Alberta
Edmonton’s 15-Minute City Hunger Games Dream
I think the idea that Edmonton will become a 15-minute city is laughable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it and point out everything they’re attempting.
The “15-minute city” concept is crucial in the United Nations Agenda 2030 and Oxford seems to be to U.K. Guinea Pig. It has a population of around 162K and a land size of 45.59 km2. They will have six zones and will only be allowed out of their city 100 times a year. We’ve seen the barriers set up to manage movement, and we have also seen those removed by citizens.
Here is a link to Oxfordshire County Council talking about the 100 times year limit.
Can they pull this off without losing too many citizens or causing their housing values to crash? Will they be able to stop the removal of barriers and damage to cameras?
Now there’s talk of Edmonton becoming a 15-minute city after the mass media box said the words and people dug up a 2021 planning document. The current mayor of Edmonton Sohi spoke about it during his campaign.
So Edmonton has a population of just under a million people and a land size of 765.61 km2. That doesn’t include the seamlessly attached bedroom communities.
So can a city the size and population of Edmonton pull this off? Will they be able to piecemeal social engineer its citizens into this?
My gut feeling is that they have no chance. They don’t have the monies or the planning and ability to execute it.
Let’s look at transit to demonstrate their capabilities. They burned so much money, staff time, and consultant time on transit infrastructure and efforts to increase ridership. Their LRT expansion has been a complete embarrassment. Their average ridership for 2022 is down to 3.4 million/month from a 2017-2019 average of 7.2 million/month. Late in 2022, they had a campaign with the slogan “Take Edmonton Transit”, how sad is that? I am surprised they didn’t add a please at the end.
Second, how will they pay for the extra infrastructure and facilities needed so that people can walk to all of them? Can they convince everyone you can only go to the River Valley three times a month? Sorry kids, we have already used two Telus World of Science travel coupons for the month. Will they have money to install the camera and surveillance infrastructure needed to track everyone?
They’re having to raise property taxes so quickly the people are getting angry, so how can they add all these other costs? If implemented, the housing value disparity in the city will get out of control. No one will want to live in District 12.
I think the idea that Edmonton will become a 15-minute city is laughable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it and point out everything they’re attempting. Their slow incremental changes only work in the dark while no one is looking. Everyone should just keep on shining that spotlight on them.
