The not so Great Canadian White Elephant Thread

[MolsonExport]

Show us your city's boondoggles.

My hometown of Montreal is no slouch. There is the famously expensive and chronically empty Olympic Stadium (Aka, the Big O, aka the Big Owe).

But then there is Mirabel International Airport.

The insane distance plus a lack of direct/train access why the latter airport ended up as Canada's biggest ever White Elephant.

Downtown Montreal to Montreal Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport: 11 miles (17.7 kms)
Downtown Montreal to Montreal Mirabel International Airport: 34.8 miles (!!) (56 kms)

It was the largest airport in the world at the time it was opened.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Mirabelintlarpttransportlinks.png/1024px-Mirabelintlarpttransportlinks.png

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/NKN-2007-08-05_144714_MIRABEL_AIRPORT%28Yvan_Leduc_author_for_Wikipedia%29.Jpg/1024px-NKN-2007-08-05_144714_MIRABEL_AIRPORT%28Yvan_Leduc_author_for_Wikipedia%29.Jpg
wikipedia

Montréal–Mirabel International Airport opened for business on October 4, 1975, in time for the 1976 Summer Olympics. In the rush to get the airport open in time for the Olympics, it was decided to transfer flights to Mirabel in two stages. International flights were transferred immediately, while domestic and US flights would continue to be served by Dorval airport until 1982.

The federal government predicted that Dorval would be completely saturated by 1985 as part of its justification for building Mirabel. They also projected that 20 million passengers would be passing through Montreal's airports annually, with 17 million of those through Mirabel. However, three factors dramatically reduced the amount of projected air traffic into Dorval.

After 1976, Mirabel and Dorval began to decline in importance because of the increasing use in the 1980s of longer-range jets that did not need to refuel in Montreal before crossing the Atlantic; the use of longer-range aircraft was made more attractive by national energy policies that provided Montreal refineries with feedstock at prices substantially below world prices, starting in 1975 and ending in the 1980s with the drop in world oil prices.

In addition, the simultaneous operation of Mirabel (international flights) and Dorval (continental flights) (see below) made Montreal less attractive to international airlines. A European passenger who wanted to travel to another destination in Canada or fly to the United States had to take an hour-long bus ride from Mirabel to Dorval. The complicated transfer process put Montreal at a significant disadvantage. The planned but unbuilt highways and incomplete train routes compounded the problem. The international airlines responded by shifting their routes to Toronto. One of the obstacles of the planned transfer from Dorval to Mirabel was Air Canada's desire to keep flights in Dorval (and its proximity with AVEOS workshops) and the connections in Pearson Airport.[12]

By 1991, Mirabel and Dorval were handling only a total of 8 million passengers and 112,000 tons of cargo annually, while Toronto was handling 18.5 million passengers and 312,000 tons of cargo. Mirabel alone never managed to exceed 3 million passengers per year in its existence as a passenger airport. It soon became apparent that Montreal did not need a second airport.[13][14]
The control tower, Mirabel Airport

To ensure Mirabel's survival, all international flights for Montreal were banned from Dorval from 1975 to 1997. However, public pressure in support of Dorval prevented its planned closure. As a result, Dorval's continued existence made Mirabel comparatively expensive and unattractive to airlines and travellers alike. While Dorval was only 20 minutes away from the city core, it took 50 minutes to get to Mirabel even in ideal traffic conditions. Passengers who used Montreal in transit had to take long bus rides for connections from domestic to international flights, and Montrealers grew to resent Mirabel as they were forced to travel far out of town for international flights.

Many international airlines, faced with the stark economic reality of operating two Canadian points of entry, opted to bypass Montreal altogether by landing instead in Toronto with its better domestic and American connections. The simultaneous operating of both Montreal airports resulted in Dorval being overtaken in traffic first by Toronto, then Vancouver and finally relegated to fourth by Calgary, as international airlines were slow to return to Dorval after it resumed handling international flights in 1997. Only Air Transat held out at Mirabel until the very end, operating the last commercial flight which departed to Paris on October 31, 2004.[15]

Over time, the decreasing passenger flights began to take a toll on businesses within Mirabel. Particularly notable was the 354-room Chateau Aeroport-Mirabel hotel adjacent to the terminal, which was forced to shut down in 2002 after 25 years of operation.
wikipedia

The vision:
https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/dfw-mp-noah-jeppson_orig.jpg

The end of the line:
https://assets.skiesmag.com/images/news/article_files/460515819207950.jpg
Airport history

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Biodome_de_Montreal.jpg/1920px-Biodome_de_Montreal.jpg

Olympic Stadium[1] (French: Stade olympique) is a multi-purpose stadium in Montreal, Canada, located at Olympic Park in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district of the city. Built in the mid-1970s as the main venue for the 1976 Summer Olympics, it is nicknamed "The Big O", a reference to both its name and to the doughnut-shape of the permanent component of the stadium's roof. It is also disparagingly referred to as "The Big Owe" in reference to the high cost to the city of its construction and of hosting the 1976 Olympics as a whole.[6] The tower standing next to the stadium, the Montreal Tower, is the tallest inclined tower in the world with an angle elevation of 45 degrees.

The stadium is the largest by seating capacity in Canada. After the Olympics, artificial turf was installed and it became the home of Montreal's professional baseball and football teams. The Montreal Alouettes of the CFL returned to their previous home of Molson Stadium in 1998 for regular season games, but continued to use Olympic Stadium for playoff and Grey Cup games until 2012. Following the 2004 baseball season, the Expos relocated to Washington, D.C., to become the Washington Nationals. The stadium currently serves as a multipurpose facility for special events (e.g. concerts, trade shows) with a permanent seating capacity of 56,040.[1] The capacity is expandable with temporary seating. CF Montréal (formerly known as Montreal Impact) of Major League Soccer (MLS) has used the venue when demand for tickets justifies the large capacity or when the weather restricts outdoor play at nearby Saputo Stadium in the spring months.

The stadium has not had a main tenant since the Expos left in 2004. Despite decades of use, the stadium's history of numerous structural and financial problems has largely branded it a white elephant.
wikipedia

Show us your city's Mirabels and Big Owes.

[Innsertnamehere]

Toronto's is the Sheppard subway - some stations average as little as 2,500 passengers a day.

https://i.cbc.ca/1.5143589.1558459489!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/toronto-bessarion-subway-station-wikimedia-commons.jpg

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/how-bessarion-one-of-toronto-s-least-used-subway-stations-offers-lessons-for-avoiding-bad-planning-1.5141013

[Innsertnamehere]

Hamilton's isn't a white elephant so much as it is wasted, fallow land as a result of a failed stadium plan. in the 2000's Hamilton City Council planned for a new CFL stadium closer to downtown and as a result purchased 4 city blocks and demolished them, before later deciding to rebuild a new stadium in the same location as the existing one in the east end of the city.

The land still sits empty nearly a decade after the new stadium's completion:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.2667384,-79.8717837,417m/data=!3m1!1e3

https://i.imgur.com/WrKRSG6.png

[esquire]

I never passed through it, but I always found Mirabel very fascinating. Perhaps the most over the top "think big" project in a country that is seldom prone to thinking big when it comes to infrastructure.

I wonder if the plan might ever be resurrected? It's not impossible to imagine Montreal's airport traffic someday outgrowing Dorval. Although I guess a lot of the land surrounding Mirabel was sold off so the original vision couldn't be realized without jumping through all of those nasty expropriation hoops all over again.

[someone123]

The big thing they didn't realize in Montreal was that by shifting the airport from Dorval to Mirabel they would instantly make Montreal 1.5 degrees colder, rendering it an unlivable hellhole, and drop it back several places in the SSP freeze list competition. Maybe this is why they pulled the plug.

[hipster duck]

Mirabel will win this thread for sure. Imagine spending the money to build a major international airport only to abandon it a generation later?

Some other Toronto-area white elephants, at least in my opinion:

1. Bloomington GO train station:

https://www.gotransit.com/static_files/gotransit/assets/ContentImages/StationStopsParkingImages/Bloomington%20GO/520x293_GO%20web%20pg%20Images_3.jpg

Source (https://www.gotransit.com/en/stations-stops-parking/bloomington)

$82 million was spent to build an enormous GO train station complete with a multistory parkade at the end of the little-used Richmond Hill line. That line only sees 4 trains out in the morning, and 4 trains returning in the evening, and it's never going to become a frequent transit line because it's either sharing tracks with CN's mainline or it takes a very twisty and slow path through the Don River valley that serves absolutely no trip generators. The station itself sits in an undevelopable moraine, so it'll never be a good spot for TOD.

The thinking behind this station was that it was near highway 404 and it would be a park-and-ride station for commuters coming in from further away but, if all they wanted was a park-and-ride, they didn't have to build such an elaborate station.

2. Highway 407 subway station.

https://www.david-pearl.com/images/Highway%20407%202.jpg

Source (https://www.david-pearl.com/page026.htm)

Same as above. A really expensive subway station that almost feels like a small airport terminal, that sits in a very undesirable spot - jammed between a cemetery, two highways and a freight rail line. It can't support any new developments and it has limited use as a park and ride.


3. Ontario Place

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Space_lounge.jpg/375px-Space_lounge.jpg
Source: wikipedia

I think that the Ontario government probably had Montreal envy (specifically for Expo 67 and the Olympics in '76) when they built this in the early 70s. They probably thought that they could recreate that "world's fair" atmosphere without having the actual event.

It's abandoned now and plans to do something with it come and go, but when I was a kid it was this weird, government-run amusement park with Ontario-themed rides and educational content. The park was too lame for kids to really want to go to - it was the kind of place that schools took you to on a field trip. It had a reasonably fun water park, though.

The cool-looking pavilions on stilts in the water (see above) were fun to explore, but even by the early 90s, about 15 years after it opened, they were comically underused. I remember my parents took me to a "Legomania" exhibit in one of those pods, and we had to pass through three other pods that were just sitting empty with chairs stacked in a corner and a musty-smelling carpet.

[casper]

I will need to think about Victoria. However up island in Nanaimo there is a cruise ship terminal that rarely sees cruise ships.

Bountiful building:
https://www.cparch.ca/nanaimo-cruise-ship-terminal

Here is the location:
https://goo.gl/maps/n7nXyqU7DYqjvhdu9

Cost $24Million to build starting back in 2011.

Today it is used as a heli-port by Helijet for a few flights a day to Vancouver.

However large cruise ships don't regularly stop in Nanaimo, not certain why it is an interesting city to visit.

[esquire]

Ontario Place is kind of interesting, Toronto was a common vacation destination for me and my friends in the 80s and 90s, but I don't remember Ontario Place ever coming up. I never went there once myself. It was always CN Tower, Hockey Hall of Fame, a Blue Jays game, Canada's Wonderland, Eaton Centre, etc. but Ontario Place was never on our radars.

That building in the picture sure looks like it has that Expo/World's Fair vibe. I'd love to go check it out myself next time I'm there. ha.

[harls]

Every time I drive by Mirabel I envision, 'World's largest go-kart track'.

[esquire]

For Winnipeg, the all-time white elephant has to be Portage Place mall. It was developed by the three levels of Government working in partnership with Cadillac Fairview. It is several square blocks long and includes a shopping mall with offices above, several highrise apartments out back, and a massive underground parking garage. There are pad development sites on either end of the mall, but they were never developed.

It was devised in the 80s as a way to rejuvenate Portage Avenue which had fallen on hard times. Portage Place effectively connected the massive Eaton's and Hudson's Bay department stores on Portage Avenue. It opened in 1987 but it never thrived, it started losing tenants quickly. After Eaton's closed in 1999 it really declined fast and now it is a mostly dead mall as COVID killed whatever life it still had remaining. The problem is the place is getting old and in need of major refurbishment, but no one is willing to sink any money into it. So its future is up in the air.

https://www.vmcdn.ca/f/files/glaciermedia/import/lmp-all/1462118-dd-winnipeg-mall-portage-place.jpg;w=960
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5265540.1567180672!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/portage-place-shopping-centre-in-winnipeg.jpg

[SignalHillHiker]

Almost no chance of that here. Our preference (excluding hydroelectric dams) is to build infrastructure that barely meets current needs, let alone future ones. It's completely routine here to have brand new schools with trailers outside providing additional, required classrooms, and that takes a especially strong inability to see past one's nose in a province with a declining student population.

[someone123]

Ontario Place is kind of interesting, Toronto was a common vacation destination for me and my friends in the 80s and 90s, but I don't remember Ontario Place ever coming up. I never went there once myself. It was always CN Tower, Hockey Hall of Fame, a Blue Jays game, Canada's Wonderland, Eaton Centre, etc. but Ontario Place was never on our radars.

I was there a couple times in the 90's. It had exactly the feel hipster duck describes. Some sort of event that used a portion of the space, lots of empty/liminal spaces around that, fun to look around as a kid but a bit run down.

The Toronto white elephants are real white elephants but not major given the scale of the city. And if it had appropriate infrastructure (subway 2-3x larger) the poorly planned stations would feel like less of the overall system. And maybe the Sheppard Line would have been used more if it connected up more meaningfully with a larger system.

Around here it's hard to think of white elephants and almost every "error" is in the other direction with undersized infrastructure. If you look for references to white elephants and boondoggles it shows things like "Christy Clark wasted $500k on flights" which may or may not be appropriate but may not have registered in say Illinois (or Quebec). The BC Place roof was sort of sold as a gold-plated boondoggle and maybe some specific Olympic venues are a bit underused but they're not really white elephants in the traditional sense.

Halifax also has very few and people scream about extremely small examples of "waste" (right now people complaining about concrete curbs on temporary streets or bike lanes). The biggest may be the Cogswell interchange which served no purpose and is being torn down, but it was meant to connect to an expressway that thankfully was never built. Ideally Cogswell also would have been skipped. If you look at the city you can see how the postwar expressway plan was only half realized (e.g. no third bridge so one end of the Dartmouth circumferential ends at a T with a road). They should have completed the suburban expressways while leaving the inner city alone.

[feepa]

Not so sure what Edmonton's White Elephant would be... perhaps West Edmonton Mall not being built downtown?

BAIT AND SWITCH: HOW A DEVELOPER CALLED THE TUNE FOR EDMONTON’S CITY COUNCIL
Posted on 6 January 2007 | Comments Offon BAIT AND SWITCH: HOW A DEVELOPER CALLED THE TUNE FOR EDMONTON’S CITY COUNCIL
In my research, I’ve uncovered some classic illustrations of how smart developers can mislead the people North Americans elect to govern their cities and towns. In those cases, their pursuit of their business ensures that it is they, and not the representatives we have elected, who decide the futures of our communities. In this entry I present such a case from Edmonton. It happened in the 1980s, but it is worth understanding exactly what occurred because similar events take place every year in many communities, and awareness is the first step toward self-defence.
My research shows that developers found it easy to manipulate Edmonton’s city council again and again, and to put taxpayers in the position of paying for a development over which their representatives exercised no meaningful control. They used a bait and switch tactic which, though blatantly obvious in retrospect, is not always easy to spot before it is too late. Edmonton’s story is a cautionary tale. It ought to be required reading for city councillors throughout North America, and for anyone concerned with democratic control over the development of our cities.
As I said in the introduction to this series, we should not waste our outrage on the developers, who serve their investors – and therefore do their jobs – by exploiting weaknesses in our institutions of local governance. In our democratic system, we have collectively agreed to allow ourselves to be governed in this way. We need to think about how we can change this system, and I hope to address that question in future, but a good first step is to understand the problem, and a clear illustration is a good way to start.


In the 1970s, downtown Edmonton was the retail centre of the metropolitan area, and the city had a policy of sustaining that role by supporting the viability of residential neighbourhoods near the centre of the city and placing limits on the amount of permitted suburban shopping centre development. That policy was forgotten when the Triple Five Corporation offered to develop the West Edmonton Mall, then the largest shopping centre in the world.
The development of massive amounts of new suburban retail floor space, accompanied by free parking and such attractions as a wave pool and a carnival ride, dealt a crushing blow to the downtown and in the 1980s empty buildings sprouted. As the city government desperately sought some way to restore life to the city centre, the same Triple Five Corporation that had developed the West Edmonton Mall offered a solution to the problem it had created, the development of a downtown mall, to be called the Eaton Centre.
Triple Five’s approach to dealings with the city was the time-honoured bait-and-switch tactic. It involved making an irresistible offer to obtain a massive commitment and then using local politicians’ commitment to keep them on-side, even as the more attractive features of the original offer were withdrawn, and its price increased. The key decisions concerning the Eaton Centre development were taken during two rounds of negotiations, the first taking place in 1980 and the second in 1985-86.
In the 1980 negotiations, Triple Five Corporation, in partnership with T Eaton Co Ltd of Toronto, announced plans for a massive, $500 m residential and commercial development consisting of an Eaton’s department store, a 31,500-square-metre shopping mall, three office towers of 39 to 40 storeys and two residential towers of 51 and 52 storeys, with 1,236 one- and two-bedroom rental or condominium units.
The development, taking in most of two square blocks of prime downtown land, would boast a roof-top restaurant and gardens and the residential part of the development would include a recreation centre with a gymnasium, swimming pool, exercise room, handball and squash courts and a social room. The Eaton’s store was to be the second largest in western Canada, after the downtown Vancouver store.
For Edmonton City Council, the attractions were virtually irresistible: a massive boost to the economy of the inner city, including both commercial and retail elements, together with a formidable increase in housing to help rally the eroding inner city housing sector. A development agreement was signed on October 8th.
The bait was in place. Next came the switch. In December, Nader Ghermezian, managing director of Triple Five, appeared at a council meeting to demand a re-opening of the agreement and the addition of a series of concessions. He warned that if the concessions were not forthcoming that day, the entire project would be cancelled. He had a letter from a solicitor for the Triple Five Partner, T. Eaton, which was said to confirm the urgency of the need for concessions, but which only Mayor Cecil J. Purves and two councillors were allowed to see.
Among the demands were cancellation of a redevelopment levy that the developer was to pay, and of the plans for a roof top restaurant, agreement by the city to fund sidewalks and setbacks for the project and to relieve the developer of the costs of leaseholds covering encroachments upon city property. Estimates of the cost of these concessions ranged from $5 m to $15 m. City council, galvanized by the impending collapse of such a large project, agreed to the concessions.
Enquiries by journalists later established that the letter from an Eaton’s lawyer had been a formality, designed to protect Eaton’s position in case of a break-down in negotiations, and had not been intended as a sign of Eaton’s dissatisfaction with the terms they had received, terms with which they in fact declared themselves satisfied. But the unkindest cut was yet to come. Nine months later, Eaton backed out of the deal despite the concessions, still denying it had sought them. In other words, the city had granted concessions, which it remained obligated to deliver, even as the rationale for them became moot.
With Eaton out of the picture, the development ground to a halt, but in time the bait and switch resumed. In 1983, a promised revival of Eaton Centre failed to materialize once an expansion of the West Edmonton Mall had been secured. In 1985, once again the project reappeared. Eaton declared it could proceed if the city offered further concessions and the negotiations resumed. In the course of those negotiations, the project changed substantially, first becoming grander in the “bait” phase of the negotiations and then contracting again in the “switch” phase, as final agreement neared.
In August, for example, the project’s rhetorical status was elevated from the mediocrity of second place in western Canada to the pre-eminence of world renown. According to the Edmonton Journal, it was touted as including “a major recreation centre with tennis, racquetball and squash courts, an Olympic-size pool, diving tank, indoor jogging track and gymnasium for aerobics… There would be 20 theatres, a 3000-stall parkade, and more than 45,000 square metres of department store and retail space [in place of the 31,500 mooted earlier]. ‘This will be the strongest magnet in the Province of Alberta,’ Triple Five’s Ghermezian said… ‘It will attract tourists from all over the world…'” The two apartment buildings previously promised had been transformed into a 40-storey hotel-apartment. There would be 2,000 apartments [in place of the earlier 1,236 units], and 300 hotel rooms.
By late January, 1986, with negotiations well along but not complete, the project had lost some of that sheen, with the profit-making parts of the project expanding while the non-profit-making elements contracted. It was slightly bigger overall than before (3.9 m sq ft compared with 3.85 m sq ft), but the residential component had been almost halved, from 2.276 m sq ft to 1.269 m sq ft, while the office tower component increased from 850,000 sq ft to 1.536 m sq ft and additional retail space was added. And then the pressure was cranked up. Eaton’s had said it would commit to the project provided excavation started by May 1st. In late February, with the development agreement not yet ready, city council was being asked to approve an excavation agreement in order “to maintain the timetables established by the partners in the project…” Council was becoming more and more deeply committed to the project without yet having had a chance to read the fine print.
Meanwhile, under a new Mayor, Laurence Decore, the city had committed itself to its own plan for the revival of the city’s commercial heart. One of the key elements of its plan was the 102nd St Arcade, a glassed-in mall that would have cut through the centre of the Eaton development. Triple Five was not prepared to make provision for the arcade. Mayor Decore and others argued that Council was too willing to take Triple Five’s claims at face value, that competing bids should be solicited for the development of the Eaton Centre project, that the project should be required to accommodate the 102nd St Arcade, and that the developer should be obligated to include actual housing, as opposed to promises of future housing, in the development.
As negotiations drew to a close, the main issues were the inclusion of residential units, provision for the 102nd St Mall, and the financial concessions demanded by Triple Five. Planners estimated the total cost of concessions at $30.4 m. In May, in a vote that overrode Mayor Decore and his supporters, Council agreed to the concessions, without guarantees of a residential component and without provision for the 102nd St Mall.
In the end, it proved to be Triple Five Corporation, not City Council, whose commitment to the viability of Eaton Centre was shaky. The assessment of a business publication offers some insight. By 1992, the Ghermezians had sold their share in the development to Confed Life for $1. That year, Canadian Business characterized Eaton Centre as a “money-losing mall” that, “In a city vastly overbuilt with malls…” was recovering only because new management had found “ways to steal shoppers from competing malls…” The sale of the property for $1 suggests, as does the other evidence on Eaton Centre, that it was the city that was assuming all the risk connected with the development and that Triple Five had little to lose, regardless of the outcome.
A review of the deal by Edmonton’s Auditor-General concurred that the city was the loser. Projecting the financial consequences 40 years into the future. He concluded that “…the Eaton Centre package… does not result in a positive cash flow to the city until approximately the year 2004. The net present value of this concessions package for the 40-year period is negative.” Even if someone thinks that is a good enough outcome for the public money expended, the lack of council control throughout the development process raises troubling questions about the way we govern our cities.
The facts cited in this entry are documented in detail in:
Christopher Leo. “Global Change and Local Politics: Economic Decline and the Local Regime in Edmonton.” Journal of Urban Affairs 17 (3), 1995, 277-99.
A related article, comparing Edmonton’s situation with the very different circumstances of Vancouver is:
Christopher Leo. “The Urban Economy and the Power of the Local State: The Politics of Planning in Edmonton and Vancouver.” In Frances Frisken, ed, The Changing Canadian Metropolis: Contemporary Perspectives, vol 2. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies Press, University of California, 1994, 657-98.

https://christopherleo.com/2007/01/06/bait-and-switch-how-a-developer-called-the-tune-for-edmontons-city-council/

[someone123]

Although now that I think of it NS is full of rural or small town white elephants. For example the NS government built a heavy water plant in Cape Breton and spent billions to subsidize Sydney Steel. A large portion of the NS provincial debt traces back to these projects.

$718M highway twinning project through 38 km of woods in rural NS: https://mobile.twitter.com/BenMacLeod/status/1569023712489340928

(Meanwhile the federal government is threatening to pull funding from the city because the province won't pay for transit improvements.)

[esquire]

Around here it's hard to think of white elephants and almost every "error" is in the other direction with undersized infrastructure. If you look for references to white elephants and boondoggles it shows things like "Christy Clark wasted $500k on flights" which may or may not be appropriate but may not have registered in say Illinois (or Quebec). The BC Place roof was sort of sold as a gold-plated boondoggle and maybe some specific Olympic venues are a bit underused but they're not really white elephants in the traditional sense.

It's kind of the same thing here in Winnipeg, few things are ever really overbuilt or built without any real purpose. We are somewhat starved for physical infrastructure, so most things, even if unpopular, do get well used. The BRT line to South Winnipeg was derided by many but the buses on it are very busy. Same with certain highways around the region. Some like to describe CMHR as a white elephant but it is still there doing its thing.

It's a far cry from situations you see in other countries where you have entirely empty cities (https://www.businessinsider.com/china-empty-homes-real-estate-evergrande-housing-market-problem-2021-10) and other such extravagant wastes.

[thewave46]

Pretty much every Eaton's Centre foisted on small-city downtowns in Ontario.

Mostly White Elephants are bigger city things. Smaller cities generally don't have the capital/cachet to go bananas on much, so most White Elephants are pretty tame there.

Even the Ontario-specific ones are thin on the ground, or ended being more useful than anticipated. The nuclear generating stations at Bruce and Darlington so long derided as wasteful now keep the electricity sector relatively low-carbon emitting.

SkyDome's inherent usefulness and solid design has probably saved Ontario from several attempts at conning the province into paying for a new home for the Blue Jays, even if it was expensive.

Underused, but overbuilt highways? Not really. Bridges to nowhere? Nah. International airports of tumbleweeds? Nope.

Wide-scale propping up the auto industry in 2009? Maybe? When one looks at the decade plus of return on investment keeping those jobs, the province probably did OK on that metric.

Anyone else can think of Ontario-specific ones?

[kool maudit]

Mirabel is just sad. Not so much for the particulars, which were more just impractical and absurd, but for the way it was a kind of final, abortive embodiment of a certain kind of national/continental ambition.

I am actually pretty convinced by the argument that Montreal has benefitted from its transition to an eccentric, storied regional centre, but Mirabel was maybe the last time that anyone conceived of it as a potential titan.

[vanatox]

I am actually pretty convinced by the argument that Montreal has benefitted from its transition to an eccentric, storied regional centre, but Mirabel was maybe the last time that anyone conceived of it as a potential titan.

Eccentric, storied regional centre... sorry but this is something that could be used to describe places such as St John's, not Montreal. Or maybe you mean in the same way Copenhagen and Stockholm are both eccentric and storied regional centre?

[vanatox]

Mirabel failed but it seems that the site has attracted a good number of businesses and has become a somewhat significant employment center now.

[esquire]

Mirabel failed but it seems that the site has attracted a good number of businesses and has become a somewhat significant employment center now.

Yes, and it has an important role in cargo aviation. But still, it would be like building an entire office tower, having zero tenants, and saying "well, at least it has a pretty nice Tim Hortons"

[vanatox]

Yes, and it has an important role in cargo aviation. But still, it would be like building an entire office tower, having zero tenants, and saying "well, at least it has a pretty nice Tim Hortons"

lol, this is funny!

I think the businesses have more economic impact that what a Tim Hortons would have vs a full office tower but i get your point.

[MolsonExport]

Back in the late 1960s (when the city was on a heck of a roll....the ball suddenly stopped with the FLQ's shenanigans) Montreal was projected to have 8 million people by the early 2000s. With a high speed train link, Mirabel made a lot of sense (it could have served Ottawa too, with another high speed train link).

The growth didn't materialize. The train was never built. The direct highways were not completed.

Originally, there was a plan to put the giant airport on the South Shore (much closer) but the Yanks balked at having international planes starting to make their descent into Montreal, over Plattsburgh Airforce base (in nearby NY State).

[urbandreamer]

Market Square and the Eaton Centre in downtown Kitchener. Uptown Waterloo has the very dead Waterloo Town Square and possibly the Region of Waterloo Airport.

