I think the thing a lot of us are afraid to admit is that downtown recovery and revitalization, including improving Portage, isn't under the control of any one authority and it takes decades and steady coordination across governments, private sector, and citizens, for tangible improvement to be made. There isn't some magical policy (well, maybe land value tax on surface lots) that is going to fix everything.
I think we, as a City, have this idea that if only the right plan in a shiny PDF form would be published, or one of our numbskull politicians would make a good decision for once, or the right policy adopted by city council, or a large enough basket of funding would be handed out by the Province, or if True North would build just one more tower, or if Portage Place would be turned into affordable housing, or if we'd just add more bike lanes, that everything would finally be fixed and people would flood downtown at all hours of the day.
I think that our hopes and dreams for downtown need to be constrained by reality.
1) Inner-city poverty: We have a lot of deep-rooted, historical poverty and addictions issues in neighborhoods that border our downtown. These issues stem from the abuse of Indigenous peoples and the effects of colonialism, but unfortunately have no easy answer. No blank cheque, no amount of more police officers or cadets, nor army of addictions councilors or social workers is going to solve the issues in Winnipeg's north end over night. People will say "we must address poverty!" until they are blue in the face without presenting a viable strategy to actually do so. The Liberal CCB program reform was an excellent start, but more resources both for prevention and response, especially at a provincial level, are needed. Until then, the effects of poverty from the north end will continually bleed into downtown, giving it a reputation for being grimy and unsafe. Every other Canadian city has some degree of poverty and homelessness, but what makes Winnipeg unique is the high concentration of poverty in a single area of our city, and that single area just so happens to border our downtown.
2) Money: Winnipeggers hate property tax, which is sorely needed to fix existing infrastructure and build new stuff downtown in the absence of an impact fee. It's a real headscratcher that Winnipeggers voted in the mayoral candidate who promised the highest taxes last year, so I'm optimistic about that. But even the 3.5% tax hike pales in comparison to Manitoba's 7.9% inflation rate last year - city services (wages, construction, materials) are also subject to inflationary pressures. Cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal regularly hand out property tax increases in the range of 4% to 9% to fund the programs we need, with little resistance (CBC comment section doesn't count). Plus these cities have area charges which allow growing suburbs to fund their own pieces of infrastructure, leaving more of the general tax dollars for inner-city revitalization, a luxury Winnipeg doesn't have. Without these things, the municipality will have a difficult time keeping downtown assets in good condition, which only contributes to the post-apocalyptic look we've got going there.
3) Transit: Our transportation woes are not easy to solve. Yes, every city struggles with this. But as we've all discussed, our main roads downtown (Portage and Main) are a blight to urban, pedestrian friendly development, but also serve the bulk of downtown and cross-town traffic. Taking steps to fix that isn't easy and will come with high political and citizen resistance. You can talk about mode shift until you are blue in the face, and most people will just laugh at you. Transit's plan to start with making rapid transit in the downtown area is a good step, but shifting Winnipegger's preferences from car to bus is going to be difficult, and more likely influenced by market forces (cost of car ownership/gas/parking) as opposed to better bus service.
4) Winnipeg is a medium-sized city with medium-sized population growth dependent on international migration: We can expect that Winnipeg will, on average, grow between 8,000 and 16,000 people per year over the long term. Historically we've seen much of this growth being absorbed by greenfield housing in Bridgwater, Sage Creek, and Amber Trails. When people immigrate to Canada, they want to go to Toronto or Vancouver. If they have to come to Winnipeg, they want a house. Few immigrants, if they can avoid it, are willing to live in a Toronto-sized skybox in a Winnipeg-sized city with Winnipeg-sized amenities, so the trade off is smaller city in exchange for a bigger house. Many of the recent immigrants I've talked to cite Winnipeg's "cheap" single-detached or semi-detached housing as one of the main draws. So overall population growth doesn't necessarily translate to downtown population growth. And you can't force it either because:
5) Winnipeg's housing market competes with surrounding (cheaper) R.M.s: you can't just ask city planners to stop approving greenfield in hopes that all new housing will be built downtown because if you stop greenfield in Winnipeg proper, there are 12+ rural municipalities bordering Winnipeg that will happily accept that growth instead. I'd argue some of this is healthy, but at the same time, congestion in the metro area isn't bad enough (yet) that people are willing to pay a premium to be closer to downtown. Many people working downtown will gladly buy a 2,200 sqft house in La Salle versus an 800 sqft condo downtown because currently it only adds like 10 minutes to their commute. So we have to consider that forcing greenfield outside the city will just cause people to leave and commute further, still using and depreciating city assets without the property tax to support it - and no, tolls will not work on our terrible road network.
It's important to set our expectations so that they align with reality. "Fixing" downtown will not come overnight. As many here know, most of the revitalization requires one critical ingredient: people living downtown. Without that, downtown in the evening is just an empty (and sometimes unsafe) husk of its daytime self. But getting people to live downtown is the tricky part. It requires solving issues 1 to 3 above under the reality of issues 4 and 5. And we need to chip away at these issues little by little because change will move at a glacial pace, but we need to be consistent over the coming years and decades.
Politicians have a tendency to make a policy or give out some funding, and expect immediate results before the end of their term. And if no results can be observed, they will pull the plug. That's not how this works. TIFs for residences, downtown-focused safety programs, carrots and sticks that help eliminate surface lots, and helping vulnerable people in the north end will take many years for real results to start showing (i.e. dwelling, population, and wage growth downtown). So we need people and politicians who are not just committed to making the umpteenth plan, but also sticking it through for many decades to come.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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