Last Saturday, I joined 200 other Winnipeggers at the Winnipeg Art Gallery to discuss how to make a more sustainable city. Participants were asked to express in 85 words or less their visions for the future.  If we were at all representative of the population, a few key issues stand out as priorities for the city. 

Winnipeggers want more active and sustainable transportation options.  They want bike lanes, rapid transit buses and they want walking routes accessible year round.  Winnipeggers who attended the event spoke loudly and clearly about the importance of moving off carbon intensive modes of transportation.  As I said in my short presentation, “Winnipeg needs to commit to a community-wide reduction of 50 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.”  We can only achieve this this if sustainable transportation is part of the mix.

Participants also expressed a desire for denser more clustered neighbourhoods, and a more vibrant downtown. One idea was that downtown land values should be taxed not just on their assessed values, but on their potential uses.  Why subsidize street level parking lots downtown with low tax rates and penalize builders that do interesting and useful things with their land?  The idea may sound radical, until we remember that David Ricardo, the father of free-trade capitalism, had similar ideas nearly two hundred years ago.  Winnipeggers need not have their city held hostage by speculating landlords.

But more important than any particular initiative, it was the recognition that Winnipeg needs a plan for sustainability, and one that is stuck to, that received the loudest approval from the audience and participants.  Winnipeggers have been frustrated in the past at the number of amendments to Plan Winnipeg that have gone through with little real consultation.  Whatever the ultimate shape of the sustainability plan that develops, the current City administration could go a long way towards building good will by guaranteeing that the work we do to create will have relevance beyond the next election.

To participate in the project, see: www.speakupwinnipeg.com