How are we addressing the donut effect in Regina?

A few years ago, more than I will share, I took a class that reviewed an interesting topic on urban development. The topic that stayed with me was the theory of the donut effect. For those of you that are thinking what the heck is that?  It is when a city’s downtown area becomes vacant. For example, the downtown area would lack activities going on, and at the end of the workday, employees head home, bypassing restaurants and other businesses to ones close to home.

Having just lived through a huge change in thinking about how employees want to work, how has this affected Regina’s downtown? If you look back a while ago, before COVID, before online shopping, downtown had some fun going on.  There were a couple of movie theatres, you could go bowling close by, and there were so many little shops you could go into on a Saturday afternoon. Why did this change? Was it when we introduced big box stores to the outskirts of Regina? I am sure this three-year ‘pause’ on things has not helped. Have we put a nail in the coffin for a vibrant downtown?

With so many of us doing a combination of work from the office and home, the needs for the downtown area have vastly changed. Less office space is needed as businesses are adjusting and using less space, this then leads to fewer restaurants, fewer bars, and less of everything that makes downtown have a culture.  In contrast, all future City developments proposed, such as the Aquatic Centre, Event Centre, and Baseball Centre are centralized downtown and around the old train track area. But these ideas for development were created before we changed how we work. Do we need to rethink what we want for Regina?

Over the years I have had the luxury of visiting cities in Canada as well as some major metropolises throughout the world. From where I stand, Regina has SO MUCH POTENTIAL compared to other cities around the world. I love the walking pathways, I love the lack of traffic, and I love how beautiful our trees and parks are. But I do miss the vibrancy, the hustle, and bustle of a downtown that has energy. When you go to Vancouver, Mexico City, Beijing, and Paris, there’s a culture. When you walked down the street, it’s so easy to grab a bite from a street cart, find a shirt at a pop-up shop, and buy cool trinkets from street vendors as you walk around. How are we ever going to get to a place like that in Regina?

If we want to create a cultured downtown, let us make Regina a little metropolis. It could be so unique and draw tourism. Can you imagine in the heart of the prairies, a downtown that has energy? With vacancies everywhere downtown, not to mention all the parking lots, why not lower taxes, promote cheap commercial rent, and make it easy for vendors to be around the downtown area? Encourage transformation of offices to residential properties, we need a grocery store close by too! Consider doing something other cities aren’t.

What does our City Council want to do about this? We have such a new city we can still create a rich and vibrant culture here! Does anybody know how to get this going? Because I want to help!

*We contacted the Regina Mayors' Office for a quote on this topic, but they were unable to.

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