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By Haveacow (registered) | Posted November 04, 2016 at 13:10:10
Oh yes here in Ottawa we squabble. We squabble and argue with the best of them. The LRT consensus only came after decades of divisive debate between BRT, LRT and the fix the roads only crowd. People just got very tired of nothing changing and nothing happening! The just do something, side of the debate finally won. It seemed collectively everybody here suddenly got tired of other cities building really big, neat things and making Ottawa look like a sleepy little provincial town that had been left behind by time. You would often have to ask yourself and say hey, we are the capital city of this country right? Shouldn't we be leading the country in something, beside bored, alcoholic diplomats?
I honestly can't say that it was one specific issue or just a generational change but for some reason the city seemed to just suddenly decided to be more vibrant one day. It seemed to me that a change started very slowly in the late 1990's and started to pick up the pace from about 2001-2002 on. For example, between 1992-2006 there were only 5 new buildings (office and condo) built in downtown Ottawa and they were quite boring designs really. Today, there are 4 under construction right now, 3 opened last year alone. It seems that the place just finally decided to wake up! Ottawa is desperately still trying to shake its old moniker, "The town that fun forgot". I hope this trend continues. However, we definitely don't have a "tidy civic consensus", its a sometimes slow, lurching, messy and loud desire to finally change what was!
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