Will ripping down the Portage Place bus shelter really make downtown safer?

Should the bus shelter at Portage Place Shopping Centre be torn downto improve safety in downtown Winnipeg, or should it be redesigned?

Orare there other answers?

The general manager of the mall,as well as police chief Danny Smyth, saythe shelter, builtwith the plazain themid-1980s,has becomea magnet for crime and needs to go. Others say changing it will make it less inviting for trouble.

"I don't think a week goes by where we don't have some kind of criminal incident, whether it's an assault or a robbery, and this [bus shelter] is the common denominator," Smyth said earlier this week.

There have been several high-profile incidents in the shelter in recent years, including arandom attack on a 17-year-oldinternational student in January.

Surveillance video of beating in downtown bus shelter

7 years ago

Duration 0:27

The attacker waited for other people in the shelter and those standing nearby outside the shelter to leave then suddenly lunged at the teen and started to punch him, Winnipeg police said.

In video released by the police, the attacker is seen waiting until all others leave the bus shelter before lunging at the teen and beating him until the victimcan't move.

In2008, aman walked into the shelter during the noon hour with a high-powered handgun and shot another man, a stranger,in the abdomen.

The shooter was later sentenced to nine years in prison.

RichardMilgrom,head of the department of city planning at the University of Manitoba, spoke with CBCInformation Radio host Marcy Markusa about what, if anything, can be done to improve the area.

Marcy:Let's start with what you think about getting rid of that bus shelter

It's very dark. It's hard to see out and it's hard to see in. So it doesn't really function very well except to keep the wind off people.

People keep talking about how it's different from other shelters. It's also attached to the building.

Milgrom: In a way that's another part of the problem. Having a bus shelter that was detached, just one of our regular shelters out closer to the curb, would be a good step towards making it better.

Removing the bus shelter, which is in front of the food court in the mall, also provides an opportunity to create better visibility.As a city, we have been turning our backs on our streets and Portage Place has taken people off the street.

This would create some life betweenthe inside of Portage Place and Portage Avenue and the bus stop.

So what do we do, if getting rid of that bus shelter isn't the solution? How can it be designed to make it safer?

I don't particularly think the standard Winnipeg bus shelter is a wonderful piece of design but they're OK and at least you can see into them. You know what's going on inside, and if you're inside you can see buses coming.

But I think the bigger design move is on the front of Portage Place, not on the bus shelter. Opening it up, even if it's just having a coffee shop or a news stand or something that opens onto the street, it would be a beginning to bridging that gap.

Would that actually tackle what the bigger issue is? None of this, you could argue, is going to stop crime. It's just going to shuffle it along.

The issue I have with people who rely on crime prevention through design is that it tends to treat a symptom. It says, 'There's a problem here. How can we get rid of that problem here?' Not how can we address the bigger picture. And of course, that is poverty.

We have a downtown poverty problem in this city and that's a much bigger issue than moving a bus shelter.- RichardMilgrom

The people who are panhandling and seem to others to be somewhat undesirable, are generally people who are living in poverty. We have a downtown poverty problem in this city and that's a much bigger issue than moving a bus shelter.

What is it about that area around Portage Place? Anyone who's lived here any length of time knows that for many years there's been different types of activity, whether it's drug activity, gang activities, violent random crimes. And what do you see as solutions?

The solutions are very long term. It's about getting more people living downtown and more eyes on the street. I think one of the reasons people go to Portage Place is because it's one of the few places left to hang out, get a cup of coffee and be warm.

We've robbed, basically, our public spaces the streets of the city that should be the places that people want to be. And we're left with very few places to go other than shopping malls and other enclosed spaces.

What do other cities do that we might take a cue from, that maybe you haven't seen here in Winnipeg?

We really do need to have a much more global push on getting more people downtown and really focusing on making the public realm the streets of the city places that all people want to be.

If you're in a city with a decent downtown residential population, people don't feel as unsafe, even if the other people whohave been making people feel unsafe really through no fault of their own are still there, because there's more, other people around.

There is perceived safety in numbers.

I know it's for the hockey games, but we've seen thousands and thousands of people in our downtown like never before for these whiteout parties without incident.Do you think we can ride on that wave?

Well, I think things are changing. They're changing slowly, but they're changing. There's a very small market for downtown housing right now but I think we need some really targeted strategies that address the people who want to live downtown.

And I do believe there are people who want to live in the centre of our city.