Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
There is such a huge difference between the kinds of projects that were successfully completed in Edmonton in the 1970's and what might be built in a comparable Canadian city today. Commonwealth stadium and the LRT both opened within a few years and Edmonton was a Kitchener-Waterloo sort of scaled metro area, with much less economic activity back then, growing at what's now a fairly standard rate in Canada.
The excuses given for why we can't build things today were all true back in the 1970's. Inflation and economic issues, disruptions, etc.
I think we are going to find that we do not have enough infrastructure in the next decade and it will impinge on our quality of life. As a hypothetical scenario imagine that prices to attend events at stadiums go way up and it becomes normal for people to commute only in small portions of metro areas.
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By today's standards, Edmonton was off the charts in terms of what it managed to get built from the period 1970-1990. Huge stadium, huge arena, LRT (including underground segment), world's largest mall with various outsized attractions, freeways and expressways. It was like a highlight reel of various interesting Chinese projects you'd see today, but all condensed into one city.
The funny thing is that there wasn't a ton of braggadocio coming out of Edmonton in those days, except with regard to WEM which was just so unique and one of a kind. Things like Commonwealth Stadium didn't come with a lot of hype the way new stadiums and arenas get now... it was just accepted and normal that this was a new piece of necessary infrastructure and that was that.
I agree that we are slowly falling into a situation where we are going to be unable to keep building infrastructure at a rate that will be sufficient to maintain quality of life. This is especially so in the top six metros.