Vision, or Lack Thereof

I would expect that the proposal to build commercial and residential spaces at the Forks would be perceived somewhat positively by the public.

I get that they're trying to create buzz around this Museum, or at least, draft off of it's supposed public support. What I don't get is what the need for "mixed use" development is.

From my limited experience, when somebody puts in a mixed use development, it attracts corporate franchises. The Forks is known as more of a market. I can't help but be skeptical to what kinds of businesses would be attracted to a "mixed use" development when the Forks Market is maybe a quarter mile away from the Museum site.

At any rate, I think I'm probably all for mid or high-rise apartments. Apartments. Am I the only one finding that they call them "condos" so they can charge more for them? Mid or high-rises could be kept affordable and get many people to move right downtown, and make the Forks Market a hub in this city.

What would be cool is if they built a separate building for the grocery market in the forks, to service these people living in my hypothetical apartment buildings. And hey, this could be a super concentrated area of high density if we built another high rise right across the street...



At Upper Fort Garry!

(In "The Price is Right" guy's voice)

Enjoy the nice view overlooking Main Street and the train station! Watch the bustling and busy Forks (with those new hypothetical apartments!) Enjoy a scenic walk along the river! Groceries available just across the street at the Forks Grocery Market! Public Transit available along Broadway and Main! Enjoy aaaaaall of these features as your new apartment rests at the foot of one of Manitoba's oldest and most important historical sites: Upper Fort Garryyyyy! Upper Fort Garry boasts a scenic and renovated green space for your enjoyment!

All of this can be yoooooours if the Price is Right!

....

..hmmm...

......

...10.5 million dollars, Bob.



The principle of this proposal is good, IMO. Replace surface parking lots with residential space. Downtown, we have little residential space and a lot of surface parking lots.

The Forks (if more apartments went in this development than commercial space) could be used as a sort of nucleator for downtown population density. And if our BFF's, the Friends of Upper Fort Garry, would get half a brain and realize that a 20 storey high rise would better preserve the Fort than their interpretive centre would, we might be starting to get somewhere...

And then...it's pretty easy to use some vision (...what's that?) and go a step further. Instead of commercial space, perhaps a Transit shuttle to Portage Place and Graham Mall. A grocery store to service all these new downtown inhabitants.

Yikes, this is Winnipeg I'm talking about.

Who am I kiddin'...

Putting the pieces together

So first we get a novelty furniture store.

Then the entire city celebrates.

Now what? What DON'T we have? We're getting our water park. We're getting our furniture store to end all furniture stores. We might not be gutting South Point for a stadium, but we're getting one of those too.

The way I see it, Winnipeggers will soon succumb and be back at where we started...that is, a bunch of whiny "me too!" people who only seem to want what we don't have.

But we HAVE all of those stores...don't we?

Oh, but we don't. But we don't. There's MORE on the way! MORE! MORE MORE MROEMROEMROMEROMEORMEOMORMORE! We got the Swedish corporate chains, but now we don't have the AMERICAN ones!

What better to fill all 1.5 million square feet of NEW retail development, than with FRANCHISES THAT WE DON'T HAVE!

Why we can have LOWES! Even though we already have Ronas, Home Depots and Canadian Tires.

We can have TIRE STORES! We can have sporting goods stores, even though Cabelas bought out SIR and we DO have a Fishin' Hole as well as Canadian Tire for all us non -hardcores.

And what is driving all of this?

EVERYONE'S FAVOURITE FURNITURE OUTLET!

Everyone ELSE MUST want to come to Winnipeg NOW! We have LAND, in close proximity to the biggest suburb yet! We have a growing population! We have easy to access retail areas!

What's going on here?

What is going on is Winnipeg will have fully completed an identity change. We will no longer be Winnipeg in the future. We will be several suburban units with 6 lane highways leading to all major retail outlets in which you can enjoy spending your money in the aforementioned stores.

We will have no identity, nothing that makes us unique. Portage and Main, downtown, nothing will happen there. Density will continue to sprawl as a result of major retail centres. After all, that's where Winnipeggers want to be.

