In the next few months, you will hear about Winnipeg 2087, my novella I'm doing for my Independent Professional Project. Right now, I'm keeping the project mostly a secret, but I will tell you that it deals with one pressing theme: urban sprawl.
Winnipeg's downtown core is certainly at a crossroads. Every urban planner is literally betting cards on what could bring it back to life. They guessed Portage Place would do it back in 1987, and they got it wrong. When Portage Place failed, they placed their bets on the MTS Centre, and sure enough, they were wrong on that count as well.
In a way, the city used to be a large village. Almost everything was interconnected. Then came the superhighway concept, and out sprang the suburbs in the 1950s. Many of the cities we speak of today are not really cities in the literal sense. They are more like a series of communities connected by major uplinks.
Well-known chains are the diving markers of every city's community -- you'll never find two Wal-Mart stores close to each other. But it would be foolhardy to suggest that chains contribute to urban sprawl. Technology is a major factor as well. If you purchase online, bank online, and order Chinese online, you'll wonder what's the point of going to an urban core to do it all.
The irony is that consumer convenience has somewhat led to frayed nerves. The bigger the suburbs, the larger the traffic mess gets, and it gets hellish for pedestrians. If there are no linking pathways or walking lanes, pedestrians have to cross the thickest of highways to get to their destinations as the motors idle on and on.
If your house is the community, your exterior environment is your weakness. The further you push your caravan into cyberspace, the more foreign the world around you becomes.
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