The Great Canadian Skyline Thread! II

[ZeDgE]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Yeah, I agree with all of what is being said this morning. I just am dumbfounded when people don't realize how much larger cities are than theirs, or how the thought of because it's in the west it must be a podunk shithole. We live in Canada, all of the information in the world is right at our fingertips. We learn it in elementary school for gods sake! I guess I just don't understand how some people have no interest in other places. That is my issue though, I guess. I'm just a traveller, I've lived in and experienced a significant amount of the cities in this country in only a short time, since I left home. The only city I have lived in that I miss(moreso than I enjoy living in Calgary) is Vancouver. The only major cities(over 1 million) I haven't lived in are Montreal and Edmonton, though I have stayed in Edmonton, I've never set foot in Montreal. Lived in Gatineau though!

I'm with you. It boggles my mind how ignorant Canadians can be about their own country.

[suburbanite]

I had a drunk revelation tonight when I was walking home from the bar and saw four construction cranes one km from each other. If anyone can prove otherwise I welcome them to do so, but I think there is no other place on the planet that is building high-rise student accommodations at the same level as Waterloo. Off the top of my head, in the last 2 years, there have been 8 new high rises built for the sole purpose of housing students attending either the University of Waterloo or Laurier.

I'll try and take some pictures in the next week or so of the extreme transformation of Kng/University Ave.

[giallo]

^ UBC is pretty crazy. I took a much-needed tour of the grounds last December, and it's booming. Not sure if 8 high-rises have gone up within the last couple of years though.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by WIGS

before I get flack for "how dare you even say that!" hear me out first:
A little known fact is that Buffalo in 1901 (pop. 352k) was larger than both Toronto(267k) and Montreal (208k).
By 1950 the small city limits peaked at 580k while Toronto was 675k and Montreal was the first Canadian city to hit 1 million!

I assume you are referring to city limits only? Montreal is generally thought of hitting one million in 1930 or so. Toronto was around 800k at the time. There was a fair amount of development outside of city limits in both cities.

[SignalHillHiker]

YYC PANO by D-2-C, on Flickr


Human Rights Museum by MR|photography, on Flickr

[SignalHillHiker]

Vancouver City Lights by AlphTran, on Flickr


Vue Urbaine. 25th level residence. by blazzzinred, on Flickr

(BTW, Jeddy recently discovered that Vancouver City Hall was the officially acknowledged inspiration behind the design of our Confederation Building, which was constructed in the 1950s just after we joined Canada).

[kw5150]

And people who prefer stuffy a-holes prefer Montreal I guess? I thought I would like to live there one day but not so sure now. Montreal seems like a city full of attitude and I prefer to relax. The glassy stuff.......lol, Montreal will have plenty of "glassy stuff" one day, dont worry. It can fill those old downtown streets with something exciting.

Originally Posted by niwell

I know this is a skyscraper forum, but do people actually live places based on skyline alone? I figured that's what pictures on the internet were for...

In any event having seen both in person many times I find Montreal comes off as much more substantial from almost any vantage point. I like the context of dense older midrises though, someone who prefers newer glassy stuff could maybe go for Calgary.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

I know this is a skyscraper forum, but do people actually live places based on skyline alone? I figured that's what pictures on the internet were for...

In any event having seen both in person many times I find Montreal comes off as much more substantial from almost any vantage point. I like the context of dense older midrises though, someone who prefers newer glassy stuff could maybe go for Calgary.

Agree entirely. And guffaws to the KW guy from Calgary who thinks Montreal is not ''relaxed'' and non-exciting!

Many of the world's greatest cities have no skylines to speak of, or at least puny skylines.

[kool maudit]

i feel like i missed some sort of montreal-involving thing recently, but it seems like its not worth going back for.

[kool maudit]

oh god, i looked. yeah, it was a bad one. it was a stupid one.

