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Downtown

This is a downtown thread, so I'll try to stick with that. Sohi is far more friendly to the central areas of Edmonton than Nickel would have been.

I have my personal issues with some views of certain council members, this is moreso towards Janz, Rice, Cartmell, and occasionally Paquette.

Very little of that is more important to me than land use deregulation (ZBR), the quality of infrastructure (things like parks and LRT/trams), and making central Edmonton a very housing friendly place.

Council has been executing on the things I care about despite admins constant attempts to place roadblocks.

I do think city council has made it far too easy for ideological attacks on themselves with things like the climate emergency rhetoric, the bag tax, the overall presentation of the bike lane spending.

Just plant more damn trees, and improve active transport options. Talking about climate change is a sure way to make 30-40% of the population immediately tune you out.
 
Probably more than 40%, the climate emergency rhetoric and bag tax are even annoying some of us who might generally agree with some of these concerns.

If you are going to talk about something, do something significant about it. If it is really not within your powers as a government at all, it just becomes virtue signalling.

And no, getting rid of plastic bags is not going save the world and may take attention away from more important and useful actions. More trees and better transportation options would be a good start.
 
David A said:
More trees and better transportation options would be a good start.
Click to expand...
I didn't even remember about the bag bylaw tbh but i guess it's still an issue for many.

But in terms of the big things - I'd argue that's where the city's resources are being spent to meet the goals of City Plan related to Green as we Grow.

2 million trees planted - not sure current numbers
50% of growth as infill (apparently we're now in the low 30s% for infill)
50% of how we get around is by active and public transportation (this will be tough)
City putting more money into home retrofit incentives - solar etc
 
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Whatup said:
I don't think Sohi is overly "level headed, steady handed, relatively risk adverse". He jumped on all the "progressive" flavours of the month - including insane "defund the police" ideas because of BLM riots in a foreign city linked to some racist police officers. He spends too much time and money on dubious "climate change" initiatives that are costly and should not be too much of a civic focus. Also, his stance on crime and drugs is too permissive and Edmonton's downtown, and increasingly non-downtown areas, look like crap and are scary places for the general population. He needed to focus more on essential civic services, reducing costs and being more pragmatic.
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So, our version of "defund the police" amounted to giving them a little less of a budget increase than they requested one year even though EPS spends on utterly stupid things habitually (like a half million dollar armoured personnel carrier that they didn't seem to know how to use and then wrecked in short order while gratuitously using it to drive through a fruit orchard).
 
Saving the planet by getting rid of plastic bags ? Such rhetoric. The city is trying to reduce the amount of waste going to the land fill which is a huge cost. The plastic bags are also unsightly blowing around everywhere and getting caught in trees. Makes one feel like you are in a third world country. This is not about virtue signalling.
 
CaptainBL said:
While these plans and visions of the council back in the day did not come to fruition as planned (as the article mentions, for various reasons), at least councils of the day had the vision for these grand plans. I cannot say the same thing about Sohi and council, and I don't feel as if Iveson's council displayed any city building vision either.

The last mayor that I'd argue who had a vision of building downtown was Mandel, who whether you like the deal or not pushed to have the Ice district and arena move forward to revitalize downtown.

Where have Edmonton's visionary civic leaders disappeared to?
Click to expand...
So, this video came on the wake of a bunch of civic vision which resulted in destroying Chinatown for a bunch of big brown shiny boxes, and ironically promises to build a new Chinatown east of downtown which no civic government actually made any progress on, especially not Decore's. Hell, they're boasting about Canada Place it was one of the very big stamps used to stamp out Chinatown back in the day, and how much did it really bring to downtown? It's really just another office building.

This visionary plan is very bad in a lot of ways. Pedways are a shitty, expensive, largely privatized (but often still heavily subsidized) substitute for walkable streets. Their 102 street thing is just more mallscape. We did a bunch of that in downtown, while knocking down nearly every last semblance of street-facing retail to herd all of the shops into the bowels of that complex where Eatons and The Bay would let them feast on their crumbs forever. Their old town is a theme park for a bunch of what got destroyed under that generation's vision. Eaton's Centre literally happened under this city government's watch without these residential towers they're talking about (and while big towers have their place, there's something to be said for permitting modest density in places other than downtown and easing up on parking minimums which is what was done under THIS council and NOT any previous one).

I'd like to get away from this whole idea that we need giant projects to "fix" downtown. The most progress anyone ever made on making something nice downtown was when 104 street got redone in the early 2000s and we went OH HEY WHAT IF INSTEAD OF HERDING THE PEDESTRIANS INTO TUBES WE JUST MADE A COUPLE OF BLOCKS THAT WERE A NICE PLACE TO WALK AND COMBINED PLACES TO LIVE WITH OFFICES AND STREET FACING BUSINESS SPACE WHILE UTILIZING HISTORIC STRUCTURES AND KEEPING THE SAME ARCHITECTURAL LANGUAGE (which years later, the Ice District would come along and cannibalize and claim massive revitalization points even though this area was hugely vibrant long before they came along). The next best one was the downtown bike grid, net actual cost of about $3 million.
 
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For anyone that doesn't care to read my opinion below I'll summarize it as this: This current council and Sohi as mayor are not the right fit for the city given where Edmonton's current state is at, however this council has certainly inherited a very complicated situation that anyone likely would struggle with.

