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Doubling Down on Downtown
- anand4716
- Aug 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 26
When office vacancies climb, our City pays the price. Not long ago, Downtown generated about 10% of Edmonton’s tax revenue. Today, it’s closer to 5%. That shortfall means higher taxes for everyone else. Cities across North America are grappling with the same challenge, with some doing better than others to stop the bleeding.
But the truth is, Downtown Edmonton isn’t just about tax dollars. It’s about the kind of city we want for the people who live, work, study, and visit here.
If we’re serious about creating a Downtown that’s safe, beautiful, unique, and full of life, we need to set one audacious goal: double Downtown’s population within five years.
Right now, we have 13,000 people living in the core. But our Downtown is three times the size of Calgary’s and, unlike many cities, has a lot of unused space. This gives us a great opportunity to create the vibrant, resilient Downtown that we all want - one that, by doubling its population, can also help address infill pressures, improve affordability, and reduce tax increases.
How We Get There
Build More Homes - Faster Not just condos, but rentals, family-sized units, student housing, and affordable options. This means cutting red tape / speeding up approvals, and using incentives that align with CMHC’s Affordable Housing Guidelines, which most developers already follow.
When I used to walk to work between 109 Street and 104 Street, nearly my entire route was through parking lots - most of which pay almost nothing in property taxes. Building residences would increase the taxes generated downtown, and more than offset subsidies currently being explored. I would favour a range of incentives to build new residences for students, seniors, newcomers and young professionals - all guaranteed to stay affordable for 10+ years.
Example: Houston’s Downtown Living Initiative added over 4,200 apartments and grew the Downtown population by nearly 40% in just five years. The incentive helped kick off the transition by granting developers $1,500 in tax rebates per unit.
Make Downtown Feel Safe and Well-Cared For That means brighter lighting, cleaner streets, well-maintained sidewalks, and community safety teams designed to build trust. People want to come here. Let's help them feel comfortable walking, shopping, and spending time Downtown.
Create Partnerships to Invest in Catalytic Projects Transformation takes collaboration. Public-private partnerships, post-secondary institutions, philanthropic groups, and senior levels of government all have a role to play. But too often we think small, then wonder why we can’t get partners on board. The next Council can help by:
Creating an arts district legal entity that can compete for mega-grants like Calgary’s Arts-Commons.
Growing our education and innovation districts.
Offering incentives to retrofit historic buildings instead of tearing them down, while accounting for the emissions saved by preserving them.
Make It Easy to Get Here and Get Around We need to minimize construction disruptions (clearer timelines, smaller/phased projects, better communication and mitigation measures - the subject of a future blog). But first, we need to look at quick fixes that make it easier for people to choose Downtown:
Free weekend parking Downtown to encourage shopping and strolling.
Free weekday daytime transit within the core to get people into cafés, shops, and parks without needing their cars.
Calgary does both of these things at minimal cost. You don’t think we can’t do better than them do you?
Activate Every Season, Every Block More markets, concerts, pop-ups, street artists, and food stalls. Downtown should always have something happening that pulls people in. Public programming can keep sidewalks buzzing all year long, even in the winter months.
