Commie-block (slabsville) capital of Canada

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by theman23

You must have been lucky, or perhaps lived in one during a period in life without any significant time pressure. Having to add on 10 minutes to your commute for the elevator wait on a daily basis is not a fun experience. Not to mention the hassle of taking out the garbage. With a low to mid rise you can always just take the stairs. The issue is even worse in newer builds as they cramp in more and more units into smaller floor plates while cutting back the number of elevators.

If it's a daily basis, it's not "adding onto your commute".. it just IS part of your commute.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by theman23

You must have been lucky, or perhaps lived in one during a period in life without any significant time pressure. Having to add on 10 minutes to your commute for the elevator wait on a daily basis is not a fun experience. Not to mention the hassle of taking out the garbage. With a low to mid rise you can always just take the stairs. The issue is even worse in newer builds as they cramp in more and more units into smaller floor plates while cutting back the number of elevators.

It's funny. It basically means if you're in a big building with slow elevators, it's equivalent to living a 5-10 minute walk farther away (and I'd much rather walk than wait for an elevator). The convenience factor of a lot of prime highrises is probably about the same as residential a couple blocks away.

My building is so-so. If an elevator is out of service or somebody's moving it gets bad. One time I had a bunch of stuff that required multiple trips and it took me over an hour. Since I'm living the urban dream I was also paying for my car share during that time.

On the other hand, it's hard to compete with the views you get on high floors of a tall building.

[someone123]

Vancouver has dog-friendly places and they seem to add a lot to the elevator traffic as well as the drama in the elevators. Rooftop patios also add a lot of elevator traffic; it's not something I thought about before.

[WhipperSnapper]

Isn't a 4 storey building built today going to have an elevator? Or a 3 storey with more than 24 units? (past the maximum square footage)

Dogs for sure. More people than calculated are adding to elevator wait times in buildings with fully functioning elevators. Higher occupancy rates are also increases wear on everything else.

[EnvisionSaintJohn]

Originally Posted by theman23

You must have been lucky, or perhaps lived in one during a period in life without any significant time pressure. Having to add on 10 minutes to your commute for the elevator wait on a daily basis is not a fun experience. Not to mention the hassle of taking out the garbage. With a low to mid rise you can always just take the stairs. The issue is even worse in newer builds as they cramp in more and more units into smaller floor plates while cutting back the number of elevators.

I lived about 800 meters away from a light rail station, the elevator was never a huge issue in my morning commute. What did —, however, is when they put the kibosh on residents without cars using the underground parking garage to enter the building. That lasted for a few months and it added about 300 meters to my walk to the station.

Taking out the garbage was never a hassle, I basically just took it out whenever it was full and I was going out anyways.

Now I'm back living in a car dependent city, and I go out far less than I did when I lived in a high rise without a car and was totally dependent on walking, public transit and ride sharing apps.

Again, I'd take living in a high rise any day over the third or fourth storey of a building without an elevator, without hesitation. There was one time; however, when the the power was out and I had to carry my groceries up 11 flights of stairs, but that was one time ever, and wasn't even that bad. If I lived on the 32nd floor, that might have been a more hellish memory.

The last time I was in Montreal I stayed in an absolute hole of an apartment on the 18th store of a high rise, it was a VRBO that my friend booked. (I refuse to use AirBnB, VRCO, etc)

The place was freaking gross, and it only had AC in the bedroom, despite being advertised as having AC. So sleeping on the futon in the living room was absolutely brutal in the mid summer Montreal heat and humidity. The one morning the fire alarm went off at like 9am and I was hungover AF, and it was just blaring. Couldn't use the elevator and had to walk down 18 storeys with the fire alarm just blasting... it was like I was in a Fellini movie or something. It was a terrible experience, and clearly showed issues that can occur with with buildings that are not properly maintained. Great location though.

I still wouldn't think twice about living in a high rise again, as long as it was in a good location.



This place was absolutely grim... but if there was another place in this building that wasn't such a hole, and the elevator/fire alarm wasn't a persistent issue, I think it could be a pretty great place to live, as the location was great.

[EnvisionSaintJohn]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

^ Canada has plenty of wood resources too and almost certainly has a greater comparative advantage with it than concrete. In fact, with our natural resource wealth we probably have vast supplies of every major construction material. So i don't find having abundant supplies of concrete ingredients persuasive at all. And while personal taste is largely subjective, the majority of people seem to either prefer low and midrises over highrises, or are agnostic to form factor. In fact, there's a great deal of political opposition to highrises that has led to them being limited to small percentages of most metro areas while buildings in the 6 story range or shorter are much more politically palatable.

So while I respect your individual taste, I don't think it's scalable for domestic housing policy. But I agree 100% with your desire to lower the cost of mass timber construction and I'd also re-assess if we could substantially lower the carbon footprint of concrete. Hopefully something does come of that since concrete is very useful for many things.

