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For the past two years I've been living in Mississauga, waiting for work opportunities to pan out so that I can move back to the city. In this short time that I've been away, a lot has changed, and since I don't get a chance to go downtown as often as I would like (I'm in the city twice a week, but not downtown) I really notice the changes to the shape and appearance of the city when I drive in on the Gardiner a few times a year.
I've read a lot about the condo-building boom in the city and have been very worried that a) the condos were going to continue being ugly structures that simply don't fit with the city's older architecture, b) that so many condos are being built that they would dramatically change the aesthetic character of the city (for the worse) in some places, and c) that developers would be allowed to build tracts of condos like they do in the suburb so that from far away it looks very dense and urban, but at ground level you realize that you are standing in a development, not a neighbourhood. Big difference.
In the last week I've driven into the city twice on the Gardiner, once all the way east to where it ends, giving me an excellent opportunity to see the overall effect of all this building and also to visit some of the most affected areas on foot to see how the changes feel at street level. My first impressions of all the residential towers (because most of this new development is residential, especially outside the downtown core) is that they are totally uninspired, poorly designed, and often just plain ugly. They are typically giant glass boxes, which is a terrible choice of building materials for our climate because it is an awful insulator, making the units freezing in the winter and baking hot in the summer. Toronto is also a city of brick and stone. All of its architecture up until around 15 years ago was mostly brick and stone. These new structures simply don't fit Toronto's aesthetic. The mismatch is unsightly.
As you drive closer to the downtown you begin to see the true magnitude of the building, especially in the Liberty Village area, where the condos are monstrous in both size and appearance. This is also true of condos that run parallel to the Gardiner just west of Spadina. This huge tract of vacant land would have been the perfect opportunity for the city to build a new mixed-use, mid-rise neighbourhood (as cities like Barcelona and Paris prove, mid-rise can be just as dense as high-rise, but is more liveable and more human). Think of how exciting it would be to have a new neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto. What we seem to have gotten instead was an ugly, soulless development that has caused traffic chaos and tremendous pressure on surrounding neighbourhoods, where residents of the development must go for just about everything.
As you drive towards the CBD, you realize with horror that the Royal York and most of the old skyline is no longer visible. What are visible are more giant glass towers that have both misshapen the city's profile and obscured some of the only decent high-rise architecture left in the city centre. Now one just sees an incoherent jumble of glassy facades with no obvious relation to one another. It's a total travesty. South of the Gardiner even more massive glass towers have sprung up, creating a wall between the city and its greatest asset, the Lake - and it is some ugly-a55 wall. East of the CBD, the glassy behemoths are rising in clusters all over the place, and I can only wonder what is being torn down to make room for these horribly ugly towers? In the middle of Old Toronto, right across from the Flatiron, on a block that as defined by its beautiful Victorian-style brick and stone facades, a massive condo project rises from the rubble. Again, what relation does this ugly glass tower have to the surrounding low and mid-rise neighbourhood of mostly older brick and stone buildings. Who is co-ordinating the building of this crap? Who is looking out for Toronto's best interest? Apparently no one. All the city wants is to collect the development fees and fifty stories of property-tax paying condo dwellers. I'm appalled. As far as I'm concerned, our central core is now UGLY. And with all the high rise condos still slated to be built, it's only going to get worse.
....anyways, I have more to talk about, including the ruining of Queen St. West and what I saw on my walk in the west end, but I've gotta go. I hope others contribute their opinions to this thread. Does anyone think these residential high rises look good? What do you think about having older brick structures demolished to make way for ugly condo towers? How can this be stopped? Why doesn't Toronto ever do anything right?
I'm so friggin' sad to see my city being ruined like this. I'm all for development, but this is not the way to do it! I want to live I a beautiful city!
I also really like the tall skyscrapers we have in our North American cities, i was just in D.C and it was a nice place but id rather wander around Downtown Toronto because of the skyscrapers.
btw, how does a "soulless development" cause traffic chaos?
I emphasize with your pain. The first step is to admit the problem before fixing it. And most people don’t want to admit that Toronto needs serious help on the aesthetic front. The sad part is, the construction boom could have been a golden opportunity to alter the city if it was managed correctly. Yes, the skyline looks great with all the lights off at a distance but the day time and many ground views are just not appealing.
The scary thing is that some people love the condos and cheer them on now matter what gets in their path. I think they psychologically equate them with national pride, economic progress and becoming more like a Chicago or New York. I can imagine the same mentality was probably behind the CN Tower – let’s build the tallest (at the time) freestanding structure and it will be impressive and put the city on the map! I don’t believe the CN Tower, which is not gorgeous either, has become iconic in anyway. And I don’t think building condos is the magic formula to make Toronto like New York. NYC is NYC because of the people, the culture, the history and the character of the neighborhoods – not because of the towers in midtown. We should be focusing on the same, except focus on our history, culture and uniqueness. I agree that we have too many characterless, contrived condo communities that don’t have any soul nor do they feel like NYC. The sad part is that our buildings and architecture reflects our values as a city. And the lack of inspiration & originality and the emphasis on practicality & cutting corners is both evident and sad. My favourite parts of the city remain no where close to the core clusters of condos.
