Quote:
Originally Posted by balletomane
I think a big part of the issue was that neighborhoods in the inner city (Downtown, River Heights, West End, North End and Elmwood) were already in decline since the early-1960's. The infrastructure was aging, and the taxes were higher in comparison to the 11 other municipalities which were seen as being tax havens. This was largely why amalgamation was seen as being a good thing, taxes being equalized in the entire urban area.
When the city amalgamated, it still had 50+ councillors for the entire urban area, because all elected officials from the former municipalities in turn came to represent the entire new city. With the expanded area, the city councillors responded by increasing their wages, believing that they had extra "responsibility" for managing the new "megacity".
Also, most of the newly merged municipalities had room for growth (sprawl) whereas the old city did not. Suburban infrastructure spending skyrocketed, at the expense of maintaining existing infrastructure in the former city. The 1970's also saw crime rates begin their increase, however crime was limited to the older city, safety was another issue plaguing the city, and continues to be one. The homicide rate in the former city is about 9/100,000 (down from 19/100,000 in 2011), compared to only 1/100,000 in the former amalgamated municipalities.
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The question remains: would the increase in crime and depopulation have happened anyway without amalgamation? Or did having an extensive suburban tax base prevent worse decline from occurring?
Many US cities lost lots of their tax base to the neighboring suburbs, which arguably caused more damage as they had to cut city services and police, which tended to exacerbate the population decline. With the surrounding suburbs contributing to overall funding, perhaps the city of Winnipeg suffered less than it might have?