Cambridge has downtown Galt: an historic attractive downtown slowly dying thanks to continuous suburban sprawl and a concentration of social services downtown/homeless. Old Quebec Street Shoppes in downtown Guelph is dead.

I always liked the Big Owe, which I call the Big O cuz it's sexy.

[Wigs]

Eccentric, storied regional centre... sorry but this is something that could be used to describe places such as St John's, not Montreal. Or maybe you mean in the same way Copenhagen and Stockholm are both eccentric and storied regional centre?

Exactly
It sounds like one is talking about a place like say St. John's, or American examples such as Buffalo or New Orleans and not the second largest city with a Metro of ~4.3M in a country of 39M :haha:

[WhipperSnapper]

Bloomington is brand new. The plan is to surround it with 1000s and 1000s of investor condos. It can still work out.

Ontario Place had its moments in the early 1980s. Significant expansion to compliment the popular IMAX , bandshell and, waterpark. The only problem is Ontario themed educational fun (that doesn't compete with science and technology) is just not fun. Food is fun. IIRC, there was outdoor food court offering international foods. It wasn't ever open.

[Wigs]

Market Square and the Eaton Centre in downtown Kitchener. Uptown Waterloo has the very dead Waterloo Town Square and possibly the Region of Waterloo Airport.

Cambridge has downtown Galt: an historic attractive downtown slowly dying thanks to continuous suburban sprawl and a concentration of social services downtown/homeless. Old Quebec Street Shoppes in downtown Guelph is dead.

I always liked the Big Owe, which I call the Big O cuz it's sexy.

I was just there in May.
The plaza "Waterloo Public Square" in front of it is pretty busy with plenty of foot traffic or people just hanging out and people watching, there's two bars/restaurants fronting King (me and my buddy drank on the patio fronting the plaza) and "The Shops" has a grocery store and Shoppers. Not to mention there's constant buses and the ion light rail dropping people off right there.
Not vibrant per se but not exactly dead in my opinion.

[O-tacular]

For Calgary it's been a few of the public art pieces that have gone up in recent years. 1% of the budget for city capital projects needs to be allocated to public art. In theory it's great, but in practice it has led to some odd locations for public art projects including sewage treatment plants, pump stations and random overpasses. Here are some of the more controversial ones:

Travelling Light (aka The blue ring or Hoolahoop):

https://i.cbc.ca/1.3550490.1461447458!/fileImage/httpImage/travelling-light.jpg

Bowfort Towers (aka contruction debris):

https://images.thestar.com/SNpFWUFm7-oVP-60LeoiJHu8ONo=/1086x725/smart/filters:cb(2700061000):format(webp)/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/calgary/2018/10/22/councillor-applauds-cancellation-of-screw-up-bowfort-towers-landscaping-as-city-reviews-public-art-policy/bowfortpublicart3.jpg

https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bowfortart1.jpg?quality=85&strip=all

Wishing Well (aka giant mirror that burned a visitors jacket and had to be removed and put into storage):

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wihing-well-cgy-genesis-centre-for-community-wellness-facebook-635x357.jpg

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wishing-well-crated-city-of-cgy.jpg

Watershed (aka LED's in a lift station that light up a display of the pipes when poop flows through them)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQE2SBKUwAAgLGF?format=jpg&name=small

[kool maudit]

Eccentric, storied regional centre... sorry but this is something that could be used to describe places such as St John's, not Montreal. Or maybe you mean in the same way Copenhagen and Stockholm are both eccentric and storied regional centre?

Yeah, pretty much. They're great cities but nobody would think of them in a list of Europe's most powerful or crucial cities.

[Wigs]

Yeah, pretty much. They're great cities but nobody would think of them in a list of Europe's most powerful or crucial cities.

Oh okay. Now I understand.
Typical North American mindset of "regional center" is different in my mind, anyway :haha:

[kool maudit]

I wasn't thinking of St. John's, I was thinking of places like Lisbon, Turin, Stockholm, Marseille.

Metropoli for sure, but yhe biggest decisions are made elsewhere. Montreal is a great city but it once commanded a continental level of resources. In the early days of civil aviation, maybe even unto the start of the jet age, it had more flights than anywhere save NYC and Chicago.

[Wigs]

O-tac,

Are you familiar with Leroy & Leroy? hilarious vignettes "there's always something to do"
You can also find them on Instagram or (probably) TikTok

E_0YkXnOjyo?

Anyway they did a longer video for the Traveling light :D
ifYp1zQFQa4

Here's their shorts
https://m.youtube.com/c/LeroyandLeroy/shorts

[O-tacular]

O-tac,

Are you familiar with Leroy & Leroy? hilarious vignettes "there's always something to do"
You can also find them on Instagram or (probably) TikTok

E_0YkXnOjyo?

Anyway they did a longer video for the Traveling light :D
ifYp1zQFQa4

Here's their shorts
https://m.youtube.com/c/LeroyandLeroy/shorts

:haha::haha::haha:

That's great!

[Wigs]

I wasn't thinking of St. John's, I was thinking of places like Lisbon, Turin, Stockholm, Marseille.

Metropoli for sure, but yhe biggest decisions are made elsewhere. Montreal is a great city but it once commanded a continental level of resources. In the early days of civil aviation, maybe even unto the start of the jet age, it had more flights than anywhere save NYC and Chicago.

When you come from a historical perspective like that yeah it makes it seem like Montréal is long past its peak, but speaking as an elder Millennial Canuck to me it seems like Montréal has never been more vibrant in the past 20 years that I've been following it. :shrug:

[kool maudit]

Yeah its a better city than ever, funnily enough. Those old Square Mile types ran a cramped, teeming, tenement-style industrial city. Montreal is a much more livable, creative place now, even adjusted for the norms of the time. But there was that moment where it was gunning for a top spot in the Americas, and Mirabel was the tail end of that.

[wg_flamip]

Anyone else can think of Ontario-specific ones?

The Trent–Severn Waterway was quite controversial. Given that its proposed route led through a handful of important swing ridings, work on the project continued even after it had been rendered obsolete. It didn't deliver on the economic growth that was promised to the regions it served, and it's never gotten much (if any) use aside from leisure.

[Wigs]

Yeah its a better city than ever, funnily enough. Those old Square Mile types ran a cramped, teeming, tenement-style industrial city. Montreal is a much more livable, creative place now, even adjusted for the norms of the time. But there was that moment where it was gunning for a top spot in the Americas, and Mirabel was the tail end of that.

In my mind it still is: NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal are what I consider the top 5 cities/Metros for North America :shrug:
Maybe I'm viewing it from a Canadian lens, although I have travelled to a decent chunk of America that I feel qualified to make this assessment

I know I'll probably get flack from Yanks in particular. To me these are the most cosmopolitan and have the blend of historic areas, charming and interesting neighbourhoods combined with constant change in the core.

Back to the airport, do you think had they piled all that money from the Mirabel dream but instead to make Dorval the best it could be that Montréal would have maintained more international connections?

[thewave46]

The marker for whether a city might be considered having aspired to be a real global city might be an avant garde vanity project or potential White Elephant that represented the peak of an era.

For Montreal, Olympic Stadium or Mirabel Airport would have been that impulse. They’re peak ‘70s attempting to look forwards for the next few decades. And rather missing the mark, like these things often do.

For Toronto, the CN Tower or SkyDome might be it.

Other Canadian cities? Not really. The closest thing I see is maybe BC Place?

Trying to think of other more minor global cities out aiming for that same stature. Sydney’s Opera House?

[wg_flamip]

In my mind it still is: NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal are what I consider the top 5 cities/Metros for North America :shrug:

Mexico City indisputably ranks ahead of 4/5 of these cities.

[Wigs]

Mexico City indisputably ranks ahead of 4/5 of these cities.

I forgot about it to be honest :P

[lio45]

I call Dorval Airport “Dorval Airport”.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport has always, obviously, been Mirabel to me.

(Doesn’t matter as much as one’d think. Can’t recall the last time I’ve flown from Quebec / Canada. It was over 20 years ago.)

[lio45]

O-tac,

Are you familiar with Leroy & Leroy? hilarious vignettes "there's always something to do"
You can also find them on Instagram or (probably) TikTok

E_0YkXnOjyo?

Anyway they did a longer video for the Traveling light :D
ifYp1zQFQa4

Here's their shorts
https://m.youtube.com/c/LeroyandLeroy/shortsThat big blue ring… is to the city of Cock Ring, AB, what the CN Tower is to Toronto, what the Gateway Arch is to St. Louis, and what the big rock is to Okotoks? :)

[Wigs]

I call Dorval Airport “Dorval Airport”.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport has always, obviously, been Mirabel to me.

(Doesn’t matter as much as one’d think. Can’t recall the last time I’ve flown from Quebec / Canada. It was over 20 years ago.)

Then how do you get to Vancouver? :???:

[lio45]

Then how do you get to Vancouver? :???:Driving.

How did you think I got to visit Maple Creek? I didn’t make a transcontinental commercial flight land there just for me :P

[Wigs]

Driving.

