City Needs Champion

“Synechdochic imagery” was one of the terms thrown around. Every city needs an icon, the University of Alberta’s Daniel Mason told the audience, flashing through slides of Big Ben and the CN Tower – a way to jog the world’s memory. Sports strategies have been used by cities like Edmonton that lack them.

The conference’s keynote was Mark Rosentraub, a professor of urban affairs who worked on a number of American downtown revitalization projects anchored by sports facilities. He is the author of Major League Losers, a book about sports-facility disasters (think Montreal’s “Big Owe”) that promise much and produce little – except a huge bill for taxpayers. Rosentraub poked fun at Rexall Place-era coliseums on the fringes of town, calling them “spaceships that landed in a sea of parking.”

His theory is that large-scale gathering places belong in the core, where cities – especially sleepy ones – want the action to be.

The sports facility becomes the initial attraction (“the buzz, much like the flagship store in the mall”) but soon businesses from retail to residential developers want a piece of the action. A centrepiece district is formed.

These “urban neighbourhoods” anchored by coliseums are revitalizing some of the dumpiest, derelict areas on the continent. They have little parking – sometimes only a few hundred stalls – to promote public transit and pedestrian traffic. Places to have dinner or a drink before and after the game let people make a night out of attending an event. The fact that spectators leave at different times means there’s no frustrating traffic bottleneck at the end.

The idea, oddly enough, comes from Walt Disney’s vision for his theme parks. He wanted to build an entertainment district that not only provided for his visitors’ basic needs (food, accommodation, amusement, relaxation), but that also came with its own lifestyle experience, something people couldn’t find anywhere else. That “Disneyfication” has become the trend in sports facilities across North America with cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Saint Paul and Newark all situating their coliseums in the core. To make an Edmonton arena district work, not only would it require partnerships with condo developers, retail chains, offices and arts venues – with everyone who benefits from the anchor paying in – it needs a unified lifestyle vision.

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