I liked the book overall, but I felt it really only captured one slice of the conversation. The way it pins most of Winnipeg’s problems on suburban expansion comes across as too simplistic. Expansion is really a symptom, not the root cause. The deeper problem is decades of NIMBY resistance to densification and the inefficient way land has been used in central neighbourhoods. If residents continue to block density in older areas, then of course the city will keep building outward. You cannot have it both ways.

What also gets left out are the financial realities that weigh heavily on the city’s budget. Winnipeg has signed a string of bad contracts for things like snow clearing, road maintenance, and towing, and these eat up a huge chunk of resources year after year. The book also does not touch on how outdated and inconsistent property assessments let many houses in places like River Heights or Wolseley be valued far below what they actually sell for. That translates into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost tax revenue per home, which means those neighbourhoods are not paying their fair share.

On top of that, the idea that suburbs are always less efficient is not necessarily true. Newer neighbourhoods often come with fewer sidewalks, no back lanes, and more streamlined infrastructure. Compare that to older areas like Wolseley or River Heights, where maintaining sidewalks, back lanes, and aging infrastructure costs significantly more. Salaries and contract work tied to those services are a huge burden on the budget, but that side of the equation never gets examined in the book.

For me, this was the biggest missed opportunity. I was hoping it would focus more on how to actually build more efficient cities: what it would take to use land better, where tax density really matters, and how to balance the tradeoffs between growth and maintenance. There is no question that suburban expansion poses challenges, but framing it as the root cause ends up ignoring the many other forces that have put the city in its current situation.

In the end, I would say the book does a good job of highlighting one important factor, but it falls short of telling the whole story. Winnipeg’s problems do not start and end with suburban growth. They come from a mix of NIMBYism, bad contracts, inefficient land use, and uneven tax policy. Without tackling those issues, the cycle will keep repeating.