Downtown talks

In a couple of weeks, we’ll hold our first event for this year’s Uniter Speaker Series. Join us on Nov. 21 for “Growing the Urban Landscape,” a panel discussion at the West End Cultural Centre with representatives from various BIZ agencies. CBC’s Bartley Kives will moderate, and we also invite your input into this discussion.

There’s been a lot of talk around town and in this paper about our downtown spaces and culture. We’re hearing questions like, for example,

·    Should development be led by business or by the community? 

·    Who pays for development - what about those growth development fees?  

·    What are some barriers to improvement? 

·    What about downtown parking? 

·    How can we counteract the so-called “donut effect?” 

·    What would our ideal downtown even look like, and who are we building it for?

We write about these and similar issues in many sections of The Uniter, but through the Speaker Series, we want to open up these conversations, to bring them off the page and into a live dialogue.

While we won’t be able to answer all of these questions, we hope this event can be a starting point and a chance to bring student and community voices into the conversation. This event is free for University of Winnipeg students (and $10 for non-students).

Our panelists, directors of BIZ organizations within downtown Winnipeg, are among those working to shape our downtown communities. 

With this panel, we hope to better understand what it is they’re doing, and have a conversation about how to move forward within this space that we all share.

Published in Volume 71, Number 9 of The Uniter (November 3, 2016)

Related Reads