Household Food Insecurity in Simcoe County

Community Leaders for a Sustainable Simcoe

Smarter and healthier communities

15 Minute Communities

Fifteen minute communities are places where people can meet their daily needs within a 15 minute walk from their home.

Why This Matters.

Fifteen minute communities are places where people can meet their daily needs within a 15 minute walk from their home. For areas that are more remote or rural, this may be more difficult to implement, but the underlying principles are applicable to every community regardless of size or location.

The antithesis of a 15 minute community is sprawl.

Sprawl is highly car dependent, is more expensive to live in, more expensive for municipalities to service and maintain and has high per-capita greenhouse gas emissions mostly due to heating and transportation.

With rising inequity, increased housing costs and a changing climate, it is imperative to design complete communities that are compact, more resilient, less expensive to service and more affordable.

Building fifteen minute communities and saying no to sprawl helps address other pressing issues such as decreasing living costs in the community, creating healthier, greener communities, reducing inequity and improving municipal finances due to wiser infrastructure investments and lower servicing costs. The first step is saying yes to more infill and gentle density and no to sprawl.

More than 70% of Simcoe County residents spend more than 15 minutes commuting to work, each way.

Eric Miller, of the University of Toronto, did a rough estimation of economic loss resulting from long commutes by calculating the time spent on them multiplied by the average Canadian wage of $27.36/hr.

For Simcoe County this results in a weekly loss of nearly $2 million for those travelling an hour to work, or more than $96 million each year. For all categories over 15 minute this equals more than $6 million each week, and more than $311 million every year.

Note that these figures do not factor in negative externalities, such as costs associated with air pollution or road maintenance.

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Did You Know…?

Hemson Consulting found that infill pays for itself and adds $606 per person/year to municipal coffers while low density single detached housing on greenfield costs the municipality $465 per person/year over and above what is received in development charges and new tax revenue.
Transitioning to more compact, resource efficient communities could reduce a community’s GHG emissions by 36-54%
Bringing gentle density to existing settlement areas is one key way to make housing more affordable. Source: Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force

What You Can Do As A Municipal Leader:

Set a vision for your municipality that will stop settlement boundary expansions and sprawl and put more housing within existing built up areas. Ensure this vision is reflected in policy statements in official plans and other municipal planning and policy documents.
Collect data and resident input about the absence or presence of amenities they need to meet their daily needs (grocery stores, child care, housing, pharmacy, businesses, public spaces, green spaces, active transportation infrastructure etc.). Ensure these amenities are accessible to all neighbourhood, especially lower income neighbourhoods.
Re-think infrastructure investments to provide residents with more transportation choices beyond their cars (e.g. protected bike lanes, walking paths, frequent transit)
Remove local zoning barriers to building gentle density and infill. Refer to resources that outline barriers for micro-units and “missing middle”.