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Municipal Politics

David A said:
Its hard to tell, but interestingly we seem to be doing ok on migration within the province. Calgary is promoted and promotes itself much more in the media in the rest of Canada, which for whatever reasons often ignores Edmonton (it is noticeably bad and has been for a long time), so the inter provincial difference is not surprising. People elsewhere in Canada often don't know much about Edmonton.
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This is a hard pill to swallow, but it is true. Which is quite annoying.

The amount of times I've had people compare Edmonton, size/importance-wise to cities like Regina, Saskatoon and Victoria is ridiculous. And I'm not talking bout newcomers... these were 50+ year-old Canadian born and raised individuals... I recently had a conversation regarding the meaning of "major city" and a 65 yo well educated guy literally asked me "what's Edmonton's size anyway? I KNOW it is not much bigger than Victoria", when I said I didn't see Victoria as being as relevant as Edmonton. I almost bit his head off! Like, city proper is about 11x bigger, metro is almost 4x bigger... I actually had to show him StatsCan website to make him believe.


A friend from Toronto was "CERTAIN that Winnipeg was the second largest city in the Prairies by a large margin, since Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina are all about the same size."

It is SO, FREAKING ANNOYING.

Edmonton should be increasing awareness about the city, not just because it's annoying, but because we could very well be losing on a lot (migration and business attraction) due to the VERY distorted perception people have of it.
 
ChazYEG said:
This is a hard pill to swallow, but it is true. Which is quite annoying.

The amount of times I've had people compare Edmonton, size/importance-wise to cities like Regina, Saskatoon and Victoria is ridiculous. And I'm not talking bout newcomers... these were 50+ year-old Canadian born and raised individuals... I recently had a conversation regarding the meaning of "major city" and a 65 yo well educated guy literally asked me "what's Edmonton's size anyway? I KNOW it is not much bigger than Victoria", when I said I didn't see Victoria as being as relevant as Edmonton. I almost bit his head off! Like, city proper is about 11x bigger, metro is almost 4x bigger... I actually had to show him StatsCan website to make him believe.


A friend from Toronto was "CERTAIN that Winnipeg was the second largest city in the Prairies by a large margin, since Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina are all about the same size."

It is SO, FREAKING ANNOYING.

Edmonton should be increasing awareness about the city, not just because it's annoying, but because we could very well be losing on a lot (migration and business attraction) due to the VERY distorted perception people have of it.
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There has been pushes in the past to raise awareness. But mots media and people in general don't want to know. Every chance I get I mention that Edmonton's Population is similar to Calgary's but Edmonton's Metro region is made up of about 22 communities so the area is larger. I also try to throw in little tid bits like Alberta oldest and Largest university is here. Or that Edmonton Had Canadas first Mosque. But I gets me that we as individuals have to do so much of the heavy lifting.
 
Airboy said:
There has been pushes in the past to raise awareness. But mots media and people in general don't want to know. Every chance I get I mention that Edmonton's Population is similar to Calgary's but Edmonton's Metro region is made up of about 22 communities so the area is larger. I also try to throw in little tid bits like Alberta oldest and Largest university is here. Or that Edmonton Had Canadas first Mosque. But I gets me that we as individuals have to do so much of the heavy lifting.
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my view is that we should be taking a page out of the provincial government's book, and advertising the city.

It would be fun if we could do that using "fun facts" like "Edmonton is the 5th largest urban centre in Canada" or "We have the highest ranked and largest university in the Prairies" and these things...

I always try to educate people on Edmonton whenever I can, but it is ridiculous that we need to do that even to other Canadians... It's less terrible in Western Canada, but sheesh, you go anywhere past Winnipeg, to the East, and people think of us as an exotic small city that is really cold and has a kinda good hockey team.
 
At some point the child will grow so big that their clothes will obviously not fit. When Edmonton hits 2m population (potentially just 10-12 years away) I wonder if people will continue to think of the city as having 250,000 people. Kind of comical really if only because it is so far from reality, and often expounded by "educated" types. Like something out of a monty python skit.
 
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occidentalcapital said:
At some point the child will grow so big that their clothes will obviously not fit. When Edmonton hits 2m population (potentially just 10-12 years away) I wonder if people will continue to think of the city as having 250,000 people. Kind of comical really if only because it is so far from reality, and often expounded by "educated" types. Like something out of a monty python skit.
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One hopes, but I am not that optimistic. I recall when we passed 1 million something similar was said.

I blame the media (particularly eastern Canadian) a lot, although not entirely. These days they are not very rigorous and sometimes downright lazy. With all the cut backs they are not that rigorous with facts and providing information beyond something very basic to a story. They tend to go to the same sources and focus on the same places and we are not one of them. Although, it tends to be more of neglect and ignorance than misinformation.
 
All of the news nationwide comes out of Calgary so it is little wonder most Canadians think little of us if at all.
 
Nope, but if it was just the Board Members of YEG and the EMRB invited then it would make sense - a meeting versus a 'photo-op' or 'announcement'.
 
Gronk! said:
If Ashley gets this done wonderfully then she automatically gets my vote for Mayor of Edmonton!
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I've been pretty impressed with her so far and how much she's sticking to an urbanist lens on things. I still think she has a term or two more as a councilor but based on what I'm seeing from Sohi and just general vibes of how politicking goes (and from some anecdotal evidence/knowledge), I've got a decently strong feeling she's being set up as a successor to him for the future on the progressive camp of council.
 
Kosy123 said:
I've been pretty impressed with her so far and how much she's sticking to an urbanist lens on things. I still think she has a term or two more as a councilor but based on what I'm seeing from Sohi and just general vibes of how politicking goes (and from some anecdotal evidence/knowledge), I've got a decently strong feeling she's being set up as a successor to him for the future on the progressive camp of council.
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Cartmell will win if he runs is my guess. Hopefully Ashley can serve after.
 
thommyjo said:
Cartmell will win if he runs is my guess. Hopefully Ashley can serve after.
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I have some strong misgivings regarding Cartmell personally. It won't be the end of the world if he does end up winning a term (he's not Nickel), but again some strong personal misgivings.

But yes, Ashley has strong and good urbanist vibes and will have full support when she runs in the future.
 
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