Building Boom Set to Vault Toronto Past Chicago in Skyscraper Rankings

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by niwell

Oh cool, good to know that building has been fully renoed / reoccupied! 2019 was the first year I haven't gone to Chicago in quite a while, so I have watched it come along over the years. Stayed just up the street from there many times, though ended up going to other areas after it became just a bit too gentrified.

i haven't hung out in wicker park really in 10 years. friends and acquaintances (including my wife) moved to logan square, then various parts of the near and far southside/st. louis/detroit etc. i have no clue what the 2020 version of 2005 wicker park is.

2005 wicker park was the center of midwest cool, though. i've got a bunch of holga photos from around that intersection from that time.

[mrnyc]

oh cool -- the other angles are just as interesting. lots to look at.

[Maldive]

Courtesy of Norman Li:

A slice of Toronto's southcore explosion featuring the first of 2 tower CIBC builds that will link across the rail corridor with a park (thank goodness).

There wasn't too much here south of Front Street (the original shoreline btw). Now too much to describe. Will leave it to others to document the change ;-) Left side will host HP's quite lovely supertall one day (phase one u/c-supertall phase 2 I think).

[maru2501]

logan is now worse than wicker for gentrification.. wicker much grittier

[kool maudit]

Southcore = Streeterville but it's your first time playing SimCity.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Southcore = Streeterville but it's your first time playing SimCity.

Toronto south of Union Station exemplifies the differences between Toronto and many U.S. cities, esp. the stagnant Clevelands. So many American cities feel underused, with impressive bones but a half-empty feeling, like they built all this cool stuff but the people forgot to show up. Toronto brought all the people and energy but forgot the stuff.

Toronto feels extremely vibrant and lived-in, but the infrastructure is almost comical. Try and walk along the "lakefront" near the Toronto islands ferries. It's unworthy of Sarnia. But the budding towers along the Gardiner look like Hong Kong.

[Centropolis]

more toronto canyon views.

wlrn.org

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Toronto south of Union Station exemplifies the differences between Toronto and many U.S. cities, esp. the stagnant Clevelands. So many American cities feel underused, with impressive bones but a half-empty feeling, like they built all this cool stuff but the people forgot to show up.

toronto is valuable from my point of view because its sort of as if you put a supercharger on a mid-sized first wave midwestern city, gives me hope that rustbelt cities can build their way out of their various holes, build over immense scars. this isn't to be completely pessimistic about the current situation, either, but i mean i'd take a fraction of torontos development horsepower.

[Crawford]

Pretty sure that's Miami. Either that or global warming has really kicked in.

[iheartthed]

^Definitely Miami. That Burger King was discussed on another thread a couple of months ago.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

So many American cities feel underused, with impressive bones but a half-empty feeling, like they built all this cool stuff but the people forgot to show up.

more like, "and plenty of people used to be there, but then some black people showed up and all of the white folks headed for the hills in terror".

Originally Posted by Centropolis

toronto is valuable from my point of view because its sort of as if you put a supercharger on a mid-sized first wave midwestern city, gives me hope that rustbelt cities can build their way out of their various holes, build over immense scars. this isn't to be completely pessimistic about the current situation, either, but i mean i'd take a fraction of torontos development horsepower.

if you could persuade 100,000 immigrants/year to move into cleveland or detroit or st. louis, and sustain that for decades, then you'd get all kinds of scar mending going on.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Toronto south of Union Station exemplifies the differences between Toronto and many U.S. cities, esp. the stagnant Clevelands. So many American cities feel underused, with impressive bones but a half-empty feeling, like they built all this cool stuff but the people forgot to show up. Toronto brought all the people and energy but forgot the stuff.

Toronto feels extremely vibrant and lived-in, but the infrastructure is almost comical. Try and walk along the "lakefront" near the Toronto islands ferries. It's unworthy of Sarnia. But the budding towers along the Gardiner look like Hong Kong.

I still find that area a bit surreal. We lived in Toronto when I was a kid in the '80s, and my getting into that view from the Gardiner is probably why I am here.

But it was all so clear then: coming from the DVP, a big city was on your right and a big lake was on the left. Sure, there was the odd factory or warehouse, weird train stuff. But that was just a kind of beach, almost. The shoreline was the cliff formed by the Royal York and the bank towers, and the Gardiner/train tracks/Front Street was the seawall.