How did you think I got to visit Maple Creek? I didn’t make a transcontinental commercial flight land there just for me :P

If you do that much driving, maybe it's time to upgrade to a Lucid electric vehicle ;)

[Acajack]

For Calgary it's been a few of the public art pieces that have gone up in recent years. 1% of the budget for city capital projects needs to be allocated to public art. In theory it's great, but in practice it has led to some odd locations for public art projects including sewage treatment plants, pump stations and random overpasses. Here are some of the more controversial ones:

Travelling Light (aka The blue ring or Hoolahoop):

https://i.cbc.ca/1.3550490.1461447458!/fileImage/httpImage/travelling-light.jpg

Bowfort Towers (aka contruction debris):

https://images.thestar.com/SNpFWUFm7-oVP-60LeoiJHu8ONo=/1086x725/smart/filters:cb(2700061000):format(webp)/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/calgary/2018/10/22/councillor-applauds-cancellation-of-screw-up-bowfort-towers-landscaping-as-city-reviews-public-art-policy/bowfortpublicart3.jpg

https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bowfortart1.jpg?quality=85&strip=all

Wishing Well (aka giant mirror that burned a visitors jacket and had to be removed and put into storage):

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wihing-well-cgy-genesis-centre-for-community-wellness-facebook-635x357.jpg

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wishing-well-crated-city-of-cgy.jpg

Watershed (aka LED's in a lift station that light up a display of the pipes when poop flows through them)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQE2SBKUwAAgLGF?format=jpg&name=small

At least Calgary actually tries with this stuff. Almost no one else does.

[Mister F]

Bloomington is brand new. The plan is to surround it with 1000s and 1000s of investor condos. It can still work out.
It isn't. It's in the middle of the Oak Ridges Moraine on a line that will be limited by CN for the foreseeable future.

[biguc]

The town of Oak Ridges in the middle of the Oak Ridges Moraine seems to fly in the face of the notion that area is undevelopable.

Bloomington looks like reasonable enough long-term planning to me. It might be a cart leading a horse, and it's a shame nobody thought about integrating the Richmond Hill GO line with the Eglington and Ontario lines (and what's up with Oriole and Leslie?), but it is going to integrate with the Yonge line extension and Highway 7 BRT. There's no reason they can't sort things with CN such that the Richmond Hill line can do some heavy lifting as a regional service.

[Innsertnamehere]

In my mind it still is: NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montréal are what I consider the top 5 cities/Metros for North America :shrug:
Maybe I'm viewing it from a Canadian lens, although I have travelled to a decent chunk of America that I feel qualified to make this assessment

I know I'll probably get flack from Yanks in particular. To me these are the most cosmopolitan and have the blend of historic areas, charming and interesting neighbourhoods combined with constant change in the core.

Back to the airport, do you think had they piled all that money from the Mirabel dream but instead to make Dorval the best it could be that Montréal would have maintained more international connections?

I think most Americans would agree with this other than maybe Montreal, swapping it out for another major US city like Boston or Washington or something.

Generally I do agree with you though, assuming we ignore Mexico like others have said.

[Innsertnamehere]

Townsend, Ontario: A planned city of up to 250,000 near the north shore of Lake Erie that never got to more than 1,200:

https://haldimandpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2-wpp1643256273167-770x540.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/RtETFTP.png

https://haldimandpress.com/townsend-the-metropolitan-city-that-never-was/

TOWNSEND—What if they made a city and nobody came? This question, posed by historian and journalist David Judd, kicked off an in-depth virtual presentation that looked at why Townsend, initially planned as a massive metropolis in the heart of Haldimand-Norfolk, never fully materialized.

Townsend was first conceived when plans were unveiled by Stelco in 1967 to build an $800-million coal-fired generating station in Nanticoke. Additionally, Texaco announced plans for a $75-million oil refinery in Nanticoke, with a 6,000-acre industrial park from Lake Erie Works approved for the area in 1973.

The hope at the time was that the industrial area would attract an auto plant and employ thousands. When big auto manufacturers such as Toyota did come to Ontario, however, they selected sites nearby the province’s 400-series highways instead.

nitially, the government envisioned Townsend as a city populated by 250,000 residents, with the public first becoming aware of the planned city in 1974. By 1979, after several years of planning, that scope was narrowed down to 100,000 residents, with the first phase, consisting of 1,600 homes and 5,000 people, expected to be complete by 1985. Projections at the time expected the population to reach 40,000 by the year 2000.

“Townsend was almost at the exact centre of Haldimand and Norfolk,” explained Judd during his presentation.

Townsend was strategically planned to be close to both Highways 3 and 6, just 20 minutes from the Nanticoke industrial area, and, importantly, the land was not recognized as prime agricultural land.

In the 1970s, Judd was a reporter for The Nanticoke Times, extensively covering the development of Townsend. At the time, The Nanticoke Times banner featured a graphic image conceptualizing a series of high-rise apartments planned for the town, but these would never be built.

Additional planned-but-never-built facilities included nine schools and a community college, a department store, hotel, movie theatre, indoor sports complex, and an art gallery, with both a bus depot and a train station.

While most of the planned infrastructure was never built, much remains today. The main road through town is a 4-lane road with grade separations over pedestrian paths between parks, small homes line quiet streets, the former regional municipal offices have been converted into the offices of the area's Children's Aid Society, and the former community centre has been converted to a seniors residence. To this day, property data mapping shows streets and lots for houses that were never built and land set aside for the construction of the planned roadway between the town and the Nanticoke Industrial area, which the town was intended to serve:

https://i.imgur.com/88vl3tr.png

https://i.imgur.com/0ig8x76.png

The most overbuilt part of the community is however a large sewage processing plant constructed for the city-that-never-was, designed to handle up to 200,000 residents and to this day, 40 years later, serving less than 10,000. Norfolk County now finally has plans to build massive sewer lines to connect the plant to Simcoe and Port Dover to service growth in those communities:

https://www.thespec.com/local-haldimand/news/2022/07/11/haldimand-norfolk-reach-agreement-on-water-supply.html

While Townsend is dead, Another version of it has popped up in 2022, this time in Nantocoke on Lake Erie, just down Highway 6. This time, a private developer is asking permission to build a new town for 35,000 people right beside Stelco's Nanticoke Works:

https://www.haldimandcounty.ca/nanticokedevelopment/

https://haldimandpress.com/empire-purchases-land-near-nanticoke-proposing-15000-new-residential-units/

[Mister F]

The town of Oak Ridges in the middle of the Oak Ridges Moraine seems to fly in the face of the notion that area is undevelopable.
Just about every town and village in the Moraine has some area designated for development in the ORM plan. Look at the areas in grey and brown in the maps (https://www.ontario.ca/page/oak-ridges-moraine). It was designed like that from the start. The area around Bloomington Station isn't designated for any kind of growth.

There's no reason they can't sort things with CN such that the Richmond Hill line can do some heavy lifting as a regional service.
Someone should tell Via Rail that it's just that easy!

[Acajack]

I think most Americans would agree with this other than maybe Montreal, swapping it out for another major US city like Boston or Washington or something.

Generally I do agree with you though, assuming we ignore Mexico like others have said.

I think Montreal nibbles at the top 5 for some people, even in the US. Especially if you exclude Mexico City as "North America".

I also think San Francisco would appear on a lot of people's "top 5" lists, perhaps moreso than Philadelphia or even Boston.

[MolsonExport]

For Calgary it's been a few of the public art pieces that have gone up in recent years. 1% of the budget for city capital projects needs to be allocated to public art. In theory it's great, but in practice it has led to some odd locations for public art projects including sewage treatment plants, pump stations and random overpasses. Here are some of the more controversial ones:

Travelling Light (aka The blue ring or Hoolahoop):

https://i.cbc.ca/1.3550490.1461447458!/fileImage/httpImage/travelling-light.jpg

Bowfort Towers (aka contruction debris):

https://images.thestar.com/SNpFWUFm7-oVP-60LeoiJHu8ONo=/1086x725/smart/filters:cb(2700061000):format(webp)/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/calgary/2018/10/22/councillor-applauds-cancellation-of-screw-up-bowfort-towers-landscaping-as-city-reviews-public-art-policy/bowfortpublicart3.jpg

https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bowfortart1.jpg?quality=85&strip=all

Wishing Well (aka giant mirror that burned a visitors jacket and had to be removed and put into storage):

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wihing-well-cgy-genesis-centre-for-community-wellness-facebook-635x357.jpg

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/art-wishing-well-crated-city-of-cgy.jpg

Watershed (aka LED's in a lift station that light up a display of the pipes when poop flows through them)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQE2SBKUwAAgLGF?format=jpg&name=small

https://media.tenor.com/UhnNd38xTJYAAAAC/sesame-street-martians.gif

[MolsonExport]

(Doesn’t matter as much as one’d think. Can’t recall the last time I’ve flown from Quebec / Canada. It was over 20 years ago.)

You don't travel abroad? Or do you only fly from the States?

[Innsertnamehere]

The town of Oak Ridges in the middle of the Oak Ridges Moraine seems to fly in the face of the notion that area is undevelopable.

Bloomington looks like reasonable enough long-term planning to me. It might be a cart leading a horse, and it's a shame nobody thought about integrating the Richmond Hill GO line with the Eglington and Ontario lines (and what's up with Oriole and Leslie?), but it is going to integrate with the Yonge line extension and Highway 7 BRT. There's no reason they can't sort things with CN such that the Richmond Hill line can do some heavy lifting as a regional service.

The Oriole Station is getting moved to be beside the subway, btw.

Eglinton would be challenging as the Richmond Hill line passed under Eglinton deep below it in the Don Valley and 350m from the closet station on the Crosstown.

[kool maudit]

I think Montreal nibbles at the top 5 for some people, even in the US. Especially if you exclude Mexico City as "North America".

