CENTR0 district for edmonton?

[kcantor]

perhaps instead of bickering about totally artificial boundaries for downtown, edmonton could be the first canadian city to adapt the european expression of centro for our central core?

centro would include not just the “official”downtown but the adjacent communities of oliver, river valley/victoria, rossdale,riverdale, the quarters, boyle street, mccauley, central mcdougal and queenmary park.

as for the current terminology, does anyone really care that the courthouse is officially downtown and the army and navy building isn’t or that nello’s won’t technically be downtown either?

we could incorporate the well recognized logo for centro districts (see below) in new edmonton entrance signs as well as in our directional signage within the city. everyone from the 124th street art walk to the new museum to the edmonton conventioncentre (yes, the edmonton convention centre – about time!!!) could incorporate it in their marketing material etc.j

just think, instead of constant bickering about what's in and what isn't we could have all of central edmonton consider itself to be a single destination district to live in or work in or visit. we could also then stop bickering inside downtown as well as to whether something is part of the warehouse district or jasper avenue or 104th street or the ice district or the financial district or government centre…

of course that’s not really the edmonton way – we do after all tend to eat both our young and our successful instead of encouraging and promoting them – but maybe it would be a simple easy way for us to start to move past that. maybe if we really want to move towards being world class we could adopt some world wide world class precedents that would be also be readily apparent for anyone visiting from the rest of the world as well.

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[Coldrsx]

Central Edmonton is well used, but how about neighbourhood names. If not let's just stick to SW, NW, SE,NE and call it at day... or not.

[EdmTrekker]

Ken, "totally artificial boundaries for downtown"? Why are these artificial or just in YOUR mind?

[kcantor]

Originally Posted by EdmTrekker

Ken, "totally artificial boundaries for downtown"? Why are these artificial or just in YOUR mind?

when i say artificial i don't mean imaginary - in my mind or anyone else's - i'm talking about their usefulness, not their accuracy.

i know every jog in the "official downtown plan" edges but not too many edmontonians do - or care - and i would say the same thing for any of our visitors. they just want to be central and to know what else is central - they don't want to go through a host of neighborhoods one by one to make their choices.

if you're in a downtown hotel, you want to know what's central and reasonably walkable, not which specific neighborhood it's in. if you're advertising your restaurant location, you want your location to be as familiar as possible to as many people as possible. if you're advertising you're in oliver to someone who doesn't know where oliver is, you might as well be in windermere.

[kcantor]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

Central Edmonton is well used, but how about neighbourhood names. If not let's just stick to SW, NW, SE,NE and call it at day... or not.

central edmonton is well used but it typically includes the university, cloverdale, strathcona and garneau. it is much larger - and much less walkable - than the european centro
concept being tabled for discussion.

as for sticking to the quadrants and calling it a day, you do realize Edmonton is one of the only places i know that doesn't yet even have four of them (there is no se quadrant)?

for a quadrant system to be an effective locator, it should change quadrants in both directions at roughly the centre of the city. edmonton's quadrants don't transect anywhere near the centre of the city and i would challenge just about any edmontonian to identify those streets and avenues where you cross from one quadrant to another.

[Coldrsx]

San Antonio uses 'Centro'...