Now I’m not against condos development at all but why can’t we build nice modern ones? Why can’t we put them in locations where they don’t disrupt more older neighborhoods? Why did we destroy most of our historic buildings/neighborhoods in the past? And if we do build in the historic areas we have left, why can’t they blend into their surroundings better with a more classical look? Why don’t they have parks, open space, sculptures, more amenities, and better connections to transportation? In addition to blocking off the Lake, why in the world is the Rogers Center right in the middle of the city too? Why are our subway lines so limited and not connected to the airport? The former was due to a bad decision long time time ago and I don't know how dig up downtown now but there's no excuse in terms of connecting the subway to the airport 20 years ago. Personally, I think we have enough condos and I would like to turn the attention over improving our infrastructure, but I know you can’t collect property taxes on that right? Instead, the talk is continuously about condos and god forbid, a casino. I’m also concerned that we up to our teeth in debt and last time I checked, housing prices have skyrocketed over the last 10 years and income levels are stagnant, and the social ramifications of this are not good either.
Last edited by johnathanc; 04-01-2013 at 02:11 PM..
Lol way too much drama in here about architecture and values - i suppose we should get the architecture police to dumb down demand so that we can concentate on buildings architectural masterpieces that meet the discerning requirements of city data forummers. The reality is the majority of torononians approve of the development because they are choosing to buy and live in these 'atrocities'
Now i agree that we should maintain our architectal gems of the past (some dev is actually integrating old with new that i like)but i also see plenty of parking lots and discusting 70s development being torn down in favour of condos which is not too bad of a trade off. I do agree there should be more squares and sculpures developed to add character to our city something we are not doing.
Some of the condos are pretty boring and uninspired (say pinnacle lol) but i actually like the changing face of toronto and appreciate that we cant have it all. There are a multitude of forces at work fuelling this which isnt all the tales of doom being characterized, not even close. I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. im ready to be attacked now for having a closed mind and having an unbalaced viewpoint because i dont advocate regressing our city back to the 1800s or not advocating building slums and barios to house our growth or maybe we should stunt our growth and refuse immigrants
Btw the airport rail link is finally under construction set to open in 2015
I also really like the tall skyscrapers we have in our North American cities, i was just in D.C and it was a nice place but id rather wander around Downtown Toronto because of the skyscrapers.
btw, how does a "soulless development" cause traffic chaos?
I personally love most of the new developments that are underway, and the glass tower look gives the city a more modern and sophisticated look. As an outsider who arrived in Toronto, I personally find most of inner city neighbourhoods to be gritty and run down. If that's your thing, great, the city has plenty to offer. But for those who want newer, cleaner and more modern living options within the city core, their options have been somewhat limited until now.
My biggest pet peeve is the lack of beautification measures that are utilized within the 905 suburbs. Virtually every suburb is growing, and with all the new plazas, freeways and residential communities being built - I wish more effort would be made to landscape boulevards, build greenways, trails and add more colour to commercial areas and other gathering places. Go to any new upscale US suburb, and there is alot of effort made to make new suburbs aesthetically pleasing. The overuse of brick and concrete would be much less dramatic if it was offset by a contrasting environment.
As an outsider who arrived in Toronto, I personally find most of inner city neighbourhoods to be gritty and run down.
We've also recently arrived in TO from Halifax and that has been one thing that surprised us. Not that there are gritty areas but that there are so many of them. Even areas many consider "nice" we look at say "huh?" It's just a different sense of aesthetics, I guess, which you carry from wherever you are from. Much of North York just looks weary and well-used.
Quick example is to look at the stretch of Yonge in NYCC between Sheppard and Finch. You have several strip mall areas that look transported from 1960, with decaying brick, decrepit facades, dirty looking properties, etc. Like something out of Beirut after a bombing. No effort at all is made to make the properties look modern, refreshed, or somewhat presentable. No one paints or sweeps a damn thing.
Then you have nicer places like the refurbished McDonald's, Empress Walk, and the enigma of City Centre. It has a great library and a brand new modern-looking food court, yet there is a medical clinic off to one side there that hangs like a rotten piece of fruit. Even the scummiest corners of Halifax will eventually open a can of paint and buy some new furniture. There seems to be a distinct lack of pride in many homes and buildings that are a bit shocking considering the swagger and puffed chest the city puts forward.