I also think San Francisco would appear on a lot of people's "top 5" lists, perhaps moreso than Philadelphia or even Boston.

As a city to be experienced through the senses, through a love of cities, through an aesthetic sensibility... sure. I'll bite.

On the terms of the game that was once played from St. James Street? Not even close. New York and Los Angeles are a given. DC is the capital of a superpower. The Bay Area is the capital of tech, Chicago is a metro of 10 million and sets commodity prices for the continent.

Toronto can peek into this door given its mining power and status as the Canadian metropolis. But Boston has Harvard & MIT and a ton of assets under management as well.

Montreal is a great city, one of North America's finest in terms of history, architecture, culture and liveliness. But it is not a seat of very much power or wealth by continental standards.

Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Miami all have higher metro GDPs than Quebec as a whole.

Mirabel was a vision from a time where you might have had a 50 million annual passenger airport in Montreal. It was planned at a time when Montreal was home to Canada's largest (and fourth-largest) bank, now since departed. We can say with full confidence and some accuracy that Montreal has flourished since abandoning (being abandoned by) the metropolitan power game, that the oligarchs were extractive and unjust, even that it was a historical necessity for reasons related to the French fact in North America, and that the best is yet to come.

But we can't honestly pretend Montreal is a top-tier North American city in any sort of empirical economic realm. Something changed. And Mirabel, to me, was the last stray fragment of the previous circumstance.

(In the resistance to this point, I must say, I detect a kind of willed unreality surrounding what Montreal has and doesn't have...)

[kool maudit]

What I am saying is that from an Anglo-American power perspective -- and anyone who follows the foreign policy thread knows I am no great booster of this bloc, of which we are all part -- Montreal dipped out. And even as someone who thinks the creation of a Quebecois Copenhagen is probably a greater historical thing than the maintenance of a particularly colourful branch office, there is a realm in which these things matter.

[Acajack]

As a city to be experienced through the senses, through a love of cities, through an aesthetic sensibility... sure. I'll bite.

On the terms of the game that was once played from St. James Street? Not even close. New York and Los Angeles are a given. DC is the capital of a superpower. The Bay Area is the capital of tech, Chicago is a metro of 10 million and sets commodity prices for the continent.

Toronto can peek into this door given its mining power and status as the Canadian metropolis. But Boston has Harvard & MIT and a ton of assets under management as well.

Montreal is a great city, one of North America's finest in terms of history, architecture, culture and liveliness. But it is not a seat of very much power or wealth by continental standards.

Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Miami all have higher metro GDPs than Quebec as a whole.

Mirabel was a vision from a time where you might have had a 50 million annual passenger airport in Montreal. It was planned at a time when Montreal was home to Canada's largest (and fourth-largest) bank, now since departed. We can say with full confidence and some accuracy that Montreal has flourished since abandoning (being abandoned by) the metropolitan power game, that the oligarchs were extractive and unjust, even that it was a historical necessity for reasons related to the French fact in North America, and that the best is yet to come.

But we can't honestly pretend Montreal is a top-tier North American city in any sort of empirical economic realm. Something changed. And Mirabel, to me, was the last stray fragment of the previous circumstance.

(In the resistance to this point; I must say, I detect a kind of willed unreality surrounding what Montreal has and doesn't have...)

By the criteria you've described here, you're no doubt right.

I had in mind a broader, admittedly more arbitrary, definition of "top cities". I apologize if I misread the criteria.

In terms of your criteria above, I assume a city like Frankfurt-am-Main would rank quite highly amongst its European peers. Though obviously not in the top rungs.

[kool maudit]

On white elephants as a whole, it seems that they appear on the chart near local tops... it becomes a white elephant when the circumstances of its conception aren't matched by those of its existence (I think the term comes from sacred white elephants kept at great expense by Burmese monasteries).

So it's not just scale or even scale + absurdity... they're like Nassim Taleb's black swans, they're animals that signal market movements and only become apparent when viewing certain time intervals. Like, the Empire State Building might have been a white elephant in the early '30s, when the '20s boom that created it was gone and the thing sat largely empty. But we don't see it as one now because New York's broader trajectory was still in ascension.

[kool maudit]

In terms of your criteria above, I assume a city like Frankfurt-am-Main would rank quite highly amongst its European peers. Though obviously not in the top rungs.



Yep, and I'd much rather live in Copenhagen or Stockholm (or Montreal) than Frankfurt. But the downtowns of each are full of people reporting on what happens in Frankfurt, where the opposite isn't true.

[thewave46]

On white elephants as a whole, it seems that they appear on the chart near local tops... it becomes a white elephant when the circumstances of its conception aren't matched by those of its existence (I think the term comes from sacred white elephants kept at great expense by Burmese monasteries).

So it's not just scale or even scale + absurdity... they're like Nassim Taleb's black swans, they're animals that signal market movements and only become apparent when viewing certain time intervals. Like, the Empire State Building might have been a white elephant in the early '30s, when the '20s boom that created it was gone and the thing sat largely empty. But we don't see it as one now because New York's broader trajectory was still in ascension.

It's why I had more of a hard time coming up with an Ontario list. In 1977, the CN Tower is a fool's errand, plunked smack in the middle of a rail yard with nothing around it. In the 1980s and 1990s the huge glut of electricity provided by the massive nuclear reactors of the province was a sign of central planning gone amok in the energy sector. In the mid-to-late 1990s, SkyDome looks to be a waste of provincial money because it only hosts crowds in the low five-figures for ballgames.

But here we are decades later. The CN Tower is in the heart of a tourist district, not a railyard. The nuclear power plants provide low carbon baseload electricity. The SkyDome is...well....maybe not the best use of money. If the costs were bad at the time, a new billion-dollar ballfield is basically mooted every time the topic comes up because SkyDome is actually pretty decent. So, we'll get another 20-30 years out of that.

Ontario grew into certain bits of its infrastructure.

[esquire]

One could argue that Olympic Stadium is not really a white elephant. After all, it did what it was supposed to do... host an Olympic Games. Most Olympic Stadiums tend to have afterlives that pale somewhat in comparison. The Big O actually did reasonably well, hosting two, and for a short time three major teams for a decade after the 1976 games, before settling into its role as a charmingly awkward baseball stadium for another 20 years after that. It's really only the last 15 or so years where it has been sitting empty and with no real purpose anymore.

A true white elephant Olympic Stadium would have never hosted the Olympic Games.

It seems to me, 4 pages into this thread, that Mirabel has to be the hands-down winner.

[ScreamingViking]

Some people used to say Hamilton's FirstOntario Centre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstOntario_Centre) (originally named Copps Coliseum) was a waste because it never did what it was intended to do, at least in large part -- attract the NHL. More than 17,000 seats, rarely filled to capacity... the AHL and OHL hockey teams that have used it draw about 5,000 on a decent night, usually less. But it wasn't very expensive even for the mid-1980s ($40+ million) and has allowed the city to host large concerts and sporting events. Curtains were installed to cover the upper tier and try to make the lower bowl feel more intimate. The arena is going to be extensively renovated over the next couple of years.

Another is Hamilton airport (https://flyhamilton.ca/). In the 1980s it was expanded in anticipation of attracting more passenger flights, including a new runway and terminal. The terminal was still fairly modest, and the whole project cost $50 to $60 million back then. Some argued it was just pork-barrel politics to feed the ego of a local MP, because the passenger market was well-served by Toronto's airport (about a 65 km drive from the centre of town) and major airlines weren't going to offer duplicate serviced here. Smaller ones came and went, offering flights to a very limited set of destinations. In the mid-90s the city made a long term deal with a private operator, who have turned it into a successful cargo facility and passenger use has increased to the point the terminal has had some changes made to it. For a time it was WestJet's eastern hub, until they moved almost all their services to Pearson. Now it's mainly used by Swoop and other low-cost airlines, with charter services as well.

I'd not call either a White Elephant today, and both were rather modest investments that have benefited the city over the longer term. The airport and the commercial/industrial development (https://investinhamilton.ca/discover-hamilton/location/business-parks/airport-business-park/) it continues to spur now make it a major generator of jobs and economic activity.

Hamilton's Eaton Centre is probably the only local example I can think of that was truly a waste. A 3-level mall opened in 1990, connected to an existing mall built during the wave of 1970s downtown redevelopment, it was only semi-successful for a few years before becoming a sad space (https://www.reddit.com/r/deadmalls/comments/tcvn12/hamilton_city_centre_hamilton_ontario/) the city eventually moved some offices into. When Eaton's died it was re-christened the Hamilton City Centre (https://hamiltoncitycentremall.com/). With some renos I think it could have become nice, if another use could be found for it. It's about to be torn down for a condo complex.

For a while we did have this (https://urbanicity.com/hamilton/city/2020/07/james-north-shop-white-elephant-is-closing-its-doors/), though. ;)

[Acajack]

One could argue that Olympic Stadium is not really a white elephant. After all, it did what it was supposed to do... host an Olympic Games. Most Olympic Stadiums tend to have afterlives that pale somewhat in comparison. The Big O actually did reasonably well, hosting two, and for a short time three major teams for a decade after the 1976 games, before settling into its role as a charmingly awkward baseball stadium for another 20 years after that. It's really only the last 15 or so years where it has been sitting empty and with no real purpose anymore.

A true white elephant Olympic Stadium would have never hosted the Olympic Games.

