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Here's what has been going up in Chicago lately. Most of these buildings don't look any better to me than what we're getting in Toronto - as matter of fact, I'd say that some of them are worse than our green glass condos that everyone loves to hate.
true.
the difference is, Chicago already has a far better inventory of architecture, admit it or not. Chicago had their boom many years ago and now it is Toronto's turn. yet we are building a sea of green glass instead of something more classy.
The neighbourhoods of old Toronto like those of the West End are not that dense. A typical city block there is only about 1.5 denser than a city block in some new development in Brampton, although new developments in the suburbs have more park space so the West End is more like 2 times the density at the neighbourhood level. Downtown however is quite a bit denser than the West End and it has a while to go before it's fully built out and has a much higher percentage of buildings that are offices. If you want to accomodate the growth in midrises and lowrises, you will have to demolish large swaths of the city. And what makes you think that these new midrises and lowrises will be so much better than the highrises? Your criticisms of the highrises in the core so far seem to be all about architecture, not height. What makes you think that you won't just have midrise glass boxes and tacky McMansions? If the problem is architecture, shouldn't the solution be to improve architecture instead of reducing height?
Also while not all the new condos have retail on the ground floor, many of them do. When they don't have retail, it's usually because they're in areas with little pedestrian traffic. Besides, how many houses in Riverdale have ground floor retail? Not very many, in fact, you have to go quite far to find any retail, either to the Danforth or Gerrard. There is virtually no retail on the N-S streets in that part of the city. Ditto for the West End although it's not quite as bad, aside from Spadina and parts of Roncesvalles and Ossington, there is very little retail on the N-S streets.
I would say there is more retail within walking distance of a condo downtown than in the older neighbourhoods, and much of that retail is located on the ground floors of highrises. Much of the retail is also boring chains, but that's a separate problem. And if there isn't enough pedestrian traffic to justify ground floor retail, what's wrong with lobbies? They can still provide residents with a place to hang out with friends.
Just because the 3 bedroom semis in Brockton Village cost $750k while the average condo in downtown Toronto costs maybe something like $350k, that doesn't mean Brockton Village is more desirable. The typical condo is much smaller and doesn't have a yard, plus it has condo fees not included in the price. Not everyone needs 3 bedrooms and not everyone can afford it. But I don't think a 1 bedroom apartment in Brockton Village will cost any more than a 1 bedroom apartment in a downtown condo, in fact, it will likely cost less. That's probably why the condos in downtown are mostly 1-2 bedroom, because 3 bedroom units would be quite expensive and families will get more house for their money (ie it's cheaper) in the neighbourhoods surrounding downtown.
I don't think the condo buildings are perfect though. Personally, I don't like the sprandrel that gets used quite a lot, if you don't want transparent glass covering your whole building, throw in some brick or stone, not curtainwall. I also think more attention should be paid to the design of the lower floors. I don't really care if you think the buildings look boring as you're driving in along the Gardiner, what matters more to me is what it looks like when you're walking on the street, and what you notice from the street is mainly the lower floors. IMO there is too much blank glass walls and little attention to detail. For example, many of the doors look appropriate for a logistics warehouse in the suburbs rather than an entrance to a store or a building home to hundreds of people.
I would say that a lot of the buildings have sculture too, mostly of the modern art variety.
A major problem though in my opinion is the public realm. Overhead hydro wires, cobra head street lights and plastered with peeling posters, concrete sidewalks patched up with asphalt. The roads are also much wider than the sidewalks in much of the city, even in areas where pedestrians significantly outnumber cars, and there's not much in the way of street trees or flowers to make up for the wide noisy roads. Not a whole lot of quiet places to get away from the noise of traffic in the downtown, and the parks are mostly quite small, which is ok if you want to eat a sandwich on a bench or take your dog out to do it's business, but not if you want to go for a "walk in the park". Many European cities have pedestrianized cores and many American cities have larger parks to get away from the noise of traffic.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, my friend. Many cities are beautiful for many reasons. I find all kinds of urban areas beautiful. If you take a walk in Toronto's neighbourhoods I think you'll see that there is a lot of beauty there, a lot of charm, and a wonderful hodge-podge of architectural styles and urban landscapes that are unique to this city. If you don't like it, that's fine. But there are tens of thousands of people willing to pay big money to live in these areas - they can't all be wrong.
Second, as far as Toronto being a world city - like it or not, it is one. It's the largest, most important city in a G7 nation and is considered an Alpha World city by the GaWC (Global city - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), right up there with Beijing, Seoul, São Paulo, Los Angeles and other leading cities. Take a look at where Rome lands on this list - you'll have to look way down to find it (it's even below Boston). That's because your aesthetics (or anyone else's) don't decide what makes a city world class. It takes more than nice architecture to give a city global significance. Sure, there are many areas where Toronto needs improvement - I'm all too aware of the things this city needs to work on, one of which was the reason for me starting this thread - but as far as Toronto not being "world class" you're wrong.
Just to give you one small example of how important Toronto is in the global financial and business world, they did a study in New York to look at telephone traffic and which parts of New York called which other parts of the world most frequently. While some of the figures were predictable, like the South Bronx having a high proportion of calls to Puerto Rico and the Domincan Republic, one of the more interesting finds was that one of the most frequent area codes dialled in Midtown and Downtown Manhattan was 416. This is just one anecdotal, but quite revealing tidbit that demonstrates how important and interconnected Toronto is to global financial markets. Toronto's stock market is seventh largest in the world. As Toronto continues to grow and improve its infrastructure, it will only continue to grow in importance on the world stage.