The emissions associated with concrete are a concern, don't get me wrong, but I still think there's great potential for concrete to be a bigger part of the response to the housing crisis here in Canada. Concrete buildings, in theory, should be able to last a lot longer than cheap, wood framed apartment buildings, but there's certainly a lot of variables. The Pantheon in Rome has stood for almost 2000 years now.

I've long been fascinated with the roman concrete, and this one channel on youtube, Told in Stone, has some great videos on the subject.

He put out a more recent one where he explored if a high rise could be built with Roman building materials today. It's quite an interesting watch.

• Video Link

Though, I think it would have been even more interesting to explore the possibilities of combining Roman concrete with modern building materials and construction methods. He came to the conclusion that it would be possible, but that stone and masonry would have to be used for the walls of the building.

This made me think about how much stone Canada has too, and how great it would be if stone once again became a more common building material in Canadian cities.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by EnvisionSaintJohn

I lived about 800 meters away from a light rail station, the elevator was never a huge issue in my morning commute. What did —, however, is when they put the kibosh on residents without cars using the underground parking garage to enter the building. That lasted for a few months and it added about 300 meters to my walk to the station.

Taking out the garbage was never a hassle, I basically just took it out whenever it was full and I was going out anyways.

Now I'm back living in a car dependent city, and I go out far less than I did when I lived in a high rise without a car and was totally dependent on walking, public transit and ride sharing apps.

Again, I'd take living in a high rise any day over the third or fourth storey of a building without an elevator, without hesitation. There was one time; however, when the the power was out and I had to carry my groceries up 11 flights of stairs, but that was one time ever, and wasn't even that bad. If I lived on the 32nd floor, that might have been a more hellish memory.

The last time I was in Montreal I stayed in an absolute hole of an apartment on the 18th store of a high rise, it was a VRBO that my friend booked. (I refuse to use AirBnB, VRCO, etc)

The place was freaking gross, and it only had AC in the bedroom, despite being advertised as having AC. So sleeping on the futon in the living room was absolutely brutal in the mid summer Montreal heat and humidity. The one morning the fire alarm went off at like 9am and I was hungover AF, and it was just blaring. Couldn't use the elevator and had to walk down 18 storeys with the fire alarm just blasting... it was like I was in a Fellini movie or something. It was a terrible experience, and clearly showed issues that can occur with with buildings that are not properly maintained. Great location though.

I still wouldn't think twice about living in a high rise again, as long as it was in a good location.



This place was absolutely grim... but if there was another place in this building that wasn't such a hole, and the elevator/fire alarm wasn't a persistent issue, I think it could be a pretty great place to live, as the location was great.

Been there many times (had many a friend living in there, in the heart of the Concordia Ghetto). Bedbugs and cockroaches. Vomit in the emergency stairwells. Weird characters roaming the halls.

Montreal has a stretch from Atwater to Guy along de Maisonneuve and Lincoln streets that are just pure commieblock hellscapes.

[O-tacular]

Here is the first of 3 identical woodframe slabs being built as a suburban TOD in Calgary:

[ssiguy]

Vancouver seems to have escaped the big commie block phase. I think this is because the high rises in Vancouver are VERY thin. Vancouver really doesn't have any large footprint towers.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Here is what is being proposed on the edge of southwest London



I am not sure what the final product will look like, but how a developer can propose this in 2025 is beyond me. At the same time, not far from this development is a well designed community called West5 (https://west5.ca/) which is the complete opposite of the dog's breakfast that is being proposed.

[MolsonExport]

London, Soyúznaya Respúblika?

[WhipperSnapper]

It's a massive limitation when walkability is limited to the densest neighbourhoods in the biggest cities. Toronto, the biggest of them all, is just — hard. It may have the best and greatest due to its size but, that comes at an immense cost to the average person. There's always a finite number of seating for the best and greatest and they're taken largely up by the top one percent. 5 million people competing for seats in stadiums and arenas with seating in the tens of thousands and cultural facilities that seat in the 1000s. If you're a major fan of something happening exclusively in Toronto than you just fly in for a weekend. The best and greatest is not advantage. So the tradeoff of tiny living spaces, more gridlock, unreliable transit (sections of the puny subways backbone are shutdown almost every weekend for the past 3 years) high prices etc. are not worth it if, towns, weren't big box shitholes around a touristy or faltering, historic, walkable town centre.

A 4 storey building with 30 plus units per floor is just a point high rise tower that has fallen over. They should be separated from 4 storey buildings with 6 to 8 units a floor with a similar footprint as a 50 storey tower. These are actually built in smaller centres detached from investor bubbles in greater areas around Canada's largest metros. The new ones all have elevators as far I can see. Doesn't matter if it's only 16 units.

[MolsonExport]

How many cities have conjoined commieblocks? Montreal certainly has a bunch along de Maisonneuve Ouest.

And this, on Sherbrooke Ouest: