Wes Regan addresses the growing concern about:· The impacts digital misinformation is having on public policy discourse regarding planning and land use· How public opposition to planning based on digital misinformation is being responded to by planners and urban policymakers.
The recent backlash to planning associated with the concept of ‘The 15-Minute City’ seen in 2023 across Canada and the United Kingdom is a useful case study in this regard.
Other highly contentious planning issues, including:· Densification of single-family zoned neighbourhoods,· Smart Cities· The Internet of Things
Encouraging mode shift from automobiles to active transportation are all contained within the 15 Minute City’s theory of change, making it an ideal lightening rod for controversy. As such, the concept was recently ‘weaponized’ through sensational narratives that implicated it as part of a global conspiracy seeking to prevent people from leaving their neighbourhoods, and then used to oppose a range of ordinary planning work across communities in Canada.
Showing different characteristics than previous generations of resistance to planning (e.g. the Slum Clearances and Urban Renewal policies of the 1960s), the NIMBY movement emerging in the 1980s, or the anti-gentrification resistance of the early 2000s, today’s ‘conspiracist’ resistance to planning is arguably a unique new challenge inviting novel approaches in response.
