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It's those 1-2 storey re-purposed 19th c shacks that I adore about Toronto. There's nothing like that here. This whole damned city looks like it
popped up in the middle of the 60's.
The DT core has been growing by a steady 10-12K people per year now for the last 11 years. The projection isn't necessarily a stretch if things continue.
Wider side walks would be great, but this is not currently the case and it gets even worse on Garbage pick up days.
I work down town, but different parts of down town have different features. I live in South East Toronto, but the TTC does not literally connect all areas very well in a timely mannor. I work about a 15 minute walk from the subway line. The bus service is this area is not the faster so walking is more practical. Different parts of the city have very different features. I can understand the need to very tall builds, but am not a fan of the idea. It is a personal preferences. I would perfer a mix and not areas looking this ...
This is likely why I am pretty satisfied living is South East Toronto !
I think we can all cherry pick certain areas of the DT that we don't like as we can parts we do. Cityplace isn't fantastic but Cityplace is one of the older crops of Condo's in the core of the last decade boom. The latest batch has gotten much better. Take a look at 88 Scott, Massey Tower, Indx Condo's, Theatre Tower, Aura, One Bloor west, Picasso as individual examples and they will speak for themselves. Plus these projects are also within already established nabe's with established infill that is often much older. Cityplace is a whole new nabe which has its drawbacks because there isn't anything established anchoring it.
Proposals are also getting much much better. I think we are two to three years away from some very big and very distinctive projects that will anchor the skyline like FCP and the CN Tower did back in the 70's. No city with the residential development Toronto has had, is having and will continue to have will have marquee projects going up left right and centre. We should be happy for the growth in all its good and bad - ask other cities how they feel about stagnancy, they'd love to have our problems!
So the next time you look at Cityplace, instead of just thinking about how much better they could have been, think about all the vibrancy those people who live in them bring to the heart of the city.
This is an interesting read on a city that not long ago was larger and more important than Toronto. Looks at its core but more alarmingly areas just straddling it. Thing of that core and than think of Toronto and areas straddling it. Toronto is filling in lots by the week. Not so for some peer cities on not just our continent, but just a few hours away from us!
Botti keeps talking about Barcelona. Barcelona is actually an incredibly dense city by western standards. This is an aerial (below) of L'eixample district. It goes to show indeed you can achieve incredible levels of density with mid-rise infill without scrapers. My opinion however is that after a few monotonous blocks they become very very repetitive. Each has its own style I suppose but it is that constant 'sameness' and shape about the architectural inspiration of each city block that lacks well, inspiration. There is litter variation in height and every city block in L'example is almost a carbon copy of the other.
Now to Barca's credit, there are some extraordinary architectural examples in the city that Toronto never will have, Gaudi has absolute masterpieces strewn about the city (need I introduce Casa Mila or Sagrada Familia or the Gothic quarter which are simply incredible. Las Ramblas, no city in Canada has a street that would compare and is on the level of Istiklal in Istanbul in terms of vibrancy and character. However, Barca isn't just those great examples and whole swaths of it is rather monotonous and rather dull. There is good ped vibrancy and lots of cafe's, markets and shopping for sure, but there is a lot of visual monotony nonetheless so in any analysis of a city, I think we need to be honest and balanced.
Well Barcelona does have the sameness in terms of buildings but it is at least the pretty kind of sameness we can only dream to have. In Toronto or other NA cities, we also have miles and miles of cookie cutter homes that are exactly like each other, and that's the ugly kind of sameness. I would choose the former in a heartbeat. Toronto may have some great high rises, but the fact is 90% of them are unsinpiring and repetitive too, all the green/blue glass condos with balconies dotting entire downtown. We are getting some high quality ones as you correctly pointed out but unfortunately the boring ones will still dominate our skyline. What makes it worse is the fact that most of the towers have very boring retail at the base: bank branches, Starbucks and dry cleans. It is not the case in Barcelona.
