Expo: Risk, Reward and Relevance?

I haven’t said much about the ongoing Expo 2017 bid but I’ve been getting more questions about it, particularly in neighbourhoods adjacent to the proposed U of A South Campus site.

On the one hand, I accept that council overwhelmingly supported it, and I see some of the benefits like leveraging investment in U of A expansion and getting some other key civic infrastructure fast tracked, like LRT and a new Walterdale bridge.

On the other hand I see some practical risks. The cost of building the proposed infrastructure on a tight timeline has uncertainty because strict deadlines sometimes drive costs up. More concerning, our resource-heavy economy is still subject to commodity-driven booms which also drive up construction costs, and this is completely out of our control. If the province is able to assume the risk on the infrastructure side, that at least will reduce our city’s financial risk. The current thinking is that the city would back the operations and take the risk there. The infrastructure budget is in the billions, the operational budget are the hundreds of millions.

I am also concerned about risk to the city’s reputation if the Energy theme isn’t very carefully handled. Energy issues are tricky in Alberta, and the project cannot look like a marketing exercise for the oilsands otherwise it could do more harm than good. However, I’m assured that those working on the bid are also hypersensitive to this.

I have a more principled hesitation, which is that while hosting these events can yield great investments in infrastructure for host cities, the very reason this is attractive is because we have a weak urban infrastructure strategy in this country. Now this isn’t an Expo issue, it’s an intergovernmental fiscal issue, but it’s related because we need to build communities to succeed whether they host big events or not; but that isn’t happening now – which is part of why cities go after these events.

The other reason for these events is more etherial: Montreal and Vancouver are both cited as Canadian examples which had transformative impact. But can Expos still make the kind of impact they once did? The Shanghai Expo happening this year does seem to be presented by the Chinese Government as a kind of watershed moment for that country, but the scale of it eclipses anything previously presented (they’ve spent more than $60 billion), and is orders of magnitude greater than what is proposed for 2017 ($2-3 Billion).

It’s been argued by many of my Council colleagues that our city needs a moment to rally around – a spark to ignite a new and more confident way of seeing ourselves in the world, and this notion is the source of their enthusiasm. Some of them who were at Expo ’67 describe having this kind of experience, and remember Canada having just such a moment. Thus, the concurrence with Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017 is no accident.

And yet, I still find myself pondering what mid-size cities in the world are doing to ‘get on the map’ as it were. I think of Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Austin, Texas. All of them are leveraging strong post-secondary institutions, focusing on economic development in technology, and delivering exceptional quality of life for residents. They do this to attract and retain productive people. It’s a simple formula when you break it down, but it seems to me that whether we get Expo or not, we need to stay focused on that kind of city-building here in Edmonton.

So: since you asked, I’m agnostic on Expo. Most of the rest of the outgoing Council was firmly committed to it so my focus has been, and will be, to provide constructive input on managing the risks, and special attention to ensuring meaningful engagement with the surrounding communities that would be affected by the main site on South Campus.