Downtown Edmonton is trying to come back.
Businesses are open. Workers are returning. Investment is active. There is effort on every front. And yet, recovery has stalled.
As I enter my fifth year serving on the Downtown Revitalization Coalition (DRC) and my second as chair, I have seen both the commitment and the constraints up close. Developers are prepared to invest. Employers are calling teams back. Community organizations are activating public spaces – but the system is not supporting this movement with the urgency it requires.
This conversation is not new. In fact, many of us are tired of having it. It feels heavy and repetitive. That is why, this year, I have asked the DRC to sharpen our focus and become relentlessly solution oriented.
Before revitalization can accelerate, one truth must be acknowledged: safety is foundational.
It is not one priority among many. It is the condition that allows every other strategy to succeed. Safety is economic infrastructure and right now that infrastructure is under strain.
Public spaces are not consistently safe. Transit corridors, pedways and core gathering areas remain chronic hotspots. Open drug use and visible disorder continue to erode confidence. People may not always say so publicly, but they act accordingly. They change routes. They avoid transit. They choose to meet elsewhere. Individually, these choices seem minor. Collectively, they determine whether downtown feels viable.
There are legitimate operational issues that must be addressed: visibility and enforcement, peace officer deployment, coordination between agencies, alignment across orders of government. These are not ideological debates. They are system design challenges.
When you spend time in Churchill Square, along 102 Avenue or in LRT stations, another reality becomes clear: crisis response is not functioning as intended. Response times can be excessive. Officers often lack appropriate places to bring individuals in crisis. Bottlenecks tie up frontline resources. Repeat offenders cycle through arrest, release and return to the street with little meaningful intervention.
This is not solely a policing issue. It is a systems issue.
When crisis response lacks coordination and capacity, everyone feels it. Compassion without coordination is ineffective. Enforcement without system capacity is unsustainable.
The business community has leaned in. Capital has been committed. Programming has expanded. Governments have made investments. However, public safety conditions are not improving at the pace required to sustain confidence. Safety is not the end goal of downtown revitalization – it is the starting point.
Municipally, this means clearly defining accountability for downtown safety outcomes. It means establishing measurable targets for crisis response times and hotspot stabilization. It means aligning peace officer deployment for visible, consistent enforcement in transit corridors and pedways. It means implementing a coordinated downtown safety framework that integrates police, peace officers, transit security and social agencies under one operational plan, with transparent public reporting on progress.
Safety cannot sit across multiple departments without a single point of responsibility. It must be treated as core civic infrastructure. Downtown Edmonton deserves a recovery that is not stalled, but sustained. That begins with restoring confidence in our public spaces and systems that function. It begins with treating safety not as an afterthought, but as the foundation on which everything else is built.