Originally Posted by bomberjet...
"Not sure how long you lived in Winnipeg."
Not my birthplace, but from around 1980–97, with a year in Stockholm during that period. Then for most of 2014. Two degrees from the U of M. So around 18 years, plus I have come back to Manitoba every summer over the past 20 years, except this year. So some presence over ~38 years. Not sure if you are inferring something, but I think I know it at least a little bit. My team is the Jets, however difficult that can be.
"It's a fairly suburban oriented place."
Oh, I was under the impression that areas like Roslyn, Osborne Village, etc. had higher population densities than suburban ones. Is that not the case? I haven't looked at the 2016 Census information, but I would have thought that there are still some fairly dense central neighbourhoods. Is that not true anymore?
https://winnipeg.ca/census/2016/default.asp
Anyway, it is not like that suburban orientation is in people's DNA there, like it is physiological or something. It has obviously not always been the case.
For example, I saw that they have finally put the downtown Bay out of its misery – a place that I always tried to buy stuff from when there [one time I couldn't find something which I shortly afterwards found at the Bay while passing through Montreal... Realized that that would of course be interpreted by the Bay execs as someone in Montreal wanting it rather than in Winnipeg].
But you know, it actually looks like people used to go there, even dress up a bit while doing so haha...
- Library and Archives Canada
In any case, I suppose that that balance has been shifting somewhat to the suburbs but as Brent Bellamy touched on in an article, I wonder how much of that has to do with the same policies that have encouraged urban sprawl everywhere.
https://www.numberten.com/blog/26-ur...half-the-story
"The exchange is such a gem..."
True. Although given a few people's attitudes, it is probably a lucky thing that any of it survived.
".... but is completely underutilized because people are scared of downtown. People are literally scared for their life to go downtown. "I sawed on the news's there was some troubles" type people."
I guess. As that B.B. article alludes to, it's a carrot-and-stick thing. If there were more people there, people would feel safer. No different than any other city.
"For most things, people see old as junky."
Not sure what this means. If it is junky it is junky. There are many old things that 'people' do not see as junky. I guess the people you are referring to are the ones hiding out in the suburbs. That house was not junky, by any objective standard.
"Winnipeg is not terribly old. Oldest buildings are from early 1900's."
In the Canadian context, Winnipeg is a historic city. It is similar in my mind to a place like St. Louis for the U.S. – a gateway to the West. As an aside, I was thinking that this painting must be one of the oldest European representations of the Forks, from 1821.
- "Winter fishing on ice of Assynoibain & Red River" (LAC)
And to take the example of Paris again, large swathes of central Paris only date from the latter part of the 19th century, when decrepit (and probably not-so-decrepit) neighbourhoods dating back to medieval times and before were destroyed in battles or razed by Haussmann. But it wasn't like he was replacing them with crap.
"The one that was demo'd surely could've been saved."
Yes – it is a huge loss.
"But for the sake of someone's pocketbook, it will be replaced."
Yeah, for the sake of someone's pocketbook. Let's hope not with crap. By the way, what an Einstein-like contribution to the debate this was!
Congratulations to him, I guess. And I will stop shouting at the clouds here now...