Canadian Skyline Thread III

[Nouvellecosse]

For me, whether or not Montreal looks big is a complicated question. With the picture in question, that's fairly simple in that I don't think there have been many (perhaps any?) downtown Montreal aerials from a similar angle posted here after the completion of multiple large towers. So the downtown objectively is bigger in some sense. But more generally, it's hard to say whether or not a place looks big in terms of its downtown without comparing to other places to get a sense of what a place should look like at various sizes. And that is hard to do in this case since there are no other cities of that size range in Canada.

A lot of Montreal's visual bigness is in how far the urban nabes extend from downtown rather than from the size or height of downtown. But when looking just at the city centre, It has fewer towers over 100m or 150m than Calgary despite having a much smaller population. But Calgary also looks much larger than it is in that respect so it doesn't make for a good benchmark. And Montreal also looks bigger in that it has more highrises overall due to the number below 100m, and also has more lowrise and midrise density in places like Old Montreal.

If we compare to other cities of its size range, some people are sensitive about comparisons with US cities so let's use Brisbane. To my eye, they look fairly similar but Brisbane looks a bit bigger because of the taller and more numerous skyscrapers, but the rest of the city outside the CBD looks smaller due to the lower density. So overall I find it depends mostly on the angle.

[Pavlov]

I really don't think Montreal forumers should be sensitive about whether people think Montreal looks big enough.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by G.S MTL

Not sure …you thought Montreal was small? I don’t understand your comment.

What I don’t understand is your hostility. The comment was perfectly valid and a compliment to your photo.

[G.S MTL]

there was no hostility.... it was a simple question. RELAX.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Pavlov

I really don't think Montreal forumers should be sensitive about whether people think Montreal looks big enough.

Calgary might look bigger than Montreal from the air, but at the street level, there is just no contest. That is not to say that Calgary doesn't have nice areas for a good pedestrian experience (Kensington comes to mind; and of course, Stephen Avenue, save for all the junkies).

But that is also true of many American cities. Pick any boomtown of the South, and the skyscrapers blow Boston out of the water, but at street level, these same southern boomtowns don't hold a candle to Boston.

[MolsonExport]

Echoes of a giant East Asian city. Vancouver looks very big and dense here.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by G.S MTL

Not sure …you thought Montreal was small? I don’t understand your comment.

No, I don't think Montreal is small.

I think that your shot was perfectly framed to capture the tallest, most dense parts of downtown Montreal such that you could imagine the same density and height extending beyond the edges of the frame, making Montreal look like a city where high density is spread out over a vast territory.

East-west, you've boxed the photo in by Maestria to the east and the Tour des Canadiens cluster to the west. In between are all of Montreal's towers over 150m+.

It's also perfect north-south; for starters, Montreal looks better from the north (i.e. looking south toward the river) than from the south, because building high quality highrises along Sherbrooke street has been a pattern for decades, while building to the south towards Griffintown has been much more recent. But the way the photo is framed, it basically looks like the mixed midrise and highrise density of Milton-Parc could conceivably continue below the frame of the picture, while the emerging density of Griffintown is the upper edge, and the industrial area south of the Lachine canal is cut off.

[Calgarian]

Montreal's skyline looks small-ish, I'd put both Vancouver and Calgary ahead of it in that regard. But on street level it's very clear Montreal is a much bigger city than either of those 2, especially Calgary. The new towers in Montreal have done a lot though, just hope it keeps going!

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

What I don’t understand is your hostility. The comment was perfectly valid and a compliment to your photo.

And now we have people saying that montreal forumers shouldn't be so sensitive just because of that dumb post. There's like 3 montreal forumers left here anyways so I guess it really doesn't matter.

[LikesBikes]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Echoes of a giant East Asian city. Vancouver looks very big and dense here.

Brilliant shot, thank you for sharing.

[davidivivid]

https://www.centris.ca/fr/condo~a-vendre~quebec-la-cite-limoilou/20664577



https://www.lesoleil.com/actualites/actu...-vers-quebec-FVIP4MOTYZA7NL444DDQHUAMX4/

[G.S MTL]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

And now we have people saying that montreal forumers shouldn't be so sensitive just because of that dumb post. There's like 3 montreal forumers left here anyways so I guess it really doesn't matter.

Calm down drama queen…

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Echoes of a giant East Asian city. Vancouver looks very big and dense here.

The bottom 2/3rd of the photo could trick you, but the top 1/3rd barely has echoes of a city at all. It's an interesting shot in that it really does look like a major city on the edge of a vast wilderness (which Vancouver basically is) - which is even better than a megacity. Not many places in the world where that extreme of a dichotomy exists.

[zoomer]

LOVE those Quebec city shots - gorgeous.

[Coldrsx]

One of a kind.
---

[Ice Cream Man]

Don't post much here, but thought I'd share this; Calgary during the intense rain last night.

[Calgarian]

Calgary is going to be super green after all this rain ends. I expect some very intense thunderstorms to happen in the next few weeks lol.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by someone123

There is something about the scale of Montreal's buildings that can make it look smaller.

People talk about building heights a lot but not the size or square footage of buildings so much. Sun Life in Montreal is not that tall but has over 1 million square feet of space. It's probably more than double the size of the largest Vancouver office tower, and significantly larger than any residential or mixed-use building here. Place Ville Marie is big too.

Having those larger buildings, I think, makes things look smaller sometimes. In these aerials you tend to perceive the mix of buildings or relative scales more than absolute size, which is very hard to judge. It is different when you are there in person.

Good points. We look at height as a benchmark but don't look at interior floor space. This makes a huge difference. Montreal has some skyscrapers that are massive.

• 1000 de la Gauchetière - 1.6 million square feet of floor space
• Place Ville Marie - 1.032 million square feet
• 1250 René-Lévesque - 1.025 million square feet
• Tour de la Bourse - 1.022 million square feet
• 800 Saint-Jacques Street West aka National Bank Place/Place Banque Nationale - 1 million square feet

1000-de-la-gauchetiere
Montrealais, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons


Place Ville Marie at 1 Place Ville Marie in downtown Montreal. Completed in 1962, the cruciform office tower was originally built as the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada.
Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


1250 René-Lévesque, Montréal, QC, Canada
Atilin, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


TourBoursenov
Mtlfiredude, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


Place Banque Nationale (800 Saint-Jacques O, Montreal)
Permafrost46, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

[MolsonExport]

Place Bonaventure in downtown Montreal spans a massive total floor area of 3,100,000 square feet (288,000 m2). When it opened in 1967 (arguably the year that was Montreal's Zenith), it was the second largest commercial building in the world, after Chicago's legendary Merchandise Mart. It is one of the only structures in Canada with its own postal code prefix (H5A).

For some reason, Montreal favours massive but relatively squat skyscrapers. Sort of like Tokyo, the world capital of squat but gigantic buildings.

[Calgarian]

Good point, if you put the largest buildings in either Calgary or Montreal in Vancouver, they would completely dominate the skyline. Kinda like how Stantec dominates Edmonton.

What is the total square footage of office space in DT Montreal?