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CBC: How public will True North Square be?

January 19, 2016 — 

The CBC recently did a Q&A with Richard Milgrom, associate professor in the city planning department in the Faculty of Architecture. He raised a few concerns with Information Radio‘s host Marcy Markusa, which they then posted online.

Milgrom is questioning how public the True North Square plaza in downtown Winnipeg will be.

The interview begins:

Marcy Markusa: What was your initial reaction when you heard about the details of True North Square?

Richard Milgrom: There’s a lot of details that are missing. My biggest concerns are probably about how public is the public square and who benefits from the tax increment financing funding that the province and the city are going to provide.

It looks to me — and I haven’t seen enough detail — like what we are now beginning to call a privately owned public space. It’s becoming a more common way of creating plazas, but it looks like it’s on private property and it’s a very controlled space. The criticisms that are levelled against privately owned public spaces is that people’s rights are quite controlled in those spaces in a way that they aren’t in other public spaces.

 

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