Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Agriculture, professional services, public administration, transportation, health care, manufacturing, retail
But realistically a second large city would probably result in a Saskatchewan-like situation where instead of one larger city we'd have simply have two mid-sized ones. I have to admit I kind of like having all of our urban eggs in one basket for the most part... Winnipeg is able to sustain more big-city features and amenities than three cities of, say, 250,000, or two cities of 350,000 would.
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What, historically, would have caused that to happen? In Saskatchewan, I imagine it was that Saskatoon was much better positioned than Regina to act as a regional commercial and warehousing centre for a huge agricultural district, so businesses located there. Regina was already the administrative centre, capital and the centre of another agricultural region. Moose Jaw was considered their equal for many years but there ultimately wasn't enough economic activity to sustain it as an alternative business location.
In Manitoba, with Winnipeg's unmatched railway connections, and its role as the primary distribution and warehousing centre for the prairies as a whole, as well as for most of southern Manitoba, it would rarely have made commercial sense for a major business to locate in Brandon, other than to serve local needs.