Online Mapping/Census Tools
 

Wow,.I just checked my house and my car is parked on the road (hopefully not getting a ticket) and they blurred out my license plate. When you finally see your own neighbourhood it looks very unusual.

The pictures on my street look like last April (I have a new side door on my garage that was put in last December) and one of my neighbours is raking her lawn from all the winter debris.

My home wasn't picked up by their coverage, but I found my car (I remember seeing the google vehicle go by)

Dang, they did it before I painted the front porch!

I think I might actually be in the picture. My garage door is open and there is a fuzzy human form coming out of it.

Looks like my area was done sometime in May or early June.

Mine was April I'm sure but other areas I've looked at are in May or June. My old place in Toronto was definately May as the trees are in blossom.

Yep, my street was done late May/early June, the lilacs are still in bloom and I have a large mound of dirt in my driveway that I know I didn't move until at least mid-June.

My (new) area was certainly done before May 30, the previous owners were still there.

Well, I can see myself on Google Street View. I remember a day that I came home after work in March and as I went on the Ottawa Citizen website, a user submitted a picture of the Google car passing by near where I work.

Although I can see myself, I do not remember the car passing by. I was pretty far away from the road though.

Confederation Park, across from City Hall, was photographed as the Jazz Festival was going on, based on the signage.

My house was done at the start of May, likely on a weekend. My magnolia tree was flowering, the car was in the driveway and the garage was open.

Behold... my "favourite" piece of so-called infill. A semi-McMansion that pretty much fills the entire building envelope (and some people on here object to FARs! Ya, well, until someone comes up with a better idea this is what you can get without them):

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,106.92,,0,5.3

This pair of 3000+ sq.ft. semis replaced a tiny cottage that also happened to have an enormous tree out front. Though it was on a large lot, I'd wager that its overall ecological footprint was substantially less than either of these. There's space for a total of 10 cars to be parked between them. My guess is that it has at least 75% impermeable surfaces too; the neighbour laid down a gravel driveway to lower his run-off volume only to have this thing built soon after - and now he gets their run-off in his driveway.

The sad thing is that the design is fairly good and if it was several units rather than just two it might even be defensible.

And it's not like there aren't examples of good semi-detached infill in the area, either. Here are two such examples, side-by-side:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,0.004823&z=18

Some older three-storey units, a semi and a three-unit townhouse; the style is a bit basic but it nonetheless works and they even kept the trees:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,0.002411&z=19

And this is what I think is one of the neatest infills I've seen anywhere nearby; it did have the advantage of having a bit of space to work with rather than just a standard lot:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,0.002411&z=19

A couple more from Westboro:

The Exchange and Westboro Station (but not the Transitway one), framing the entrance to Westboro:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,0.002411&z=19

Rochester Field and the possible route for LRT from Dominion into the Richmond/Byron corridor:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en...,0.002411&z=19

Great links...I gather you are not crazy about some infills in Westboro.

Love that last link...the blurring technology blurred the wheels of the white car but not the driver.

I can see these photos being used at OMB hearings or at Council meetings by residents in opposition to projects.

I think it won't be long until Kirchoffer is lined with those kinds of houses, especially with this precedent. The reason it's happening there and not as much on Berkley is the value of the land and proximity to the beach. A developer buying a half million dollar plus bungalow in Westboro Beach is going to want to raze it and build as high end as the market can take.

There's this one on Roosevelt that has every square inch of front yard paved!
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&sourc...,60.15,,1,8.51

:previous:

Oh, that one. Sad too, since the styling isn't too bad. I think the porch-over-garage is a pretty good way of mitigating the effect of the garage doors.

Last I checked they *still* hadn't repaired the freaking sidewalk there, either.

About Kirchoffer, I was really surprised when the two cottages next to it were put up for sale at the same time by the same agent that they apparently weren't bought together by one developer. That would have been a really good opportunity to put in a 4-6 unit townhouse terrace and also mitigate the effect of that semi at the same time. Instead, I imagine it'll just end up being another pair of semis (or is that a pair of pair of semis?).

Yep, not too crazy about some infills. The problem is that putting in gigantic and ugly infills tends to reduce any community goodwill towards them. In the late 80s and throughout the 90s we got a number of semis coming in and few people objected to them because they were properly massed and added to the general eclectic feel of the area. But recently there has been a tendency towards gigantic semis that just look overwhelming from the street (and people's back yards too - I wouldn't want to live behind that thing either).

I imagine OMB hearings are about to get a lot more interesting. But on the other hand it also has the potential for developers of showing that three-storey infills could be preferable to deep two-storey infills. The fact that a garage is that much less prominent on a three-storey façade is a definite advantage, as is the fact that houses that aren't as deep don't have such prominent roofs. You don't appreciate those in a simple elevation drawing but it's so noticeable as you approach and can see part of the side of a house. So, at the end of the day, if it means developers have to start making better designs then it could well be an improvement in the end.

Maybe in 50 years some of those big homes will be converted to triplexes or rooming houses?

Street View is great for looking at infill and smaller scale projects.

La Maison Jeanne d'Arc by Uniform (designed by Barry Hobin, the big building is heritage). Not sure if "La Maison Jeanne d'Arc" is the the project name or if they sold it under something else.

76 Chamberlain Ave and 57 Lewis... 2009 urban design award winners

47-49 Ontario Street by Routeburn.. I think that's River Court Lofts by Domicile under construction in the background

An interesting constrast on Kehoe Street.

This one on Burland (near the Colisium) is definitely different... I am curious what used to be on this site.

You could probably turn this driveway on Ancaster into a parking lot.

Petrino Lofts by Tega Homes... nice rooftop terraces. Phase 2 is just down the street.

Modern, small-scale, interesting garage... .... and another modern house on Beechgrove, which I think incoporates a carport quite well (at least I think that's a carport)

Site of the proposed Montreal Road drug store that got everyone excited a little while ago at committee

Blimey - I thought that one at 76 Chamberlain was an artist's rendering for a moment.

There's another interesting contrast on Duchess at Lochaber; the rose-coloured house in the background was the subject of a fracas with the NCC a few years back - they had built too close to the parkway and were forced to tear down a substantial part of the house, with the lawyer ending up getting sued:

455 Duchess @ Lochaber

I think so too, but it's pretty close to being a garage.

The other new feature I find really neat is the addition of layered user photos. Most of the ones for Ottawa seem to be concentrated around Wellington Street/Parliament Hill. Maybe the avid photographers in this forum should get their pictures integrated into the system.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=4...29.27,,0,-5.43

^ I've got about 300 hits off a picture of Bank and Wellington since Google street view went live.

I thought you had to add them to a Panaramio (sp?) account though, but all of the referrals came from Street view.

Where are you hosting the photo that Google is picking up?