Edmonton's finances (along with every other city, really) is a disaster primarily thanks to covid and no one really foresaw the unprecedented growth Edmonton was about to undergo as soon as the pandemic was over. It's certainly difficult to be ambitious and focus on the future when you're trying to plug holes on a ship that has a ton of leaks. The thing is though, there is no other choice but to envision what Edmonton as a two million metro city is going to become because it's underway and at insane growth levels. Sohi would be a fine and capable mayor if things were overall relatively stable (i.e. finances were in decent shape, growth was occurring but at steady rates, crime levels were at the very least stagnant) but Sohi is just way too passive and not the person you want running the show when there's internal chaos and bickering among high ranking members at city hall.

I want a leader and council who actively go out of their way to hire the best urban planners, city managers and staff members to provide stability, ambition and a sense of reasonability. I don't feel like we have that at all today. I'm not saying I want someone who has yet another out of touch "grand plan" to turn downtown into an urbanists paradise, but someone who actively tries to bring business to downtown (both corporate and retail) and then who tries to make downtown attractive for young professionals who actually want to live and work in and around the core. Someone who's willing to get creative to try and keep our downtown clean and modern and try to provide better services for our homeless. Edmonton is actually becoming a large urban centre and it's time to start making decisions appropriate for a large city.

Yes there are certain wins we've seen with the council (the zoning bylaw change that very well could become one of the best decisions any council has made in Edmonton's history) but overall it kind of feels like Edmonton is a talented hockey player about to join the big leagues and while the talent and skill level is there to be successful in the next tier, our development may stall because we're not mentally prepared to hit that next level.
 
For reference.
abbey-lane-1-jpg.333944
 
IanO said:
For reference.
abbey-lane-1-jpg.333944
Click to expand...
Not sure where you keep this archive of old proposals like this but I imagine they're stored in a folder titled "Bullets Dodged"
 
Reference ID:Job No 519200059-002
Description:To install (2) Fascia Sign(s) limited to On-premises Advertising (Lloyd Sadd Insurance)
Location:10104 - 103 AVENUE NW
Plan 8021480 Blk 1 Lot B
Applicant:FIVE STAR PERMITS
Status:Intake Review
Create Date:2024-07-10T14:57:51Z
Neighbourhood:DOWNTOWN
 
Munanyo said:
For anyone that doesn't care to read my opinion below I'll summarize it as this: This current council and Sohi as mayor are not the right fit for the city given where Edmonton's current state is at, however this council has certainly inherited a very complicated situation that anyone likely would struggle with.

Edmonton's finances (along with every other city, really) is a disaster primarily thanks to covid and no one really foresaw the unprecedented growth Edmonton was about to undergo as soon as the pandemic was over. It's certainly difficult to be ambitious and focus on the future when you're trying to plug holes on a ship that has a ton of leaks. The thing is though, there is no other choice but to envision what Edmonton as a two million metro city is going to become because it's underway and at insane growth levels. Sohi would be a fine and capable mayor if things were overall relatively stable (i.e. finances were in decent shape, growth was occurring but at steady rates, crime levels were at the very least stagnant) but Sohi is just way too passive and not the person you want running the show when there's internal chaos and bickering among high ranking members at city hall.

I want a leader and council who actively go out of their way to hire the best urban planners, city managers and staff members to provide stability, ambition and a sense of reasonability. I don't feel like we have that at all today. I'm not saying I want someone who has yet another out of touch "grand plan" to turn downtown into an urbanists paradise, but someone who actively tries to bring business to downtown (both corporate and retail) and then who tries to make downtown attractive for young professionals who actually want to live and work in and around the core. Someone who's willing to get creative to try and keep our downtown clean and modern and try to provide better services for our homeless. Edmonton is actually becoming a large urban centre and it's time to start making decisions appropriate for a large city.

Yes there are certain wins we've seen with the council (the zoning bylaw change that very well could become one of the best decisions any council has made in Edmonton's history) but overall it kind of feels like Edmonton is a talented hockey player about to join the big leagues and while the talent and skill level is there to be successful in the next tier, our development may stall because we're not mentally prepared to hit that next level.
Click to expand...
It's actually more complicated than that. COVID didn't help, but it came in concert with the province pulling the rug out from under us in terms of funding (after never really turning around from Klein era austerity regardless of who was in power) and once again deciding to neglect social services. Meanwhile, we had decades of the sprawl Ponzi scheme coming home to roost, where there city had relied upon the revenues of new development to shore up the budget, while neighbourhood after neighbourhood was stamped out with insufficient tax base to pay for its infrastructure needs.

Can't say we've really seen any kind of "grand plan" to turn downtown into anything resembling an urbanist's paradise any time in recent history. The last Grand Plan we got was probably the Ice District, and it wasn't exactly brimming with urbanism.
 
Yeah, it is always someone else's fault - Klein or the most recent Premier. I'm no fan of either, but this seems to me to be the kind of excuses of mediocrity.

Ice District has done fairly well, at least compared to something like Blatchford, but it was as much a private than a city initiative, which I think says something.

Our City governments (both the politicians and the administrations) have been absolutely terrible over they years in attracting businesses to downtown Edmonton.

So the most recent bunch is not that much worse than some of their predecessors, but they are generally neglectful of downtown except when forced to respond to serious problems.
 
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