After 'verbally aggressive' residents prompt pause, Brandon resuming moderated engagement on city plan

City planners in Brandon, Man., say they're taking extra precautions for an upcoming meeting about the city's future after some residents became "verbally aggressive" at the last public meeting.

A March 24 public meeting about Brandon's 30-year city plan took an "intense" turn when around 40 people attended, the city's new principal planner said.

Sonikile Tembo said some of those in attendance raised concerns about the "15-minute city" urban design concept, which promotes the idea that communities should be designed to allow residents to have access to their main daily needs within a 15-minute walk, bike ride or transit trip from their homes.

The concept has become the focus of conspiracy theories in other cities, such as Toronto and Edmonton.

"Suddenly there was a big group coming in saying that this is … part of a government agenda towards, like, lockdowns and enforcing restrictive measures and digital identity," Tembo said of the March 24 meeting in Brandon.

"As you can imagine, we were kind of caught off guard."

The concept of 15-minute cities, which dates back a few years, has been picked up by many cities to guide urban planning and design. 

But some people have also recently claimed the concept is an elaborate conspiracy intended to limit individual freedoms by restricting people to movement within barricaded sectors of a city.

Brandon's 30-year city plan — a vision intended to guide growth in the city of roughly 51,000 over the coming decades — emphasizes the need for ease of access to services through walking or biking, giving it similarities with the 15-minute city idea.

That's meant what would normally be a mundane public information session boiled over in March, with residents coming out to air their concerns. 

The March 24 meeting quickly became derailed by residents criticizing 15-minute city plans and interrupting staff, according to city officials.

City manager Ron Bowles was not present at the public engagement session, but was told by staff that "people were just very passionate" and "verbally aggressive." 

"It was not a comfortable situation for our staff that were present at the event or for our councillors that were present," Bowles said. While the city welcomes public feedback, it needs to be conveyed in a safe and respectful manner, he said.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett, who was also not at the meeting, said city staff were caught off guard by the "aggressive approach of a crowd that came in."

Fawcett said the city has been holding public consultations on its plan for more than a year, but the 15-minute city questions only became a significant issue at the late March meeting.

"People are coming out with these same issues across the country.… Brandon is not unique in that," he said.

Citizen concerns

Rick Macl attended the March 24 meeting, which he also recorded, in hopes of learning more about the city plan and what it would cost taxpayers.

He said he found out about the meeting at the last minute and attended with about 25 others who showed up as part of what he described as a "grassroots movement." In the video he made, others who attended the meeting also said they only heard about event a few hours ahead of it.

"I don't think the government realizes that people are concerned where our money is going," Macl said.

"That 30-year plan is a waste of time because ... that plan is going to have to change."

He said there was a lack of organization around the city's feedback sessions, and there was frustration over the absence of other city officials at the March meeting.

In the video he made of the event, one attendees says the "people in charge of this should be here to actually be able to answer some questions."

City staff were inundated with questions suggesting the 30-year plan faced influence from "higher up," calling the process illegitimate and mocking the need for bike lanes. 

Others raised concerns about the effects a 15-minute city strategy would have on seniors in a winter city, asking whether there will be plans to add hospitals in the city.

Brandon is "doing exactly what the smart cities are," said Macl, referring to the federal government's Smart Cities Challenge, which awarded funding to communities for projects intended to "improve the lives of their residents through innovation, data and connected technology."

Brandon was not part of the program, but "Winkler signed up for this smart city," said Macl.

"They have a map of all the locations of the cities that signed up for 15-minute smart cities. It's the same shit," he said.

"You can see it on the government website. It's not a conspiracy theory.… But do we really have the money to take care of that infrastructure?"

Fawcett denied there is any broader influence behind Brandon's 30-year plan.

"Our city plan is about Brandon, not some big UN master plan," the mayor said.

Fostering positive public discourse

Brandon University political science professor Kelly Saunders says the meetings are part of larger issues when it comes to healthy debate in politics.

People seem to have lost sight of the fact that while they may have differences, "at the end of the day we're all Canadians, we're all Manitobans, and we all want the best for our community and for the members of that community," she said.

That's made having any sort of healthy debate a challenge, she said.

"The larger problem, I think, is what this says about the quality of our democracy and the quality of our communities moving forward … if these vital ties that should be binding us together as a community … [are] being steadily eroded by these kinds of misinformation and false ideas that are really, really destructive."

The city faces a careful balancing act in making sure it has a process for people to participate in public discourse that is meaningful and constructive, while ensuring a vocal minority doesn't drown out those conversations with misinformation, said Saunders. 

After putting a pause on public engagement sessions following the March 24 meeting, the city is planning a moderated public meeting for Thursday, May 18 at the Keystone Centre Upper Curling Club, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. 

Bowles says the city has learned from the previous meeting and will be making adjustments for the upcoming session. That includes a plan to counter misinformation about 15-minute cities and emphasizing clarity, public safety and democratic engagement as the project moves forward, he said.

That approach is "something that we intuitively have done all the time," he said, but the city will now make a more concerted effort to ensure it's planning for different scenarios.

However, he said it is key for the city to remain open and transparent, and to communicate with the community.

Fawcett says the March 24 meeting put city staff were in an awkward position. City officials have had some discussions with them and he thinks they're comfortable moving forward — especially because the city wants to keep getting community input.

"We're open to dialogue. I'm always for more people getting together and looking one another in the eye … [to] have a discussion," Fawcett said.

Tembo says moving forward, she is focused on what the city plan actually is — a policy and land-use framework that invites people to imagine what they want and need the city to look like in the future.

Its goal is make neighbourhoods more walkable, inclusive, and resilient — socially, financially, and economically, she said.

"We know we're going to grow — but can we have a discussion about how we're going to grow and where we're gonna grow, and can we plan for that growth?" Tembo said.

"City planning really is just planning for development for the future."