Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax
From what I understand, Edmonton never had much of a downtown. That is why West Edmonton Mall was able to be built, the largest shopping center in the world at the time, and it has be successful. This is a little more than a transit story.
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Eh, I think the story of downtown Edmonton's decline has in part to do with the WEM drawing people away, and the fact that the city allowed developers to tear down most of the city's historic main street (Jasper Avenue) and build featureless office towers throughout the 60s-70s. It DID have a robust downtown, probably better than Calgary's at one point (as the capital and formerly larger city). But a series of bad decisions decimated it over the years, and it's only now crawling back.
One of the downtown plans there, incidentally, is a stadium, which there's plenty of room for due to all the surface parking. The city has sunk insane quantities of money into it, and there's a lot of controversy over whether it's a good use of downtown real estate.
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