We have sent a strong message to these retail companies. Winnipeggers want to live in a suburban home, drive a car, spend their money at a familiar big-box store. We don't want to go downtown, we don't want fancy architecture and we choose to spend our time at shopping malls and furniture stores. We want parking lots, we want 6 lane highways, we want them clean and snow free without potholes 100% of the time.

And what did I read today in the FreeP?

The city wants my opinion on how to continue development in the future.

Haha, I laughed to myself. The future in Winnipeg?. The future here is spoken for. We want retail franchises we don't have. And we want them in our suburbs.

Fuck the downtown. Who goes there? People are getting shot in Portage Place now. There's no parking for the MTS Centre. There's panhandlers. It's cold, you can't walk everywhere inside. Let's go to the KENASTON RETAIL AREA! Where we can drive our cares up to within 50 metres of the store of our desire, hurredly walk into it without a hat or gloves and buy stuff we don't actually need.

If I show up to this meeting, this forum, roundtable, internet forum, whatever they decide....If I show up will people listen to me?

Will these city planners give two shits about my opinion?

In case any of those people are reading my blog, I'll tell you who I am. I'm a 22 year old student who is going to move right the hell out of Dodge when I graduate. There is nothing for me here, there is NOTHING FOR MY ENTIRE GENERATION HERE!

We don't have a place to live. We can't afford to drive. We don't want retail centres built for suburbs because we would rather be in a cool place where stuff HAPPENS! That's why we live in places like the 'Village. Like the Exchange. We don't want to live in Waverly West, we don't want to visit your furniture stores, we don't care if Lowes comes here or if some tire company comes here.

We WILL move away. Your population growth will come from immigrants, who will have no place to live because they can't afford to live in Waverly West.

We WILL move away. Away to cities with a downtown centre. Like Vancouver. Like Montreal. Away to cities where you CAN'T drive from shopping centre to shopping centre in 10 minutes, all of which HAVE THE SAME STORES ANYWAYS. Away to cities with a night life.

I have ideas. I have solutions. You might agree with them if you think keeping young people in this city is a good idea. I'll tell you right now, none of them include building 10 000 home suburbs and creating 1.5 million square feet of retail space in a suburb that already has 1.5 million square feet of retail space. None of them include luring corporate retail giants into the city just to satisfy the me-too's. None of them include building museums that cost hundreds of millions of dollars or "save" a limestone wall so that rich people don't have to look upon the commoners.

Our planners are out of touch. They plan by sprawling our city and making more retail spots. How out of touch are they? I shall demonstrate with the following quote:

"Winnipeg is just at that cusp, really becoming a vibrant, urban centre. And with that, there are huge opportunities and huge challenges. This is the kind of work we all went to school for."
Michelle Richard, project manager for the city's Plan Winnipeg initiative.

We aren't at a cusp. Not anymore. We aren't vibrant, unless "vibrant" means people who want to buy cheap Swedish furniture. We aren't an urban centre, we are a SUBurban centre. There are only oppurtunities downtown and there are not huge challenges, there are monstrous, nearly insurmountable challenges. If that's what you guys went to school for, then why is Winnipeg the most backassward city on the whole fuckin' continent, and why does my gut instinct tell me that Winnipeg will continue to ignore real issues, and instead rubber stamp new suburbs and retail centres?

And that's why I vent myself on this blog. And that's why I named it Progressive Winnipeg.

"Progressive."

Now this is just sad

This is the scene if you happen to click on "local".

Count'em....

If you can make out the headlines, FOUR out of SIX of those articles are about everyone's favourite furniture store, which, I vow not to mention the name of in this post.

According to Policy Frog it's worse than that screen cap up there, there were not four but SEVEN articles in the FreeP today about it.

If this is what passes for news in this city, if this is what newspapers would rather report than REAL STORIES then what in the fuck am I doing in Winnipeg? What future is here for me? What do I have to look forward to, if THIS is what Winnipeggers spend their time on?

Hey, they're already figuring out how to widen the roads for this ugly-as-fuck blue and yellow box of an eyesore, and I CAN'T PARK MY CAR AND TAKE THE BUS?!?! I have to WAIT for people to decide if they should build a parking lot for P&R users, but at the drop of a hat they'll WIDEN ROADS for a FURNITURE STORE?

