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I’m not going to get into this debate, but I wanted to say that there are places around the GTA where you can see these skylines blooming from horizon to horizon and it’s very cool. Especially heading south on the 400, somewhere between Major Mack and Steeles, you can see the Toronto skyline, and many kms of urban development and highrise nodes stretching north and west to the Mississauga skyline, which admittedly is more impressive at a distance than it is up close. If you catch it at the right time of day and the air is clear, it is a really cool panorama.
this is a good picture that illustrates your point
That is a really cool picture and it does illustrate what I’m talking about. The GTA isn’t very hilly, so there are only a few spots other than high rises where you can see this, but when you find one, it really is amazing to see how the city has grown in the last 20 years. In another 20, many of the gaps between clusters will be filled in.
Personally, I don’t like the style of most of the high rises going up. I think glass is a terrible choice for both environmental and aesthetic reasons, and is an especially poor choice for this climate. I know it’s cheap and fast to build, but the legacy is apartments that cost a fortune to heat and cool, kill millions of birds every year, take a terrible toll on the environment (the world is actually running out of sand for concrete and glass and extracting it is becoming more and more deleterious to the environment) and I imagine we will look back on them the way we look back on a lot of the brutalist residential towers. Toronto has some great architecture, but it’s almost all low-rise and concentrated in the Old City.
I really wish they could build these high rises using brick and stone, with the modest flair and simple elegance that Toronto used to do quite nicely. 1 King West and the buildings around it, though office towers, are good examples of Toronto’s classic architectural style (https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.64891...7i16384!8i8192) I’m sure something like that could be built as a residential tower, but developers don’t care about aesthetics in residential architecture. It’s all about profit and and it’s hard to beat glass and steel in that department.
That is a really cool picture and it does illustrate what I’m talking about. The GTA isn’t very hilly, so there are only a few spots other than high rises where you can see this, but when you find one, it really is amazing to see how the city has grown in the last 20 years. In another 20, many of the gaps between clusters will be filled in.
Personally, I don’t like the style of most of the high rises going up. I think glass is a terrible choice for both environmental and aesthetic reasons, and is an especially poor choice for this climate. I know it’s cheap and fast to build, but the legacy is apartments that cost a fortune to heat and cool, kill millions of birds every year, take a terrible toll on the environment (the world is actually running out of sand for concrete and glass and extracting it is becoming more and more deleterious to the environment) and I imagine we will look back on them the way we look back on a lot of the brutalist residential towers. Toronto has some great architecture, but it’s almost all low-rise and concentrated in the Old City.
I really wish they could build these high rises using brick and stone, with the modest flair and simple elegance that Toronto used to do quite nicely. 1 King West and the buildings around it, though office towers, are good examples of Toronto’s classic architectural style (https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.64891...7i16384!8i8192) I’m sure something like that could be built as a residential tower, but developers don’t care about aesthetics in residential architecture. It’s all about profit and and it’s hard to beat glass and steel in that department.
Glass blends in well with the environment which for big buildings is pretty important.
These things can be found all over NYC... The fact that they're ugly and wide doesn't dismiss their existence.
Yes it 100% does and I think for some reason people tend to think that Manhattan is just one single downtown area, but really Manhattan is an entire borough with a large land area and collection of very different + diverse neighborhoods including 2 large CBDs.
Here’s Manhattan overlaid on top of Toronto for size context: https://cdn.skyrisecities.com/forum/...lay-jpg.13664/
So dismissing Manhattan as just one area doesn’t make sense. And not only that but highrises exist outside of Manhattan too.
You mention those wide highrises that exist in the outer boroughs and that’s because in NYC the zoning laws allow a building height to be a certain ratio relative to lot size (to put it simply). In areas zoned for mid-density, highrise buildings are allowed but need to have a large lot or base like those ugly wide buildings and “Towers in the park”.
Here’s a map of those mid-density residential areas: the minimum zoning districts that allow highrises (R5 + R6): https://imgur.com/oxAck2a
Ex: Starrett City, Lefrak City, Co-op City, most of Coney Island, Far Rockaway, much of the South Bronx, and even parts of Manhattan.
In the higher density zoned areas the buildings are allowed much higher ratios of height to lot size which is why we’ve been seeing all the controversial super skinny supertalls being built in Manhattan. In these areas, highrises are even more common than the first map and are built more easily into the environment instead of using large lots. These are the highest density residential and major commercial areas (R7-R10 + C4-C6) https://imgur.com/PIDXzlN
Commercial is red and residential is yellow. These areas are the more obvious ones
Ex: almost all of Manhattan + DTBK, Queens blvd, Downtown Jamaica, Downtown Flushing, the Western Bronx, the area around Prospect Park, and more of Coney + Brighton.