[davidivivid]

Indeed

[kool maudit]

i have never been to calgary, but i am sure it offers a lot of doug (the forumer)-type corporate/outdoorsy dynamism and some truly amazing downtown architecture. it also probably has some nice, loose-jointed urban neighborhoods of the ottawa or halifax type, where you have a cool main street, some highrises, and also a lot of free-standing houses.

montreal has a lot of industrial-era, eastern seaboard-type charm, where even when you turn off of the main street, everything is still built tall and right up to the lot line. montreal is nice and chunky for miles and miles. probably more than any other city in canada. it makes it feel like a large place when you're in it, but at the end of the day it doesn't necessarily contribute more people to the street or buildings to the skyline than any other approach. it also is the place where two of the world's greatest and vastest literary languages share a contentious space, which is both extraordinarily cool and annoying.

they're very different places. they might even be, like, two poles of this country's urbanism. but that doesn't mean they have to be enemies.

i will be in pristina until june 2014, and then i don't know where i will be. i would like to move to geneva or london or paris or maybe vienna. i wonder, if i stay in europe, if very new world-type cities like calgary will grow more fascinating to me. i bet they will. it's all where you're coming from i guess.

i should probably go skiing near there in like 2016 after being immersed in ancient buildings for years. we'll test the theory.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by kw5150

And people who prefer stuffy a-holes prefer Montreal I guess? I thought I would like to live there one day but not so sure now. Montreal seems like a city full of attitude and I prefer to relax. The glassy stuff.......lol, Montreal will have plenty of "glassy stuff" one day, dont worry. It can fill those old downtown streets with something exciting.

Your post doesn't show that you like to relax. In fact, it shows that you badly need to relax and take things more lightly. Calgary is amazing, very modern, very glassy, very dynamic. It's the best. There, there.

[kool maudit]

the only time i am not relaxed is when my EI check doesn't come and we're still part of canada.

[Razor]

Through pictures alone, Montreal doesn't awe you with it's skyline the way Calgary does..To truly appreciate the urbanity of that city, you have to have your boots on the ground..Montreal came into being before 60 story glass skyscrapers..I doubt that Calgary has a street as long and built up as Ste.Catherines, nor do they have the neighbourhoods..No knock against Calgary, but you can only dress a modern city of a million up so much.Calgary was smart, and put what they do have in it's core. Cities need age, seasoning,and battle scars. Having said that, the way it's going I doubt Calgary will take 300+ years to be a metro of 4.0 million,unless things go south for Alberta...This can be attributed to the world having more population, being more transient and more urban today..Cities can grow faster than they did 100 years ago.

[Martin Mtl]

All pictures: Mario Faubert / airphotomax

[FrAnKs]

Thats probably from last summer! ... Brilliant pictures thanks!

[Symz]

Do I see a pool on top of Place Ville Marie?

[kool maudit]

montreal isn't an awe-inspiring skyline. it's textured and wonderful, but not awe-inspiring. i have never been to calgary, but it's not hard for me to believe it could have more skyline punch.

i like to live on streets that look like this though (credit: flar):



i think it's really important that residential streets look at least like that. that's a minimum. it's better if they look like this (credit http://www.parisgeo.cnrs.fr/):



i guess we all like imposing buildings. that's why we're here. calgary has some great imposing buildings downtown, but it doesn't yet have whole areas of people living in at least somewhat imposing houses. i don't discount its rapid growth in adjacent-to-downtown areas.

that's also a thing.

[ssiguy]

I absolutely adore the Montreal skyline.

Montreal's skyline is incredibly diverse by the fact that is has slowly been nutured over time. Yes Vancouver and Toronto have more highrises but the difference is that the buildings in Montreal are actually worth having.

Tor/Van have added a staggering amount of highrises to their skyline in the last decade but a larger skyline doesn't neccesarily mean it's a better skyline. Tell me, has there been even ONE building over 25 stories in Tor/Van in the last decade that is not blue/green glass?

Toronto's Waterfront area despite all it's new highrises looks more like a wall than a skyline. An endless series of blue glass 101 that any 5 year old with a box of crayons could design. Vancouver is exactly the same except the buildingsare shorter as the skyline looks like the world's best but then god came along with a razor and slice them all off at exactly 30 stories.

In Tor/Van the only design requirement in the last decade has been that they must be blue glass and can't fall down. Anything less than 10 years old just looks like cook-cutter design...............they've moved the suburban blandness that downtowners profess to hate into the core of the city.

Montreal, due to such a large hiatus, has a more nutured skyline with good building spacing, different design ideas, different and unique building materials so it isn't overwhelmed the McDevelopments that have overtaken Tor/Van.