My point isn't about the beauty of buildings. That can't be reversed. It is the lack of good public space, pedestrian streets and vibrancy I am mostly concerned about. Barcelona isn't just about its nice buildings. It's street designs are for transit, bikes, buses as well as cars. I was amazed how well functioning they are. On the other hand, even in downtown cars still take too much road space in Toronto. It is sad that only the 510 has its dedicated lanes while the super busy King and Queen streetcars still need to share roads with cars. We also have Bay st, University ave, Jarvis st, Richmond and Adelaide etc right in the core which essentially serve as a freeway for rapidly moving cars. Exactly how important are cars? We also have Bathurst and Sherbourne etc which are so boring and have near to zero retail. And we still have zero pedestrian only street. This is so backward - exactly who HAVE to drive on Yonge st? So many times I see idiots trying to make a right turn at Yonge/queen, sometimes even left turns. Let's even not talk about building subways and the Gardiner drama- not exactly what I call progressive. In comparison to other cities our parks are also pathetic. The don valley for example is our greatest green space asset yet we build a highway on it killing any possibility of letting people enjoy it.
I am sure the city as of now is heading towards the right direction given everything I am seeing but it is hardly fast enough or bold enough. In 2016 we should stop using the "new continent" excuse. It is the urge to please suburban drivers who only walk to and from their cars in their life that prevent real good planning from happening.
Last edited by botticelli; 04-23-2016 at 06:28 AM..
Well Barcelona does have the sameness in terms of buildings but it is at least the pretty kind of sameness we can only dream to have. In Toronto or other NA cities, we also have miles and miles of cookie cutter homes that are exactly like each other, and that's the ugly kind of sameness. I would choose the former in a heartbeat. Toronto may have some great high rises, but the fact is 90% of them are unsinpiring and repetitive too, all the green/blue glass condos with balconies dotting entire downtown. We are getting some high quality ones as you correctly pointed out but unfortunately the boring ones will still dominate our skyline. What makes it worse is the fact that most of the towers have very boring retail at the base: bank branches, Starbucks and dry cleans. It is not the case in Barcelona.
I had to laugh when you said starbucks because it has indeed infiltrated Barca and there are quite a few of them as there are quite a few Mc'Ds, BK's etc and many of these places are at high profile intersections of the city! I personally wouldn't choose every aspect of Barca over old Toronto. I'd choose some aspects of it in an instant.. We are speaking of Europe however and not Canamerica - I'd take our employment rates over Spain all day and everyday but street vibrancy, your avg Euro, Latin American or Asian city will always pummel us Canamericans - this you know and is largely cultural. Your preference in architectural style of the Barca blocks as I call them have advantages, but they are dull and monolithic over and over again and FAR from being 'pretty' as you call them. I wouldn't have designed a city myself using this template - even a high density one! I actually prefer the urbanism of Lisbon as an example over Barca, but that is my preference and Lisboa isn't as dense as Barco so different demand, different development but i'm sure it would have been more interesting in Lisboa.
As for Toronto, it is now densifying but it isn't doing that in the early 1900's and not in Europe. Its doing it in late 20th and 21st centuries. We simply don't build infill like Europe did century/centuries ago - can that be expected? They have the history that we largely don't have and are more established. Its unfortunate that for us, growth is taking place where glass buildings and value engineering trump architectural merit and details. I just wanted to provide balance here - not every monolithic city block in Barca is beautiful and neither is every suburban stretch of that city or Madrid or Paris either - far from it and a walk through these cities in entirely would show that quickly. I also noticed in barca there are also a lot of abandoned stores/shops that are perpetually closed and have graffiti laced steel shudders blocking the store. I saw many examples of 'ugly' in Barca botti - just an older concrete ugly than the newer glass condo box ugly. As for retail, the problem is where people want to shop. We live in big box store culture. I'd love for lots more smaller and pedestrian retail but people aren't supporting them as much as the home sense's and Marshalls of the world. Is it unfortunate, yes but its where demand is so developers will build what people want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli
My point isn't about the beauty of buildings. That can't be reversed. It is the lack of good public space, pedestrian streets and vibrancy I am mostly concerned about. Barcelona isn't just about its nice buildings. It's street designs are for transit, bikes, buses as well as cars. I was amazed how well functioning they are. On the other hand, even in downtown cars still take too much road space in Toronto. It is sad that only the 510 has its dedicated lanes while the super busy King and Queen streetcars still need to share roads with cars. We also have Bay st, University ave, Jarvis st, Richmond and Adelaide etc right in the core which essentially serve as a freeway for rapidly moving cars. Exactly how important are cars? We also have Bathurst and Sherbourne etc which are so boring and have near to zero retail. And we still have zero pedestrian only street. This is so backward - exactly who HAVE to drive on Yonge st? So many times I see idiots trying to make a right turn at Yonge/queen, sometimes even left turns. Let's even not talk about building subways and the Gardiner drama- not exactly what I call progressive. In comparison to other cities our parks are also pathetic. The don valley for example is our greatest green space asset yet we build a highway on it killing any possibility of letting people enjoy it.
