Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
I'm hard pressed to think of any advantages of de-amalgamation beyond perhaps idealistic notions that a smaller municipal government would somehow be closer to its citizens. All I see is more administrative overhead (much like with our school boards) and a situation where there would be less integrated planning and more instances of developers playing one municipality against the others.
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I'm with you on this although I can think of some possible advantages. The one that sticks out to me is that the cities could be in competition with each other in a more tangible way than is otherwise the case. Keeping up with the Jones' would take place in a different context that might make certain necessary changes more attractive than they would otherwise be.
I'm thinking about how Winnipeg wants to compete with cities like Calgary and Edmonton. The problem, of course, is that those cities have had decades of oil money flowing into them and Winnipeg is in no position to compete with them in any way. If, on the other hand, St. Boniface decided to beautify the stretch along Marion and Goulet and turned it into a major night spot (for example) other cities in the region would be able to look at that and say "There's absolutely no reason we can't do the exact same thing so why aren't we doing it?"
Anyway, that's just my guess. Otherwise, I see no real advantage at all and it may even be a step backwards.