Now there's a lot more stuff but it has trouble coalescing.

In fairness to the city fathers, though, that '80s lakefront was a big task, and the City Beautiful days were long gone.



Cleveland's lake- and riverfronts aren't really any different than pre-boom Toronto, though. The lack of improbable towers isn't really redeemed by any great visual cohesion or meaning there.

[JManc]

^ That's pretty much how Toronto looked when I went as a kid in the early 80's. We also moved there. Kinda wish we did...

Originally Posted by Crawford

Pretty sure that's Miami. Either that or global warming has really kicked in.

It is Miami. I remember that BK being mentioned on this forum which is why it stuck out when we drove buy it this summer.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Cleveland's lake- and riverfronts aren't really any different than pre-boom Toronto, though. The lack of improbable towers isn't really redeemed by any great visual cohesion or meaning there.

Yeah, Cleveland has a terrible lakefront, but the city has a ton of City Beautiful stuff. A DC-like downtown mall, surrounded by neo-classical buildings. Monumental library, art museum, orchestra hall. Lots of necklace-like Olmstead parks. A vast public square and train terminal. It just lacks people. It has grander bones than some metros 3x the size.

[Centropolis]

2nd-half twentieth century toronto really seems like it had this vibe of having quit its job as a half-ignored utilitarian workman of the empire, trying to make sense of what it now had to work with to remake itself and just started pumping iron (or whatever) like a lunatic .

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

2nd-half twentieth century toronto really seems like it had this vibe of having quit its job as a utilitarian workman of the empire, trying to make sense of what it now had to work with to remake itself and just started pumping iron like a lunatic.

toronto was also gifted alpha status within canada (to a degree) when quebec decided that language was more important than money.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

toronto was also gifted alpha status within canada (to a degree) when quebec decided that language was more important than money.

yeah it also got a nice inheritance. helps.

just seems like maybe it didnt have the same level of control over its destiny when it was tied to london so much. there's something to be said for working with what you got.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Cleveland has a terrible lakefront, but the city has a ton of City Beautiful stuff. A DC-like downtown mall, surrounded by neo-classical buildings. Monumental library, art museum, orchestra hall. Lots of necklace-like Olmstead parks. A vast public square and train terminal. It just lacks people. It has grander bones than some metros 3x the size.

Yeah, it does have some beautiful elements. That 1910-30 boom gave incredible gifts.

The trouble with Cleveland is that it destroyed so much, it really just tore its guts out. And it has that Detroit-like frame house scale, it's just that bit too sparse to support commercial strips with contemporary household sizes. What ends up happening is that downtown itself becomes a sort of monument, and life in even the inner-city areas is often lived in a suburban manner involving cars, box stores etc.

But yes, it has some lovely early 20th stuff going on.

As an aside, while Toronto lacks the City Beautiful monumentality of those midwestern giants, it does have a vernacular of its own from that time that I think is easily missed if you are looking for, and missing, that US-style stuff.

The manner in which the U of T and Queen's Park are embedded in their neighbourhoods is a part of this. I have noticed people visiting from over here picking up on that area and what to their eyes was a kind of hybrid "Englishness" thing that really stuck out. Now I see it, but I never really clicked into it before. I think was really after that whole prewar US aesthetic myself. I think at that time I almost measured cities by their approximation to the New York of a certain era. Some of my old posts about Montreal have a bit of that in them.

Prewar Toronto was not Chicago, but it wasn't Timmins either. Montreal had a bit more stuff but there were a lot of big families in Toronto and a lot of fortunes. The things they built have a particular kind of Richmond-and-Kew-go-to-America feel that is different from the midwestern US giants but in line with things you'd see in Melbourne or Adelaide.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

2nd-half twentieth century toronto really seems like it had this vibe of having quit its job as a half-ignored utilitarian workman of the empire, trying to make sense of what it now had to work with to remake itself and just started pumping iron (or whatever) like a lunatic .

It's a more uncanny city than I gave it credit for being. It's in the uncanny valley from a few perspectives.

My view on Canada and its cities is a bit different after nearly a decade away from them.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

if you could persuade 100,000 immigrants/year to move into cleveland or detroit or st. louis, and sustain that for decades, then you'd get all kinds of scar mending going on.

Midwest cities need to get their heads out of the sand and start by fixing their shitty anti-urban policies. Then we can get to immigration.