It seems to me, 4 pages into this thread, that Mirabel has to be the hands-down winner.

Yeah, the Big O stings my heart a little as a Quebec taxpayer that indirectly owns that thing, but in terms of its service life it hasn't been too bad when you compare it to many other stadiums elsewhere in North America and around the world.

It's also hosted countless football and soccer games, concerts and other events over the years.

My guess is that most NFL stadiums in the US, especially the outdoor ones in the northern tier of the country, get a lot less use in their lifetimes.

[vanatox]

One could argue that Olympic Stadium is not really a white elephant. After all, it did what it was supposed to do... host an Olympic Games. Most Olympic Stadiums tend to have afterlives that pale somewhat in comparison. The Big O actually did reasonably well, hosting two, and for a short time three major teams for a decade after the 1976 games, before settling into its role as a charmingly awkward baseball stadium for another 20 years after that. It's really only the last 15 or so years where it has been sitting empty and with no real purpose anymore.

A true white elephant Olympic Stadium would have never hosted the Olympic Games.


And the olympic stadium is not just the stadium, it is the multiple facilities on site, the tower, etc which are all occupied. The tower is now all occupied with offices, there is the biodome, the planetarium, a movie theatre, multiple training facilities (used by Canadian athletes), a huge sports centre, the olympic swimming pool... etc. The site during summer is used for multiple festivals. It is definitively an asset to the city.

[Acajack]

Yep, and I'd much rather live in Copenhagen or Stockholm (or Montreal) than Frankfurt. But the downtowns of each are full of people reporting on what happens in Frankfurt, where the opposite isn't true.

Point taken.

[esquire]

Some people used to say Hamilton's FirstOntario Centre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstOntario_Centre) (originally named Copps Coliseum) was a waste because it never did what it was intended to do, at least in large part -- attract the NHL. More than 17,000 seats, rarely filled to capacity... the AHL and OHL hockey teams that have used it draw about 5,000 on a decent night, usually less. But it wasn't very expensive even for the mid-1980s ($40+ million) and has allowed the city to host large concerts and sporting events. Curtains were installed to cover the upper tier and try to make the lower bowl feel more intimate. The arena is going to be extensively renovated over the next couple of years.


I guess one could argue that major league arenas that never attracted major league teams (Copps Coliseum, Saskatchewan Place, Centre Videotron) are white elephants, but even then the most you could say is that only the upper halves of those arenas are white elephants since the lower halves are regularly used by the home teams and for other events.

[thewave46]

Yeah, the Big O stings my heart a little as a Quebec taxpayer that indirectly owns that thing, but in terms of its service life it hasn't been too bad when you compare it to many other stadiums elsewhere in North America and around the world.

It's also hosted countless football and soccer games, concerts and other events over the years.

My guess is that most NFL stadiums in the US, especially the outdoor ones in the northern tier of the country, get a lot less use in their lifetimes.

Given that the Big O might have a 100+ year lifespan (honestly!), the optics look a lot better. Ironically, its lack of a regular tenant might actually be key to its longevity and the costs don't look near as bad with a hugely long amortization.

Now the City of Montreal can say: "Look, we have a super-venue for the handful of times a year we need it. We can't blow the budget on something new that nobody will use. Knocking it over means we spend a pile of money and get nothing."

So, in a twisted way, the Big Owe may actually save more money in the long run, even if it hurt in the short-term.

[MolsonExport]

all the comments about the Big O are true. But it cost so. much. money. The Olympic Stadium’s total cost is more than $1.6 billion. Repairing the roof almost cost as much as a new stadium (however, demolishing the Big O would cost a prohibitive amount of money). Don't forget that the poor fit for Baseball (and Football) is perhaps the main reason why the Expos left (and why the Alouettes decamped to Molson stadium). Don't forget that massive concrete chunks of the Big O have fallen into the stadium bowl.

The $1.61 billion price tag (with inflation) is the second most expensive stadium ever built, after London’s Wembley Stadium.

The stadium would cost almost another $1 billion to demolish
https://dailyhive.com/montreal/olympic-stadium-facts

As a former smoker, I paid more than my share of excise taxes* to fund the Big O. As a Montrealer, I also paid in terms of property tax. After the Olympics, I think most of the debt was transferred to the city of Montreal, so I don't know how much Quebeckers outside of Montreal were on the hook for, outside of the cigarette excise tax.

*In May 1976, the Quebec government introduced a special “tobacco tax” to help recoup its investment into the stadium. By 2006, a total of 8% of the tax revenue earned from cigarette sales were put into the Olympic Stadium.

The Olympic Installations Board says the roof is unsafe during heavy rainfall of more than 8 centimetres (3 inches) of snow, which is not uncommon during Montreal winters. On the rare occasions where winter activities are planned, they must be cancelled if heavy snowfall or rain is in the forecast, as is the case with the postponement of the Montreal Impact home opener in 2014.

The committee says the roof rips 50 to 60 times per year and, as of May 2017, has had more than 7,400 tears that have been repaired.
https://dailyhive.com/montreal/olympic-stadium-facts

on the other hand :D
Pink Floyd attracted the largest paid crowd to the Olympic Stadium. On July 6, 1977, 78,322 paid to see the band rock out at the stadium.

:thrasher:

I saw Pink Floyd in 1988 (May 11) at the Big O. Second Row, dead centre (I had a connection to get extremely good seats). Best concert I ever saw, hands-down.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/08/c7/41/08c741fc24b71ae35b19597df0808c74.gif

[Rico Rommheim]

Just the fact the the Floyd played at the big O, and that this was the single biggest attendance of any stadium in canadian history, and that this specific concert was the one in which Roger Waters spat on a rowdy fan and that this incident led to Waters penning The Wall, makes it all worthwhile at the end.

[esquire]

Yes Olympic Stadium cost a fortune, but it is really more than just a stadium, it's an entire complex... it came with a world-class competition pool and velodrome (since repurposed into the Biodome) and a tower. I'm not sure if the Metro station was built into the cost too. But that's a lot. I'm not saying it was great value for money, but there was a lot wrapped up in that billion-plus of expenditures.

[MolsonExport]

Just the fact the the Floyd played at the big O, and that this was the single biggest attendance of any stadium in canadian history, and that this specific concert was the one in which Roger Waters spat on a rowdy fan and that this incident led to Waters penning The Wall, makes it all worthwhile at the end.

Quite. The Wall is a masterpiece, and is priceless.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yes Olympic Stadium cost a fortune, but it is really more than just a stadium, it's an entire complex... it came with a world-class competition pool and velodrome (since repurposed into the Biodome) and a tower. I'm not sure if the Metro station was built into the cost too. But that's a lot. I'm not saying it was great value for money, but there was a lot wrapped up in that billion-plus of expenditures.

If the cost of the leaning tower and observation deck is included that makes for a stronger value proposition too. A development like that would have been expensive even on its own.

[ScreamingViking]

I guess one could argue that major league arenas that never attracted major league teams (Copps Coliseum, Saskatchewan Place, Centre Videotron) are white elephants, but even then the most you could say is that only the upper halves of those arenas are white elephants since the lower halves are regularly used by the home teams and for other events.

Sure nice to have that space when needed though.

Without it, Copps/FOC would not have hosted Canada Cup games and other large sports events, concerts by big-name performers, and other stuff that filled it to capacity. The economic impacts of such things are highly debated, but the city could not have gotten them without the large arena.

And now that the greater Toronto and Golden Horseshoe urban area has grown so much, the arena is one of a limited number of facilities of its size in the wider region and doesn't just serve the Hamilton market. Thankfully this is what makes the business case for the renovations that are badly needed, being led by the private sector.

[phone]

Townsend, Ontario: A planned city of up to 250,000 near the north shore of Lake Erie that never got to more than 1,200:


This one really fascinates me. Never heard about Townsend before, thanks for sharing. The place gives off a really creepy, liminal feeling. It's not quite a ghost town as it appears to be generally occupied to the extent that it was actually built out, but it has a ghostly presence on the map nevertheless. A little like a living shadow, perhaps.

[esquire]

This one really fascinates me. Never heard about Townsend before, thanks for sharing. The place gives off a really creepy, liminal feeling. It's not quite a ghost town as it appears to be generally occupied to the extent that it was actually built out, but it has a ghostly presence on the map nevertheless. A little like a living shadow, perhaps.

Too bad it never took off... it seems to me that Southern Ontario could use another city in that 250,000 range to give the GTHA region some relief.

[jamincan]

I was just there in May.
The plaza "Waterloo Public Square" in front of it is pretty busy with plenty of foot traffic or people just hanging out and people watching, there's two bars/restaurants fronting King (me and my buddy drank on the patio fronting the plaza) and "The Shops" has a grocery store and Shoppers. Not to mention there's constant buses and the ion light rail dropping people off right there.
Not vibrant per se but not exactly dead in my opinion.

Waterloo Town Square is actually a pretty good example of revitalization. It used to be bigger extending all the way down to William St. and was desolate. As I recall, while Valumart was still there, the other end was anchored by a Liquidation World and there was a depressing office block that I'm pretty sure was vacant. The entire thing was surrounded by a sea of parking lots.

I forget the exact date that they started redeveloping it, but it was probably around the mid-2000s. The end result is renewed street-fronting retail along King and Willis Way, a very well-used public square, and the remaining stub of the mall much better off with street-fronting retail along Willis Way.