This city can bend over backwards and kiss theses people's asses to accommodate them, literally, but we can't figure out how to make traffic flow, what diamond lanes are, what merge lanes are, or what synchronized lights are? We can't figure out how to keep wading pools open in the summer? We can't figure out how to fix up Assiniboine Park? We can't figure out how to revamp Disraeli properly? Oh by the way, how's that stadium comin' along?

They can RUBBER STAMP 18.5 MILLION DOLLARS for ROADS for a FURNITURE STORE ...And our councillors can't agree on how much money to spend on BIKE PATHS?

Good fucking grief, Charlie Brown.

Oh but don't just listen to me. Just about every other blogger in, oh, I'd say Manitoba and a one-province radius has something to say about this.

Frogger 1 and Frogger 2. Mr Brown. Anybody want a Peanut.

I suspect more will come as the excitement for this monstrosity approaches a feverish, viral level. Then watch it come crashing down to earth as the novelty wears off after about 7 days after the store opens.

Reminds me of something else I remember hearing about...

hmmm...

Oh yeah.

The WATER PARK.

Progressive? No. (Progress impeded)

Sad? Very. (Comical if you are not from Winnipeg)

Are we WORLD CLASS yet?

This is what counts as a "Christmas miracle" in Winnipeg. Overhyped novelty furniture store going into a suburb.

Too bad our "Christmas miracle" couldn't have been something more charitable.

"The alternative media, Jerry! THATs where you hear the truth!"

Hahahaaaaaa hahaaaa. Was watching some Seinfeld and came across a golden line from Kramer. A quick Youtube search and, voila.

Now behold, as I have figured out how to add video to my blog.

Death of the print newspaper

It's on the horizon. I can see it...

Detroit can too.

Print newspapers will, sooner than later, become a thing of the past. Maybe available on the corner store...err...(wait...those don't exist anymore...maybe at..a corporate franchise coffee shop?)...novelty items? Going the way of the National Post, where it shows up in gas stations a mere once a week.

Maybe time for the Sun and the FreeP to get a head start and get on designing better web pages.

Common sense....vs....good 'ol Winnipeg ingenuity

I had planned on illustrating how bus shelters are supposed to work today, and I have made good on my goal.

Unfortunately, Mr Cotton just happened to say exactly what I was going to illustrate today, yesterday.

"I have no idea what they were thinking when they installed the new bus shelters around the city. They have heaters installed , but have gaps under the glass , and gaps above the glass. These things do not retain a drop of heat and are very inefficient."

Let's play a game. I want to play "civil engineer."

Fact: Cold air sinks. (Dont you hate cold feet when you get that draft from an old door?)

Fact: Warm air rises.

Okay, now let's design a bus shelter! Alrighty then. I'm done playing "civil engineer."

I planned on illustrating this as there are still some old-skool bus shelters in North Kildonan and the Concordia area. They are fastened to the ground, and are essentially a shed without a door. Yes, without a door. Yet I would, 100/100 times, rather stand in one of these old-skoolers than one of the new ones.

Behold:



Without a door, these things are warmer than the new shelters.

Now, somewhere along the lines, somebody decided it would be a good idea to replace the bus shelters. Make them look nice and stuff. And I'll give them that, you know, they look okay. But they don't FUNCTION!



I mean...HOW? HOW do they function properly, how do they keep you warm, when there is a 3 INCH GAP between the bottom of the glass and the ground?! Can you imagine, in January, a 3 inch gap in the bottom of your front door?

Oh, but we have HEATERS in some of these shelters! (And since I've never seen one working, I'm more inclined to believe they are just grills underneath the seats that aren't even plugged in). So let's say these heaters are hypothetically working. Where does the heat go? Does it stay in the shelter? HEEeeeeeeeeell no!



It goes RIGHT THROUGH THE TOP OF THE SHELTER! Not only that, but between each pane of glass there is a gap where, if the gales of November...or December...or January...or February...come knockin' at the door of the bus shelter, it'll go right through.

Yes. Let's have a round of applause from the folks responsible for the decision to use THESE bus shelters to replace the old ones. (I bet none of them take the bus)

I'd rather have those old shelters, without heaters (and without DOORS even!) than these new ones. They look nice, but they don't work. The old ones are, surprise surprise, warmer. More sheltered. They're closed in. They're actually "SHELTERS!"