However, I do worry that our political leaders and decision makers aren't up to the task of making this city the best it can be. They love taking money from Toronto, in the form of taxes, but they hate giving it back, even if it means stunting growth in the entire region (the transit wars are a perfect example). This often leads to the city having to do a lot with a little, and the result is half-a55ed transit, public spaces, urban planning, infrastructure development, etc. Then the city is so desperate for cash it lets the developers build whatever crap they want without proper urban planning or ensuring existing neighbourhoods are not saddled with developments that simply don't fit, or preventing important historical properties from being torn down, or even ensuring there is sufficient infrastructure and amenities in place to accommodate all the new residents. These are all problems this city faces, but every city has its problems. Despite them all, Toronto has managed to be a leading world city in many ways. Business and finance is just one example.
What do you think about Aura and the L Tower.. They aren't green boxes lol and far from ugly ... I think it's a great time for T.O!
^I like both Aura and L. Especially the setbacks that are to come on the top of Aura asit continues to grow.
Do you remember the Sapphire tower proposal? I wish that got build and the old proposal for 1 bloor east before it was scrapped. The top looked amazing IMO. And if I recall it was supposed to be 290-something metres tall.
Why is it everyone is only citing the green crap going up when there are plenty enough projects that aren't green crap.. Its almost as if its glass and concrete it has to be crap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticman
Here's what has been going up in Chicago lately. Most of these buildings don't look any better to me than what we're getting in Toronto - as matter of fact, I'd say that some of them are worse than our green glass condos that everyone loves to hate.
this is especially true.
Toronto looks generic and cheap. Yes, we have the most highrises under construction in the western hemisphere, but also the most ugly ones as well.
The L tower is a good change.
I agree. Besides L, the CN Tower and Trump....just about every other tower is a box. We need crowns, unique antennas, cool lighting fixtures, spires etc... Something that stands out.
For sure and they certainly aren't green boxes that everyone always talks about for some reason lol..Sapphire would have been cool but Stinson was always sketchy to me for some reason.. it certainly would have been better than Trump though! I know you don't like twins but the ICE condo's are sexy and I actually like Shangri-La!
Simple but elegant.... Better than the new 1 Bloor East imo
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrjun18
^I like both Aura and L. Especially the setbacks that are to come on the top of Aura asit continues to grow.
Do you remember the Sapphire tower proposal? I wish that got build and the old proposal for 1 bloor east before it was scrapped. The top looked amazing IMO. And if I recall it was supposed to be 290-something metres tall.
I think that many of us here are disagreeing because we have different aesthetic preferences. I like Toronto's old neighbourhoods best and think that if we want to add housing we should do it with mid-rise apartments packed in tight and having some relation to the brick Victorian and Edwardian architecture that makes Old Toronto unique. I sometimes see new residential developments that crop up here and there in the city and think "why can't they do more of that - it fits so perfectly with what's around it, you barely even realize it's brand new." Obviously, other posters prefer other styles and don't like the aesthetic of Old Toronto, listing some of my favourite features as things they hate about it
To the poster who said it is far more important what an apartment looks like at street level than it does from the Gardiner, I absolutely agree with you. And it's not the height that makes these buildings undesirable to me. I've already explained pretty clearly what I don't like about them, and I don't believe I mentioned height as a factor - build towers all you want, but don't plop them in low and mid-rise neighbourhoods. Build them in the downtown core and undeveloped areas outside established neighbourhoods where they won't clash with what's already there. I agree that architecture and design are extremely important - maybe most important of all. And I don't necessarily separate architecture from design. For me a well-designed building or development is one that reflects or comments on the architecture that surrounds it - it doesn't have to match it, but it should fit in. Finally, about density, the old residential neighbourhoods of the West End are much denser than you think. Go to the Urban Planning forum on this board and check out the thread on urban density. You will see that there are several sections of the West and East ends that are among the densest in North America. Have you seen the size of a lot in Brampton or Mississauga compared to a typical Toronto home? Or compared the compact footprint of a Toronto home to one in the suburbs? A Toronto house of 4500 square feet usually has a smaller footprint than a 2500 square foot house in Mississauga, and half the lot or less. Plus the fact that houses in many Toronto neighbourhoods are chopped up to accommodate multiple tenants. And residential streets in the city are frequently crossed by commercial thoroughfares like Dundas or Queen where most residents live above shops or in small apartment buildings, increasing the density even more. You are very wrong on this point. Just go to Google Maps or Bing Maps and see for yourself how the spacing and density changes from the Old City to Scarborough to Pickering or Markham. It's really only the toney residential neighbourhoods in central Toronto like Forest Hill or Lawrence Park don't conform to this general rule.
Anyways, I'm enjoying debating all of this, reading all the different POV's. I hope people keep posting their comments.
For sure and they certainly aren't green boxes that everyone always talks about for some reason lol..Sapphire would have been cool but Stinson was always sketchy to me for some reason.. it certainly would have been better than Trump though! I know you don't like twins but the ICE condo's are sexy and I actually like Shangri-La!
i like the rendering too.
however, this design has already been rejected by the city.
Whoa, the city actually rejected a design. I just can't wrap my head around their logic There's nothing about this development that makes it any less viable than most of the crap I've seen sprouting up everywhere. What is their criteria?
At least they weren't going to level those bank buildings - I really like those buildings, always have. Don't they have a pub in one of them?
Anyways, I hope when they do decide on a design, it's better and not worse than that rendering in the link. And if they don't preserve the bank buildings I'm torching myself in protest, Buddhist monk style. Ok, maybe not but I'll be pissed
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