Where is our civic vision?

From flags to Ikea, we’ve got it backwards

James Culleton

A newfound interest in how Manitobans portray themselves to the world seems to have begun in earnest. The Winnipeg Free Press recently launched a design contest to garner support for revamping Manitoba’s provincial flag. The contest was inspired by some in the provincial New Democratic Party who have been pushing to undertake a re-branding of our provincial flag the same way they re-branded our provincial slogan in the now infamous ‘Spirited Energy’ campaign.

Premier Doer rejected the flag proposal, but that hasn’t stopped many in Winnipeg from considering our current flag’s shortcomings, and what these flaws expose about us as Manitobans. Fears that our flag may be boring, outdated, or even too similar to Ontario’s (gasp!) have sprung up in conversations and newspapers throughout Winnipeg. A groundswell of support for updating the Manitoban flag to something more modern and exciting appears to be gathering steam.

If only this passion for change and innovation could be directed towards another major civic issue that grabbed headlines last week.

It almost seems that Winnipeg’s city planners take pride in the dead last ranking of sustainable cities we recently received.

I am talking of course about the plans to add yet another monument to the great North American pastime of shopping to the traffic death trap and box store wasteland that is Kenaston Boulevard.

As it turns out, the Ikea which is coming to our fair city by 2011 is only the beginning of yet another development proposal seeking to reaffirm Winnipeg’s antipathy to sustainable city planning. Not only is Winnipeg set to showcase its very own Mecca of pretentious Swedish furniture, but by 2018 the 350,000 square foot Ikea will just be a piece of a 1.5 million square foot shopping complex at the corner of Kenaston and Sterling Lyon Parkway.

This will spring up just a few blocks north of the other shopping complexes that already litter either side of south Kenaston. Along with the shopping mall expansion, Shaftesbury Boulevard, Kenaston and Sterling Lyon will all be widened in desperate attempts to accommodate the massive influx of traffic coming to an already overdeveloped area.

It almost seems that Winnipeg’s city planners take pride in the dead last ranking of sustainable cities we recently received. This shopping complex will only add to the congestion apparent to anyone who has ever driven down Kenaston. Nonetheless, city officials are touting the proposed mall development as being even more ambitious than The Forks.

Apparently, we as a city should look forward to a time when our traditionally central meeting place will pale in comparison to the excitement that a senselessly large mall in the suburban southwest can generate.

Though plans are still in the proposal stage, it seems the Ikea development complex is all but a done deal. In a city with an inferiority complex roughly the size of this proposed shopping centre, city officials will always bend over backwards for the privilege of hosting the types of corporate clients bigger cities boast of.

This brings us back to the hype in Winnipeg concerning the great flag debate, and whether or not we as Winnipeggers see our provincial flag as an embarrassing relic or an appropriate representation of our provincial character.

Before we go on about how Manitoba’s flag could be improved, perhaps we should focus more on how Manitoba’s capital can improve, especially its tendency to do away with any semblance of long term city planning. The thought of having an Ikea of our very own is exciting to many, but just like our provincial flag, this urban sprawl model of development is both outdated and embarrassing.

Andrew Tod is a University of Winnipeg student.

Published in Volume 63, Number 24 of The Uniter (March 19, 2009)

Related Reads