EDMONTON – Edmonton’s downtown core has seen a lot of change over the last 15 years; and the new arena is expected to add to the revitalization that’s already taking place. But will that be enough?
At the fifth annual Revitalizing Downtown conference held at the Westin hotel on Wednesday, experts from cities like Vancouver, Vienna, and Detroit offered their take on what they believe is needed for a vibrant downtown. For them, it boils down to: proactiveness, transit, and becoming more pedestrian friendly.
Detroit may not be the first place that comes to mind when one thinks of a bustling downtown. It’s actually been described as a “doughnut” city: empty in the middle and modestly affluent around the outside.
Robert Anderson with the City of Detroit says things there have been improving, though. That’s in part due to a hometown billionaire taking a risk by buying and then renovating derelict buildings to attract tenants.
“It’s really paying attention to who the players can be, who you can partner with. But also, it’s about making the right investments for the future so that you don’t leave a ticking time bomb,” he explains.
“Detroit, for example, never reinvested in our street lights. So we’ve got 139 square miles with 40 per cent of our street lights that don’t work. In the boom times, we didn’t invest in those things.”
He believes Edmonton has the right attitude when it comes to anticipating future needs.
And we may also be on the right track when it comes to expanding our transit, something which has played a big role in Vancouver’s growth.
Jeff Busby, with the city’s TransLink system, says in the last two years metro Vancouver’s transit usage has skyrocketed to records higher than those set during the Olympics. In addition to bringing more people downtown, transit stations in the suburbs are seeing another return on investment.
Busby explains suburban centres, which used to be mostly occupied by shopping malls and parking, have been transformed into areas where people not only live and work, but also play.
“And all of that’s being built on our transit system, which is a really exciting way to kind of transform places that were built around the automobile, to places that are more sustainable for getting around by transit, walking, cycling,” he adds.
Dr. Friedrich Mair of Salzburg, Austria would like to see more people walking and cycling in Edmonton’s downtown core; and to make that happen, he suggests designating more gathering places where no vehicles are allowed.
“People like to be in areas where no cars are, where it’s quiet, where they can talk, where they can sit and look around,” he says. “You have cars everywhere here, and it’s very, very loud here.”
Like many European cities, he says Vienna has a large area designated strictly for pedestrians.
“And millions of people go there.”
While telling Edmontonians to forgo their cars – even just in some areas of downtown – may be a tough sell, the city has made steps recently to make our city’s downtown streets a little more pedestrian friendly.
And the work is far from over, as the revitalization is only expected to become even more visible when the downtown arena goes up.
But in the meantime, the conference on Transforming & Revitalizing Downtown continues on Thursday, with more experts offering their advice on what else could improve Edmonton’s core.
With files from Vinesh Pratap, Global News
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