When you are speaking of cars you are speaking of culture. We had this discussion in the Canada forum and you are in Canamerica.. Car is more important here and in the U.S than Europe. Should cities be built where they are not so important, I agree but ultimately it is what it is and i'm not sure how much we can change it. I'd be on board with you to create more pedestrian only streets in the core of Toronto! As for beauty of buildings, i'm not so much talking about that either and that is why I said to KLM - even the ugliest areas of the core like Cityplace are still attracting people to the core. People are the most important aspect of vibrancy! As for the new projects, you underestimate the impact they will have. The ratio of good to avg to bad is changing and as these are built that'll change as well. Often people just talk about the tall condo's too. There are oooooodles of mid-rise projects going up across the city that will make a difference particularly east and west of the DT core. Toronto isn't getting it all right but its growing and putting lots of infill over parking lots and low density crap from the past. There are a lot of cities not able to say that!
Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli
I am sure the city as of now is heading towards the right direction given everything I am seeing but it is hardly fast enough or bold enough. In 2016 we should stop using the "new continent" excuse. It is the urge to please suburban drivers who only walk to and from their cars in their life that prevent real good planning from happening.
Well the city is going in a better direction than it was in the 70's/80's and early 90's that is for sure. Is it 'ideal' - no but I like that the city is adding so much more infil and is densifying. I think its a work in progress but will only improve with every passing year. You say 'new continent' excuse.. Well what city that is densifying at Toronto's clip with 2016 growth is doing it right in terms of built form in your opinion? I mean Barca isn't really developing in as transformative fashion these days as Toronto in terms of residential infil - they already have swaths of dense infill that was built over a century ago. You can't compare growth in 2016 with growth in the early 1900's. Everyone prefers 'old' dev to new'. Old Scrapers are always 'better' and more inspired than new. Who is building 'New' and doing a great job of it?
As for bold and speed.. Well I think most people would disagree about the speed part and say that Toronto is developing at more than an acceptable clip. Most cities in the west are frozen in time in terms of dev compared to T.O lol.. As for the bold part I would agree but again, you are talking about a culture here and it may not always reward what you personally prefer. It will reward the the masses, what they want and also it will reward their indifference! I would love more pedestrian friendly and civic space development and that would happen quickly if we all demanded that be a bigger focus, but i'm not sure the majority of your colleagues in the city are as passionate about that as you are. You may think i'm not, but I actually am. I'm just trying to balance things here, a lot of cities would kill to have the growth and dev we are having. The fact that we are fighting over how it develops is a great problem to have. We could be talking about large parts of the city being abandoned and dying and we can both agree - that is not Toronto's problem.
Barcelona is indeed very dense, the urban area is about 4-5x more dense than Toronto's.
But there is more to Barcelona than the Eixample and Old Quarter. The Eixample is surrounded by many more neighbourhoods which have a lot more mid-late 20th century buildings but still have an urban built form.
What part of Lisbon do you like? It has quite a variety of neighbourhoods, some of which seem quite nice, others are more meh...
Barcelona is indeed very dense, the urban area is about 4-5x more dense than Toronto's.
But there is more to Barcelona than the Eixample and Old Quarter. The Eixample is surrounded by many more neighbourhoods which have a lot more mid-late 20th century buildings but still have an urban built form.
What part of Lisbon do you like? It has quite a variety of neighbourhoods, some of which seem quite nice, others are more meh...
For sure there are other parts of Barcelona than L'eixample and I appreciate the urbanity - i'm just not all that thrilled with it for reasons I detailed. Last time I was in Barca was in Sants Montjuic. Did it have an urban built form - sure and leaps and bounds better than what we have in terms of North York and Scarborough. That said, I'm just not gushing over every part of its urban form.. Don't get me wrong - there are many things to be learned from Barcelona but I wouldn't take it all!
Sounds like you might like some of the smaller cities in Europe. A lot of the time they can be quite interesting in a way that the big "grand cities" of Europe aren't.
Examples -
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