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Originally Posted by thebasketballgeek
That’s super interesting I’m surprised that something that important slipped from my attention. What a great implementation by the councillors can we steal them here for a year or two 
Being a resident there have you noticed any changes within the developments that include less parking or more infill developments in those parking lots? |
Well, I'm from Edmonton, but was living in Winnipeg until a couple of weeks ago, and will be back in the near future. Anyway, I haven't noticed much difference yet in Edmonton, but it was only brought forth last year, and due to the pandemic, there haven't been a lot of new starts. Most of the construction is from stuff already approved from before covid.
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Also Edmonchuk, I’ve noticed your comments on other threads and I gotta say unfortunately those comments seem quite accurate. Of course we’re improving our other neighborhoods but Main from Higgins - Jefferson has been completely neglected and if nothing is done to counteract this trend we might see Canada’s first urban slum in decades.
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Edmonchuk's comments are sensationalist and ridiculous and are coming from someone whose observations are rooted in some street view glances rather than meaningful engagement with the city. This person has admitted to not having set foot in Winnipeg.
I get that there's a lot of defeatism in Winnipeg, but this city is not that bad and has tons of potential. That isn't to say there isn't bad things - there is a lot about Winnipeg that is frustrating, but I wouldn't let outsiders without a clue have a say on that. Edmonchuk made repeated (and outdated) reference to how Winnipeg looks "third world" even though Edmonton isn't exactly known for being a polished place. This user saw little of merit in Winnipeg and thought that the city lacked anything aesthetic merit beyond the Exchange and considered 90% of the downtown to be a "ghetto" (another egregious term).
This isn't to put Winnipeg on a pedestal or to say that it is better than Edmonton. Merely it is drawing attention to the wealth of old, pre-war urbanism the city has that Edmonton never did which, if Winnipeg did half of the public realm and infrastructure improvements as well as policy updates that Edmonton did, would really enrich those existing bones. Right now in Edmonton, to use Edmonchuk's examples (this is the final time I will be doing this ridiculous comparison):
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Originally Posted by Edmonchuk
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Edmonton is doing the public realm investments like in the above photo, which shows a beautiful new streetscape on Jasper Ave. However, the surrounding built form is bland at best and hostile at worst for pedestrians. You have the empty, blank walls of the Edmonton Convention Centre to the left and the gargantuan fortress of Canada Place on the other side. Now, I'm not saying every block of Main St or Portage is incredible urbanism, but there's a lot less of that and a lot more of:
Yes, Portage could use a new streetscape, some more benches and planters, and more businesses and amenities on the main floors of the surrounding buildings, but the bones, i.e. the existing buildings on these downtown main streets are much more beautiful and are much more able to be adapted into uses that make a more vibrant street. And having a streetscape like in the Jasper Ave example would enhance those bones and potentially spur more usage of those spaces. In Edmonton, after just rebuilding the streetscape, there isn't going to be a massive influx of people because the surrounding area lacks destinations and amenities as well as a pedestrian-friendly exterior. Edmonton will essentially need to rebuild the street-facing side of the convention centre to have either public space (say, a garden) or retrofit it into small CRUs to give something for pedestrians to engage with on the street. You'd also need to redesign the main floor of Canada Place across the street to attempt to give what fine grained urbanism does but with a bulky pomo behemoth. So redoing the streetscape is only part one, then the buildings need to be redone, then you need to find people to fill those places. For Winnipeg, you only really need to redo the streetscape and find some people to fill in some of the spaces. So there's less work to do because the bones of the existing buildings (the scale, the street orientation, and even the aesthetic beauty) are already in place in a way that isn't in Edmonchuk's Edmonton example.
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124st
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Edmonton also has some quite ugly main streets - 124th Street is arguably one of the more hideous, even though it does have a nice assortment of amenities and is in a very walkable area generally. Aesthetics aside, for 124th Street essentially being the next rank in terms of vibrant main streets in Edmonton after Whyte, it falls kind of flat, especially compared to similarly sized Calgary, which has Kensington and Inglewood. But even Winnipeg, for all its faults and a lack of a truly vibrant main street, has better main streets. Not only are they more aesthetically pleasing and more already oriented towards main street retail as that's what they were built as (124th Street was really just a few small clusters of neighbourhood retail that later got connected by postwar office buildings and commercial development that isn't always the most pedestrian friendly) but many are also busier or as busy.
That being said, Edmonton does many things a lot better than Winnipeg. Its transit system, while imperfect, is a million times better than Winnipeg's. Its urban policies, including the aforementioned parking minimum elimination, are way more progressive. Public realm improvements are sorely needed and are actually being built. There's momentum and it's interesting seeing my hometown as somewhere to look up to, but I get it. I do think if Winnipeg applied much of what Edmonton is starting to do, it would be an even more amazing city and, because of its stronger bones, probably more vivacious than Edmonton.
Also as much as it seems like the status quo is inevitable in Winnipeg, it may not. Edmonton 10-12 years ago felt very much like Winnipeg does now, and did feel a lot less ambitious and like there was inevitability that Edmonton would always be behind Calgary or Vancouver. It felt like it was still hungover from the '80s. But a lot of that has been shed in a very short amount of time. I doubt Winnipeg will, at least in the next decade, boom like Edmonton did, but that doesn't mean big and impressive changes that would've been unfathomable a decade ago won't be able to happen. No one in Edmonton in 2005 would have thought that in 15 years it would have the tallest building outside of Toronto in Canada.
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