There are definitely still improvements that can be made. It's my understanding that the area between the LRT and Erb St. will be redeveloped soon and it's only a matter of time before the remaining mall bit is too. But anyone who visited it 20 years ago and then again today wouldn't recognize the place.

What it used to be:
https://images.ourontario.ca/Partners/Waterloo/WatPL002678335.jpg

[ssiguy]

Mirabel is the obvious winner when it comes to government largess............there is no second place.

In terms of private investment, London's Westmount deserves a very honourable mention. Although at first it was a great investment as up until the 80s, it was London's largest and most successful mall but then when nuts on expansion in the 80s and since 2000 has been completely dead space.

For Vancouver it's definitely the Chinatown "International" Village. It is a true relic of the 90s and is only international if you consider a Food Court or McDonald's and Starbucks as international cuisine. The mall is completely vacant and it's ONLY redeeming feature is the Cineplex theatre on the 3rd floor. No one ever goes there and with good reason, it's dead space.

[Acajack]

Other notable ones that people might want to expand upon:

Newfoundland:

Sprung greenhouses

Come-by-Chance oil refinery

New Brunswick:

Bricklin automobile manufacturing

[O-tacular]

Other notable ones that people might want to expand upon:

Newfoundland:

Sprung greenhouses

Come-by-Chance oil refinery

New Brunswick:

Bricklin automobile manufacturing

Newfoundland has one giant White Elephant that I'm surprised no one has posted yet:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B18AXJ/the-rooms-provincial-art-gallery-st-johns-newfoundland-canada-city-B18AXJ.jpg

[kool maudit]

That thing is so incredibly crude, I can't believe it's real.

[someone123]

That thing is so incredibly crude, I can't believe it's real.

It's a good metaphor for rural Atlantic Canadian politics dominating and limiting the cities.

[Innsertnamehere]

This one really fascinates me. Never heard about Townsend before, thanks for sharing. The place gives off a really creepy, liminal feeling. It's not quite a ghost town as it appears to be generally occupied to the extent that it was actually built out, but it has a ghostly presence on the map nevertheless. A little like a living shadow, perhaps.

yea - I was in the area and drove through it a summer or two ago and it was a very odd feeling. Like a dead-quiet version of suburban Mississauga or Brampton plopped in the middle of farmers fields. The comically overbuilt 4-lane roads with no cars on it, the loopy subdivision streets and large parks which are again completely empty, etc.

What's interesting to me as well is how close it is to Jarvis. Why create a "new town" when you have an existing one to start off with right next door? It wouldn't be a "failure" at all if they had instead focused on growing Jarvis as demand provided.

There are a surprising amount of little oddities hidden in the Southern Ontario Countryside, be it abandoned WW2 training airports (https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.9279685,-80.124997,1344m/data=!3m1!1e3), secretive hunting societies rumored to be home of many of the world's elite (http://my.kwic.com/~pagodavista/lpco.html), century-old abandoned amusement parks for Buffalo's wealthy, (https://militarybruce.com/the-crumbling-remains-of-erie-beach-amusement-park/) and more.

[wg_flamip]

On white elephants as a whole, it seems that they appear on the chart near local tops... it becomes a white elephant when the circumstances of its conception aren't matched by those of its existence (I think the term comes from sacred white elephants kept at great expense by Burmese monasteries).

To be a true white elephant, I believe some form of on-going cost disproportionate to on-going value is required. An overly expensive sculpture of dubious artistic merit plopped down in the middle of your town square might've been a mistake and a waste of money but isn't really a white elephant in the traditional sense. Conversely, an overbuilt highway to no where that requires regular road maintenance, snow clearing/salting, etc. would qualify.

[esquire]

Newfoundland has one giant White Elephant that I'm surprised no one has posted yet:

It's huge, but I was under the impression that it was well-used. It's not like it's some giant convention centre that sits empty 50 weeks of the year or whatever.

What about the big Asian mall north of Calgary? That thing seemed like it was a white elephant in the making.

[Acajack]

I like The Rooms.

[esquire]

I like The Rooms.

Acajack going all in on being the contrarian :haha:

I can't imagine how annoyed I would be if some organization built a huge grain elevator-looking tower to dominate the urban Winnipeg skyline. Because that would pretty well be the equivalent.

[jamincan]

I like The Rooms.

Weirdly, I actually agree with you on something. :cheers:

[kool maudit]

What do you guys like about it?

I just think it looks like this next to the old town:

https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg

[Nouvellecosse]

I like The Rooms.

I'm calling security.

[thewave46]

It's a good metaphor for rural Atlantic Canadian politics dominating and limiting the cities.

I'd liken it to how big ideas / mass production don't map onto something like Newfoundland.

Mississauga City Hall is dumb, but it kind of works in the inane soullessness of 'downtown' Mississauga. Super-suburb interpretation of farm country or city.

The Rooms is like the Shard plunked in central London. In Dubai, sure. London? No. Stick it in Canary Wharf or don't built it at all.

[LuluBobo]

Regina's is easily our bypass.

$1.2 billion dollar freeway around the city that extends 5 kilometres past any existing or built development. Between the existing Ring Road and the bypass, there is just farm fields. No existing or planned development. By far the most expensive capital project in provincial history, it is a per capita equivalent of a $35 billion capital project in the GTHA.

It is still greatly underutilized for about 75% of its length.

[phone]

Acajack going all in on being the contrarian :haha:

I can't imagine how annoyed I would be if some organization built a huge grain elevator-looking tower to dominate the urban Winnipeg skyline. Because that would pretty well be the equivalent.

It would be like if Regina plopped down the Expo 86 Saskatchewan pavilion in the middle of Wascana Park :haha:

http://cdn.reelingback.com/uploadimg/sask86.jpg

[esquire]

Regina's is easily our bypass.

$1.2 billion dollar freeway around the city that extends 5 kilometres past any existing or built development. Between the existing Ring Road and the bypass, there is just farm fields. No existing or planned development. By far the most expensive capital project in provincial history, it is a per capita equivalent of a $35 billion capital project in the GTHA.

It is still greatly underutilized for about 75% of its length.

One could argue whether or not it should have been built right now, but Regina will inevitably grow into it one day.

[esquire]

It would be like if Regina plopped down the Expo 86 Saskatchewan pavilion in the middle of Wascana Park :haha:

http://cdn.reelingback.com/uploadimg/sask86.jpg

When I was a kid I was jealous that Sask had an Expo 86 pavilion but Manitoba did not :haha:

But yes, you are 100% correct. The Rooms is rural, or small town vernacular plunked into the middle of the city where it just looks goofy.

[Acajack]

What do you guys like about it?


Boldness over blandness.

[phone]

Regina's is easily our bypass.

$1.2 billion dollar freeway around the city that extends 5 kilometres past any existing or built development. Between the existing Ring Road and the bypass, there is just farm fields. No existing or planned development. By far the most expensive capital project in provincial history, it is a per capita equivalent of a $35 billion capital project in the GTHA.

It is still greatly underutilized for about 75% of its length.

Wasn't the point of the Regina bypass to be... you know... a bypass for highway traffic/heavy trucks? AFAIK accommodating local suburban traffic was never a primary intent behind the project :???:

[phone]

I guess one could argue that major league arenas that never attracted major league teams (Copps Coliseum, Saskatchewan Place, Centre Videotron) are white elephants, but even then the most you could say is that only the upper halves of those arenas are white elephants since the lower halves are regularly used by the home teams and for other events.

While Saskatchewan Place (Credit Union Centre) has never been the home of any major league team, and while its location leaves a lot to be desired, I would never call it a White Elephant, even counting the upper decks which are frequently used for concerts and other sporting events like the World Juniors.

The facility garners a steady stream of regular use despite being on the larger size for a city Saskatoon's size. This is part of the reason why the current downtown arena proposal, which should be about the same capacity as Credit Union Centre, probably won't be a White Elephant despite on paper being more than what Saskatoon needs. We already have a 15,000 seat arena, and it doesn't feel like wasted capacity. It's just rapidly aging and in a poor location (and has a perpetually crowded concourse since the upper decks were only added later, putting strain on the concourses that were not designed with those additions in mind).

[LuluBobo]

Wasn't the point of the Regina bypass to be... you know... a bypass for highway traffic/heavy trucks? AFAIK accommodating local suburban traffic was never a primary intent behind the project :???:

That's why it was built so though.

The communities of White City and Pilot Butte and Balgonie turned it from a project connecting the #1 by Tower Road to Ring Road, into a massive project.

[someone123]

The Rooms is like the Shard plunked in central London. In Dubai, sure. London? No. Stick it in Canary Wharf or don't built it at all.

I don't know the history of that one but aside from rural folks running the provincial governments there can be an obsession with tourism (locals design and pay for things for tourists, not for themselves) and a desire to bring in more famous outside architects (typically paired with a local firm because we have to say that locals are involved) who have a superficial knowledge of the local culture and styles.

[Acajack]

Wasn't the point of the Regina bypass to be... you know... a bypass for highway traffic/heavy trucks? AFAIK accommodating local suburban traffic was never a primary intent behind the project :???:

I am reminded of the old Uncle Vern analogy about what Tyco toy race car tracks and boobs have in common: they're supposed to be for kids but it's mostly dads who play with them.

In the case of new highways on the outskirts of the city, everyone says it's for heavy freight trucks and to keep them out of the city core, but really they're for people who want to live outside of town but still have access to urban amenities.