Because quite frankly no one at the top has demonstrated they know how to do anything at all that benefits downtown and Edmonton. This city is run by a group of individuals who are unoriginal and uninterested in solutions.
City council just voted against a potential solution of incentivizing residential development downtown on the basis of "not being able to justify it to tax payers" according to Sohi despite overwhelming evidence that it would spur tax revenue downtown (both Winnipeg and Calgary have recently implemented this approach as well), but then turned around a week later and announced an additional up to $65M expenditure for lights in bike lanes that spur $0 of revenue for tax payers.
Developers are frustrated by council’s rejection of a plan to subsidize residential builds in the core
urbanaffairs.ca
Even a debate about downtown cleanliness is tinged with mistrust
urbanaffairs.ca