So when you hear people complain about how the bus shelters aren't heated, they have a point. When you hear people complain about how ridiculous it is to wait half an hour for a bus that comes every ten minutes when it's minus 30, they have a point. These people are waiting in bus shelters that are supposedly heated and supposedly SHELTERS!

Common sense 1.

Winnipeg 0.

Manitoba government to offer farmers incentives to restore lost wetlands

Finally something right up my REAL alley.

I've been wanting to write a post for, well probably since I started this blog, about some specific "environmental issue" in Manitoba.

Wetlands are my area of interest, they are what I know best and as such I decided to pursue an Ecology degree at the University of Manitoba. Manitoba is naturally home to wetlands. Unfortunately over the years, colonization, and further agricultural development has left these very important ecosystems as somewhat of a nuisance, a thorn on people's sides per se.

Uncountable hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of acres of wetlands have been drained over the years, leaving a very small percentage intact. They are after all, unfavourable to farming...they collect water and keep soil saturated, making otherwise workable land impossible to work with.

Most people, aside from farmers, also have a very negative opinion of wetlands or, as most people like to call them, "swamps." Something that breeds zillions of mosquitos, is filled with "weeds" and in general, an eyesore.

For the last two summers I have had the fortunate opportunity to work under Manitoba Conservation in the Wildlife Services branch, specifically in wetland areas. While on a trip to Dauphin to do some work, the Dauphinite we ended up working with explained to me how farmers in the area were trying to be encouraged to allow part of their properties to revert back to their natural wetland states.

While driving along a highway and pointing to what was probably several sections worth of land, and saying how it all used to be wetland and was drained, I was shocked.

Farmers are now being encouraged to allow at least some of their land to revert back to it's natural state.

This is incredibly progressive news.

In intense agricultural areas, such as Dauphin, water flows off of the worked land, collecting fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, natural nutrients, and sediments. With no natural wetlands, this water ends up in a drainage area, which leads to a ditch and eventually to a river or stream, completely unfiltered.

In case you can't see where I'm getting at, I'm getting at Lake Winnipeg.

This is one of perhaps the most effective ways to contribute to bettering the health of Lake Winnipeg. All other gimmicks aside, such as the ridiculous hog barn stuff, naturalizing drainage waterways would go a very, very long way.

If one considers all of the wetland areas that preceded human development, all of the creeks and streams and bogs that were in the Lake Winnipeg watershed before they were drained and filled in, one may be able to picture a pristine lake. If one removes, as the FreeP article suggests, 70% of those creeks, streams and bogs, replaces them with high intensity agriculture, the picture gets a little dirtier.

In case you've read this far and are skeptical of what I am saying, living proof of a working wetland system is available for exploration at your leisure, at Oak Hammock Marsh.

And remember while you are there, that what is now Oak Hammock, used to be a wetland spanning over 116 000 acres. It now occupies less than 10 000 acres.

No, I did not miss any zeroes in those numbers.

This is the real impact of human development environment-wise. Humans have changed the landscape, on a world-wide scale, from what it once naturally was, to how it is now. In my opinion this is a much bigger contributor to climate change than any talk of carbon emissions is: literally changing the face of the earth. Almost no part of the world has been left untouched by human activity.

That isn't to say that we need to revert EVERYthing back to it's natural state. Just that it is often to our benefit to do so. In the case of wetlands across the prairies, they could be brought back to help filter water and remove high nutrient concentrations before it ends up in major tributaries of various watersheds.

Mother nature is a powerful force. Instead of destroying it, we should think about using it to our advantage.

The Eagles

I MIGHT have been interested in going to see the Eagles.

But with ticket prices approaching or exceeding TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS you can just forget it.

It's evident with ticket prices like that that the Eagles don't give two shits about the music. They aren't coming to Winnipeg or anyplace else for that matter, to change people's lives or put on a killer, unforgettable show. These dinosaurs are making their victory lap tour and, well, they're probably laughing all the way to the next city.

Why do these guys do it? Drives me nuts.

Like Lefsetz says, back in the day people used to go to a dozen shows a year. More, even. Now people go to a couple, or a few shows a year. Because they can't afford to go to more.