We are hoping that the new development projects put pressure on some of the old crappy buildings to either renovate or be bulldozed and replaced. Look at Sheppard Centre Mall. Walking in there is like going back in time to a suburban mall circa 1983. Dark, dreary, lifeless. It's astounding that there is such complacency and apathy when it comes to keeping things fresh and modern, especially in an area that promotes itself as a second downtown.
Maybe with Cineplex moving up the road to Empress, Riocan will finally kick a few bucks towards a facelift for that mall. Things are cleaning up, but not nearly fast enough.
For the past two years I've been living in Mississauga, waiting for work opportunities to pan out so that I can move back to the city. In this short time that I've been away, a lot has changed, and since I don't get a chance to go downtown as often as I would like (I'm in the city twice a week, but not downtown) I really notice the changes to the shape and appearance of the city when I drive in on the Gardiner a few times a year.
I've read a lot about the condo-building boom in the city and have been very worried that a) the condos were going to continue being ugly structures that simply don't fit with the city's older architecture, b) that so many condos are being built that they would dramatically change the aesthetic character of the city (for the worse) in some places, and c) that developers would be allowed to build tracts of condos like they do in the suburb so that from far away it looks very dense and urban, but at ground level you realize that you are standing in a development, not a neighbourhood. Big difference.
In the last week I've driven into the city twice on the Gardiner, once all the way east to where it ends, giving me an excellent opportunity to see the overall effect of all this building and also to visit some of the most affected areas on foot to see how the changes feel at street level. My first impressions of all the residential towers (because most of this new development is residential, especially outside the downtown core) is that they are totally uninspired, poorly designed, and often just plain ugly. They are typically giant glass boxes, which is a terrible choice of building materials for our climate because it is an awful insulator, making the units freezing in the winter and baking hot in the summer. Toronto is also a city of brick and stone. All of its architecture up until around 15 years ago was mostly brick and stone. These new structures simply don't fit Toronto's aesthetic. The mismatch is unsightly.
As you drive closer to the downtown you begin to see the true magnitude of the building, especially in the Liberty Village area, where the condos are monstrous in both size and appearance. This is also true of condos that run parallel to the Gardiner just west of Spadina. This huge tract of vacant land would have been the perfect opportunity for the city to build a new mixed-use, mid-rise neighbourhood (as cities like Barcelona and Paris prove, mid-rise can be just as dense as high-rise, but is more liveable and more human). Think of how exciting it would be to have a new neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto. What we seem to have gotten instead was an ugly, soulless development that has caused traffic chaos and tremendous pressure on surrounding neighbourhoods, where residents of the development must go for just about everything.
As you drive towards the CBD, you realize with horror that the Royal York and most of the old skyline is no longer visible. What are visible are more giant glass towers that have both misshapen the city's profile and obscured some of the only decent high-rise architecture left in the city centre. Now one just sees an incoherent jumble of glassy facades with no obvious relation to one another. It's a total travesty. South of the Gardiner even more massive glass towers have sprung up, creating a wall between the city and its greatest asset, the Lake - and it is some ugly-a55 wall. East of the CBD, the glassy behemoths are rising in clusters all over the place, and I can only wonder what is being torn down to make room for these horribly ugly towers? In the middle of Old Toronto, right across from the Flatiron, on a block that as defined by its beautiful Victorian-style brick and stone facades, a massive condo project rises from the rubble. Again, what relation does this ugly glass tower have to the surrounding low and mid-rise neighbourhood of mostly older brick and stone buildings. Who is co-ordinating the building of this crap? Who is looking out for Toronto's best interest? Apparently no one. All the city wants is to collect the development fees and fifty stories of property-tax paying condo dwellers. I'm appalled. As far as I'm concerned, our central core is now UGLY. And with all the high rise condos still slated to be built, it's only going to get worse.
....anyways, I have more to talk about, including the ruining of Queen St. West and what I saw on my walk in the west end, but I've gotta go. I hope others contribute their opinions to this thread. Does anyone think these residential high rises look good? What do you think about having older brick structures demolished to make way for ugly condo towers? How can this be stopped? Why doesn't Toronto ever do anything right?
I'm so friggin' sad to see my city being ruined like this. I'm all for development, but this is not the way to do it! I want to live I a beautiful city!
I agree as do many..that the Condo thing is getting out of hand, the entire core of the city is now littered with glass condo's...UGLY!
We've also recently arrived in TO from Halifax and that has been one thing that surprised us. Not that there are gritty areas but that there are so many of them. Even areas many consider "nice" we look at say "huh?" It's just a different sense of aesthetics, I guess, which you carry from wherever you are from. Much of North York just looks weary and well-used.
