Quote:
Originally Posted by Regorium
Hilariously, in the context of my above post, spending 24 million on the peace bridge is actually one of those things that DID make Calgary closer to a world class city.
People take pictures on it, people come to see it and thousands use it every day. It's used as the face of Calgary in publications, in top 10 lists and other articles.
We've gotten far more than 24 million of value from the peace bridge than most other grand things we've built.
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There's also the celebrity effect of having a piece of our city designed by Calatrava. World-renowned architects attract other world-renowned architects, which eventually leads to more of that un-quantifiable global status.
Tangibly or intangibly, all of this stuff attracts people (and therefore business, and therefore dollars) to a city.
Edit: I admit that this stuff is hard to put on a balance sheet in such a way that it helps to zero out the cost, but the effects exist nonetheless.