I felt like making the distinction to make it clear that not all areas on this map are equal when it comes to highrise amounts or height of buildings, but when you combine the 2 maps together, you’ll get an almost complete map of where NYC allows highrises to be built (anything colored red/yellow): https://imgur.com/Z69puvz
Green areas are parks, in case that was unclear to anyone. So basically you have just the uncolored areas are where highrise buildings CAN’T be built.
Long Island City in Queens doesn’t show up on that map because it has weird zoning rules, but it’s too big to ignore so for anyone that doesn’t know: this is where it is https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning...ocator-map.jpg
Yes it 100% does and I think for some reason people tend to think that Manhattan is just one single downtown area, but really Manhattan is an entire borough with a large land area and collection of very different + diverse neighborhoods including 2 large CBDs.
Here’s Manhattan overlaid on top of Toronto for size context: https://cdn.skyrisecities.com/forum/...lay-jpg.13664/
So dismissing Manhattan as just one area doesn’t make sense. And not only that but highrises exist outside of Manhattan too.
The scale is surprisingly comparable, since midtown Toronto skyline is right about where midtown manhattan is by central park.
Assuming we count downtown Toronto/Manhattan as one skyline and midtown as the second skyline.
In addition to that you have humber bay in etobicoke at the bottom left, scarborough town center at the right, and north york center where upper manhattan is. But of course Manhattan is significantly more dense and has significantly higher concentration of highrises in a similar space.
Houston... Using the weird criteria for what a skyline is, here's what I can amass
Downtown
Texas Medical Center
Uptown
Greenway/Upper Kirby
Memorial
Energy Corridor
West Chase
Woodlands Town Center
Hughes Landing
Galveston Strand
TC Jester @ North Loop
Sharpstown area
Sugar Land Town Center
Buffalo Bayou/4th Ward
Midtown?
CITY OF CHICAGO
100m+ Built: 336
100m+ U/C: 10
Total: 346
Proposals: 19
Potential Tally: 365
CITY OF TORONTO
100m+ Built: 284
100m+ U/C: 105
Total: 389
Proposals: 288
Potential Tally: 677
CITY OF CHICAGO
150m+ Built: 130
150m+ U/C: 7
Total: 137
Proposals: 12
Potential Tally: 149
CITY OF TORONTO
150m+ Built: 74
150m+ U/C: 35
Total: 109
Proposals: 112
Potential Tally: 221
CITY OF CHICAGO
200m+ Built: 32
200m+ U/C: 6
Total: 38
Proposals: 6
Potential Tally: 46
CITY OF TORONTO
200m+ Built: 23
200m+ U/C: 10
Total: 33
Proposals: 40
Potential Tally: 73
^some numbers from skyscraperpage.com
Lots of good info on this thread. New York is in a class of its own. Chicago is second in almost every category currently and it is much taller than Toronto. Toronto is third, growing at an unprecedented rate and will surpass Chicago in 150+ buildings within the next few years. Fourth is so far away from these three mentioned above, not even comparable or in the same league (LA, Philly, Miami, Seattle). To the OPs post, Toronto IS unique that it has a few different skylines, 4 (5 if you include Mississauga) not 30. Midtown could rival many other American cities.
what Yonge/Eglinton, Vaughan Metro Centre which have 200m buildings, all the highrises clusters along Sheppard avenue above 100m?, liberty village, the Reagent Park Redevelopment, etc...
there is so much being built in Toronto currently that if you have not been in the city recently you will bae misinformed. Vaughan has built 3 200m buildings in the last year for example. there are countless projects underway across and around the city that I even am surprised when i go to an area in the GTA I haven't been been to in a couple of years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joakim3
All the buildings along Sheppard are absolutely not 100m. Do they have a lot of +100m towers, yes, but let’s not pretend suburbs of Toronto are Kowloon or Manhattan.
If we are saying Younge/Eglinton or Vaughan Metro Center count as entirely separate skylines because they have a several +100 buildings doted around them in the middle of suburbia, then we should be able to count every single high rise cluster in NYC. There are ~15 in the Bronx alone. All of which each have multiple +100m buildings in closer proximity than their Toronto counterparts.
Anyway you slice it, NYC is going to beat Toronto in high-rise numerics. It’s just the nature of the business
That’s just wrong info. Vaughn doesn’t have any 200 metre buildings. A quick google search will show all 200 plus buildings are downtown/midtown except for Eau De Soliel in Etobicoke....
That’s just wrong info. Vaughn doesn’t have any 200 metre buildings. A quick google search will show all 200 plus buildings are downtown/midtown except for Eau De Soliel in Etobicoke....
If you want to get pedantic then it's 190m to be exact and 3 over 175m
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