Quick example is to look at the stretch of Yonge in NYCC between Sheppard and Finch. You have several strip mall areas that look transported from 1960, with decaying brick, decrepit facades, dirty looking properties, etc. Like something out of Beirut after a bombing. No effort at all is made to make the properties look modern, refreshed, or somewhat presentable. No one paints or sweeps a damn thing.
Then you have nicer places like the refurbished McDonald's, Empress Walk, and the enigma of City Centre. It has a great library and a brand new modern-looking food court, yet there is a medical clinic off to one side there that hangs like a rotten piece of fruit. Even the scummiest corners of Halifax will eventually open a can of paint and buy some new furniture. There seems to be a distinct lack of pride in many homes and buildings that are a bit shocking considering the swagger and puffed chest the city puts forward.
We are hoping that the new development projects put pressure on some of the old crappy buildings to either renovate or be bulldozed and replaced. Look at Sheppard Centre Mall. Walking in there is like going back in time to a suburban mall circa 1983. Dark, dreary, lifeless. It's astounding that there is such complacency and apathy when it comes to keeping things fresh and modern, especially in an area that promotes itself as a second downtown.
Maybe with Cineplex moving up the road to Empress, Riocan will finally kick a few bucks towards a facelift for that mall. Things are cleaning up, but not nearly fast enough.
Dude, you should go a little further west to Downsview. Check out Keele and Finch, Jane and Finch, Jane and Shoreham, Jane and Chalkfarm, or go down to Mt. Dennis around Weston Rd. east of Jane if you want to see grittiness in Toronto. The east end of the downtown around Cabbagetown and Regent Park, or Triangle Junction, Dovercourt north of DuPont, Old Weston Rd., Rogers Rd. and Oakwood, Parkdale, parts of Riverdale, and many other areas. These areas are some of the most desirable in the city and are gritty but beautiful. That's the way Toronto is. The best neighbourhoods have a faded charm and beauty that gives it an authentic, historical look. Some of the hottest, most expensive neighbourhoods in Toronto's West End are gritty, faded, and full of character, but not dirty in the sense that there's trash all over the streets.
From previous posts you've made about this subject, it seems like you haven't visited a lot of North American cities, because Toronto's grit doesn't even compare to what you see in most American cities. It sounds like maybe the suburbs are more suitable for you than Toronto proper, because the kind of grit you complain about is the norm rather than the exception in most of the city. But this grit that you don't like is what many Torontonians love about the city. Check out the area around Dundas and Ossington. Gritty as hell and one of the hottest neighbourhoods in the city right now. You couldn't find a house there for less than 750,000 if you tried, never mind all the Victorians in the area that easily top a mil. You may have to adjust your aesthetic standards or consider moving to Oakville, or even a little further up Yonge to Thornhill.
Dude, you should go a little further west to Downsview. Check out Keele and Finch, Jane and Finch, Jane and Shoreham, Jane and Chalkfarm, or go down to Mt. Dennis around Weston Rd. east of Jane if you want to see grittiness in Toronto. The east end of the downtown around Cabbagetown and Regent Park, or Triangle Junction, Dovercourt north of DuPont, Old Weston Rd., Rogers Rd. and Oakwood, Parkdale, parts of Riverdale, and many other areas. These areas are some of the most desirable in the city and are gritty but beautiful. That's the way Toronto is. The best neighbourhoods have a faded charm and beauty that gives it an authentic, historical look. Some of the hottest, most expensive neighbourhoods in Toronto's West End are gritty, faded, and full of character, but not dirty in the sense that there's trash all over the streets.
From previous posts you've made about this subject, it seems like you haven't visited a lot of North American cities, because Toronto's grit doesn't even compare to what you see in most American cities. It sounds like maybe the suburbs are more suitable for you than Toronto proper, because the kind of grit you complain about is the norm rather than the exception in most of the city. But this grit that you don't like is what many Torontonians love about the city. Check out the area around Dundas and Ossington. Gritty as hell and one of the hottest neighbourhoods in the city right now. You couldn't find a house there for less than 750,000 if you tried, never mind all the Victorians in the area that easily top a mil. You may have to adjust your aesthetic standards or consider moving to Oakville, or even a little further up Yonge to Thornhill.
With all due respect, I think you are being overly dismissive of NYEd's comments.
It is true that Toronto has very little blight compared to the most large US cities, but that does not necessarily mean that it has an appreciable amount of urban grandeur. Much of Toronto is gritty, worn but also bustling and occupied.
I also think that in your comments about the suburbs you are confusing newness with good maintenance. Go to Europe or even US cities like New York, Boston and Chicago and see what their older nice (or even just "OK") areas look like. For some reason they look better than similar parts of Toronto and this is true of other Canadian cities as well. I hardly think that newness vs. oldness enters into it when we are talking about Paris, London, Munich, Amsterdam or even Manhattan.
Perhaps it's just because here no one thinks it is worth it to maintain stuff like this:
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