responsible for locking the building has handed over the keys and left. The interaction ends, an hour past schedule, ambiguously. As the woman in the puffy jacket gets ready to leave, Knack points her in the direction of a few more documents on the city website and urges her to reach back out after she’s read them so they can talk again.

She’s noncommittal about how much time she has to read more, but says that he has her email and she’d like to hear about more public sessions in future. (A week later, she still hadn’t reached out to his office, but Knack says he remains hopeful.)

Standing outside the hall next to his bike as he gets ready to pedal off into the snow, Knack says he’s not upset with how things have gone this night.

“I would say some folks are very concerned and very fearful. And you can be dismissive if you want. And a lot of folks are,” he says.

“You can dismiss it, but then that just pushes them away. And it pushes into that same position that is more and more reinforced by the community they may have found.”

His answers may not have been received today, but they might be tomorrow, or the next day, he hopes.

The conversation isn’t over, and that feels like a win.

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