Something Greater Together

The following, from a speech by former Winnipeg Mayor Glenn Murray, provides a wonderful perspective on placemaking...

"Winnipeg started as a city that had a huge sense of possibilities. The first people who arrived there were trying to attract the railroad so they built grand railroad stations. They built beautiful Carnegie libraries and grand boulevards with beautiful trees. There was a sense that beauty had to be necessary and a necessity had to be beautiful and that when you walk down the main street of your city, what things looked like were a reflection of your values, your sense of civic pride, sense of identity and a celebration of the intellect, the imagination, the culture and the success and prosperity of the community. You wore it on your sleeves.

"The idea was also about the pulic good. People like Carnegie were putting money into libraries because they thought it was important that places of knowledge and learning were open and accessible for people who might feel the library was a much more extraordinary and beautiful place than they would ever be able to own. The public realm had to be beautiful and to be shared, so we could all have something greater together than any one of us could own individually.

"One of the changes in values in the suburbanization of our culture is that what's on our property matters most.... You cannot talk about change or culture unless you deal with the values that are associated with it."

  

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