We can debate various places, but I agree with the overall point about San Diego. Another important thing to consider is the suburban mentality in Edmonton is very entrenched and getting a lot of people to chose to live downtown, even if it is a good solution, will be very difficult while suburban housing is affordable, jobs are not concentrated downtown and there are so few essential retail services left to make it walkable for residents. If you have to drive to get almost anything at a strip mall on the edge of downtown, really what is the point of living in the core?
However, visitors are not as affected by our situation, preconceptions and biases. There are a number of interesting things to see downtown (AGA, Winspear, a number of decent restaurants and some nightlife). Unfortunately, on a scale of 1 to 10 our city puts attracting visitors around 20 and attracting jobs to the downtown core around 15. This has been the case for a while, so its no surprise things are the way they are.
But at least there does seem to be some interest in having more events that could draw people downtown regularly and that may also bring in some out of town visitors. We do already have Rogers downtown and other facilities, so maybe we just need to make more use of them. If we can clean up and maintain downtown more, that would help a lot too.
