The Development of Downtown Winnipeg: Historical Perspectives on Decline and Revitalization

Andris E. Roze was an urban planner and designer in Toronto.

Professor Robert W. Fenton and Deborah M. Lyon have collaborated to prepare this analysis of Winnipeg’s downtown development and its major problems from a historical perspective. The topics examined, which are standard for urban planning studies, include: housing, central business district issues, commercial/institutional development, and urban and municipal planning.

Unlike many planning reports of a technical nature, this report is written in clear, readable, English with minimal professional or academic jargon. It can be speculated that this may be due to the influence of Deborah M. Lyon, whose experience includes writing for the Winnipeg Free Press and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Whatever the reason, this report, although not light reading, can be easily understood by anyone interested in knowing something about Winnipeg.

The authors have made a concerted effort to examine each topic discussed in the context of Winnipeg’s historical evolution. As a result, the report gives a good overview of Winnipeg and explains why it grew the way it did.

A major shortcoming of the report is its graphic communication. A key objective of the text is to describe the evolution of Winnipeg’s urban form, and sometimes a whole series of arguments relies on a precise understanding of geographic relationships. The graphic presentation of these geographic specifics consists of poor reproductions of historic maps. Although interesting in their own right, these maps are sometimes illegible and each is at a different scale. As a result, the reader who is unfamiliar with Winnipeg will have extreme difficulty in following key locational descriptions. This report would have benefited immensely from a series of maps prepared specifically for each chapter.

This report is a low-budget, soft-cover, stapled-spine publication. But it is a creditable piece of information for the serious reader who is interested in Winnipeg.