How many people in this city, will have seen Neil Young, Bob Dylan AND the Eagles? How many people bowed out of Dylan just because they had already seen Neil and couldn't afford another 70+ bucks?

I go to as many shows as I can. But I ALWAYS avoid money-grabbers like these. You can tell their hearts aren't in it, BEFORE tickets even go on sale! You sit at the back of the Arena if you don't want to pay the exorbitant price, they play a predictable setlist, everyone just sits down and takes their seats for the whole show, the band does one encore and then you leave.

You get a better show by going to the Walker, to see a band like Sam Roberts, the Weakerthans, Queens of the Stone Age, etc. Or to the Garrick, to see Tokyo Police Club or the New Pornographers. You get a better show, every time, at the WECC. Maybe you went to go see the Constantines or Sloan at the Pyramid. It doesn't cost you a fortune and the band CARES about putting on a good show.

I don't know what gets to these Dinosaur's heads that people want to see them for such ridiculous prices. I'll save my money and spin my dad's Eagles records instead.

...Wow

I never thought Bob Rae would drop out. As much as he may think this will "unify" the party, I only think it makes it even more divisive, given that probably half of Liberals were against Ignatieff just walking in and taking over.

Man are the Liberals ever fucked.

Free Transit on New Year's Eve

....yaaaaaay.

You know, it's nice Transit would do something like this, and it's nice that they would like to help curb drinking and driving.

But maybe Transit also thinks New Years Eve parties end before 1:30AM?

Looky looky

Whaddya know, we made the BBC.



Interesting how it's more enjoyable reading BBC articles about this rather than Canadian articles. Hmm I smell the faint scent of bias-less-ness.

"The Public Tide"

You know, you really don't get points for being an unbiased source of news when you write articles on a controversy that start with a sentence like "Stephen Harper is taking to the airwaves in an effort to turn the public tide against the opposition coalition and justify his bid to hold on to power."

The "public tide?" swings THAT way does it? Seriously?

I suppose the MSM decided that public tide was left-o-centre, like they are. Apparently nobody at the FreeP has tuned into CJOB anytime in, oh, the last...5 days. Oh, and there are anti-coalition Facebook groups that are pretty big. Oh, and there is a picture (right this moment) on the FreeP website showing Stephen Harper supporters. Hell even their (fantastic) letter of the day (they shoot, they score!) is against the coalition, printed front and centre with a grey background on a special page dedicated to coalition letters.

Yeah seems like the public tide is pro-coalition to me alright.

Being the person that I am, everyone I have come into contact with (save for my job interview on monday), I have asked about the coalition. Very left-wing people, and right-wing people alike. NOBODY I have talked to, in 5 days, has said they were pro-coalition. And I mean, I've asked everyone, knowing that there are a lot of viewpoints out there in this country and knowing that for every viewpoint would surely be another take on the coalition.

You know, I'm trying to gather as many viewpoints so I can make a self-educated guess on what people generally think of this coalition, something I doubt the FreeP went outside their own building for.

The only people who have been able to offer a legitimate pro-coalition argument, was, (shock!) here on the blogosphere where I had a few comment-conversations with the Don Street blog.

Nothing at all is done to sway my opinion during this whole mess that the MSM, has a left-leaning bias.

Well what do you know, the FORMER Governor General would support a coalition if HE were still around! (Hint hint, Michaelle!) Oh, oh, and Broadbent says Harper is lying, so we should all listen to Broadbent instead. And now, apparently, Harper might be a hypocrite.

It's gettin' hard to read the media these days, I's tells ya.

No worries! No worries. I'll filter it all through my super-duper red-tinted media goggles that make the left-bias go away!

As much as other people would rather not, I'd love to have an election over this. How the media can portray Harper as the big evil boogeyman hungry for power, and Dion as a guy somehow doing what is in the best interest of his country, is beyond me. Why the Liberals even think that Dion is fit for leadership after just 7 weeks of getting his ass kicked, and then left for dead by his own party members, is beyond me.

Although I may be wrong in my own gauging of public perception in this matter, and a majority may actually support a coalition, an election would find out.

In closing, good job MSM, in keeping a calm, cool, collected and unbiased head in covering this matter of great importance.