Quote:
Originally Posted by bsenka View Post
What other cities do is irrelevant. Those places already exist if that's the kind of city people want to live in.
I still have not heard a single argument as to why downtown needs to be anything other than offices and through traffic. People think it's self-evident that those are bad things, but they provide no rationale as to why.
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Please excuse the botchy quoting tags...
I hate to backtrack the conversation to this but...
From my perspective, part of the problem is that Winnipeg has never taken a strong stance in the last 100 years on how they want to develop Winnipeg's core. Let's look at other Canadian examples here; we have Calgary which has an office-heavy downtown, essentially you go to downtown Calgary to work which sounds like the vision that you have. Calgary throws in a few condos here and there to mix things up and bring a little more livability to their core but the foundation of their downtown is built on working in downtown. And then we have Vancouver with a downtown that everybody wants to live AND work in; and with the third largest port in North America, combined with stellar natural beauty, downtown Vancouver boasts being a tourist trap and a huge shipping hotspot in the western hemisphere. I say all this to point out that every downtown is different in some way and that Winnipeg, as a city, really hasn't designated what kind of a downtown we want to develop.
As for other cities being irrelevant... I 90% agree and 10% disagree lol. I only agree with you on the fact that I feel that Winnipeg needs to develop its own purpose as a metropolis in Canada. When the Fort McMurray fire occurred, which was a fire larger than some countries, they did need more fire equipment and I specifically remember that they called on Winnipeg for support because it was convenient to have the equipment shipped from Winnipeg. Also with the new Maple Leaf airlines
(which, by the way is a Winnipeg-based company and I am surprised that there isn't a thread about this), they base themselves out of Winnipeg for the convenience of having access to both the East and West from our location. And I do feel that we have the advantage of being a city that can serve as a giant relay centre for the country for when Canada needs to store imports or exports for a certain amount of time or for when a city needs a certain resource fast. But that's just a little vision that I have.
I think that a big part of what has hindered our downtown development was the development of Office parks in the suburbs. From the vision that I quoted from above, I do think that Winnipeg is more likely to develop its downtown like Calgary; being a place to work. With more people working downtown there is usually spill-over demand for places to live near where they work, especially if there are no good transit options. And once you get people living in downtown again, new demands are made including livability, and transit, and the rest is history. If Winnipeg's downtown was a bigger tourist trap or a denser residential neighbourhood, its walkability score would be better but alas, we live in a city where most of the population is living in the suburbs and therefore we need to cater towards the majority population. And we are absolutely NOT one of the top places that international tourists choose to visit, when they think of visiting Canada. You cannot tell me that people outside of Canada would choose Winnipeg over Quebec City, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria, Ottawa, or even Halifax. I don't think that tourism is our strong point. And yes I named Ottawa because they have a plethora of museums, art galleries, and a lot of historical locations that puts our efforts to shame (even though the HRM is amazing).
All in all, the (lack of) development in Winnipeg's downtown is no surprise and it's nothing new in history. It's just that Winnipeg developed different work centres (or nodes) all over the city, focused on its suburbs, and never invested in a vision which is my biggest criticism of the city. I wouldn't have a problem with a very spread-out city if its done right but Winnipeg has been waffling with this recently with the development of its half-assed "rapid" transit system, its hit-or-miss condo proposals, and lack of highway infrastructure (for a city as spread out as it is). I have only been a couple of times but the city of Phoenix, AZ comes to mind when I think of a very spread-out car-centric city that still manages to be lively. Yet Winnipeg is just not committing to a vision and it's flying by the seat of its pants.
