Rideau Centre Expansion | Completed

[teej1984]

Originally Posted by citydwlr

didn't see this coming:

the drake general store - rideau centre location


[ source: blogto ]

the drake general store (for those who don't know) is a retail store run by the drake hotel in toronto. They have some pretty neat, if not a little expensive, merch. Here's a quote from blogto (see link above):

coooool!!!

[EdFromOttawa]

Originally Posted by ac888yow

Interesting. My love of Ottawa has grown since I started travelling.

Love of Ottawa is one thing different entirely. I love Ottawa as my home; but by virtually every objective measure it is an incredibly mediocre and average city. There is no quantifiable metric that would indicate otherwise, from transportation to architecture to entertainment options.

I mean damn look at Astana, capital of Kazakhstan...it looks like a future metropolis compared to Ottawa, the capital of an OECD G8 country....







why not us?

[YOWflier]

Originally Posted by EdFromOttawa

Love of Ottawa is one thing different entirely. I love Ottawa as my home; but by virtually every objective measure it is an incredibly mediocre and average city. There is no quantifiable metric that would indicate otherwise, from transportation to architecture to entertainment options.

Love of Ottawa isn't a different thing at all. It's a feeling that's developed by measuring the factors that are most important to living an excellent life. The fact that Ottawa consistently ranks very highly in living desirability and quality of life indices means that people responsible for objectively measure such things disagree with you. I also disagree with you. Incidentally, I don't recall Astana featuring highly on any such index, but I'll stand corrected.

And I think we covered the entertainment topic exhaustively in the 'boring Ottawa' thread. I maintain my position that if you have trouble entertaining yourself in Ottawa, you're just a boring person ... or have very limited/niche interests.

[White Pine]

Originally Posted by EdFromOttawa

Love of Ottawa is one thing different entirely. I love Ottawa as my home; but by virtually every objective measure it is an incredibly mediocre and average city. There is no quantifiable metric that would indicate otherwise, from transportation to architecture to entertainment options.

I mean damn look at Astana, capital of Kazakhstan...it looks like a future metropolis compared to Ottawa, the capital of an OECD G8 country....









why not us?

Some neat pictures. A bit confused, though, as one of those pics seems to be a legislature. It looks great, but ours does too!

In any case, we'd have to bulldoze half the city to make anything that looks like that.

[EdFromOttawa]

Originally Posted by ac888yow

Love of Ottawa isn't a different thing at all. It's a feeling that's developed by measuring the factors that are most important to living an excellent life. The fact that Ottawa consistently ranks very highly in living desirability and quality of life indices means that people responsible for objectively measure such things disagree with you. I also disagree with you. Incidentally, I don't recall Astana featuring highly on any such index, but I'll stand corrected.

And I think we covered the entertainment topic exhaustively in the 'boring Ottawa' thread. I maintain my position that if you have trouble entertaining yourself in Ottawa, you're just a boring person ... or have very limited/niche interests.

Yes Ottawa has a high standard of living. Loads of cities do too though. My point was that Ottawa is MEDIOCRE and AVERAGE when compared to other cities, not that it's a BAD city per se. I'm just saying everything you can get in Ottawa you can get in droves from a lot of other places.

Again look at the above. If Kazakhstan can pull off something that unique (land of BORAT recall), then why do we have frumpy little concrete cubes filling our downtown? I mean really cut out Parliament hill and show me skylines of the two and I would have guessed Ottawa as Astana and Astana as Ottawa...

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by EdFromOttawa

Yes Ottawa has a high standard of living. Loads of cities do too though. My point was that Ottawa is MEDIOCRE and AVERAGE when compared to other cities, not that it's a BAD city per se. I'm just saying everything you can get in Ottawa you can get in droves from a lot of other places.

Again look at the above. If Kazakhstan can pull off something that unique (land of BORAT recall), then why do we have frumpy little concrete cubes filling our downtown? I mean really cut out Parliament hill and show me skylines of the two and I would have guessed Ottawa as Astana and Astana as Ottawa...

Astana is in the former USSR. I imagine all that was built by the Soviets. They, especially under Stalin, threw godlike sums of money at making everything stunning (just google pictures of the Moscow subway), but the people didn't exactly live very good lives. I'd take Ottawa any day.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by EdFromOttawa

I mean damn look at Astana, capital of Kazakhstan...it looks like a future metropolis compared to Ottawa, the capital of an OECD G8 country....

why not us?

In a word: phenomenal oil wealth. OK, that was three words.

[eemy]

Also a megalomaniac of a president who diverts much of the nation's wealth into making Astana a monument to his greatness.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Astana is in the former USSR. I imagine all that was built by the Soviets. They, especially under Stalin, threw godlike sums of money at making everything stunning (just google pictures of the Moscow subway), but the people didn't exactly live very good lives. I'd take Ottawa any day.

Close, but it was founded by Cossacks, but didn't really become a significant city until it was made the new capital of Kazakhstan in the 1990s, at which point godlike sums of petrodollars were thrown at it.

I agree that it is hardly fair to compare capitals of dictatorships to capitals in democratic countries where the government has to put money into healthcare, pensions, other cities that are not the capital, etc.

That being said, it would be nice if every once in a while the government would shell out for some good architecture. As far as I know only one public building in Ottawa has won a GG award in the recent past (War Museum)

[eternallyme]

No other G7 capital city has anything like that...go to Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc. and they don't make government architecture a high priority any more than Ottawa does.

Dictatorships seem to be the places that want the most post-modern style...at great cost.

[EdFromOttawa]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

No other G7 capital city has anything like that...go to Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc. and they don't make government architecture a high priority any more than Ottawa does.

Dictatorships seem to be the places that want the most post-modern style...at great cost.

Wut the bleep. Are you serial?

[jslath]

Slightly off topic, don't ya think?

[drawarc]

Not sure if posted already, CTV Ottawa did interview with tower crane operator at Rideau Centre. The extended video has some nice aerial views of city.
http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/a-job-that-reaches-dizzying-heights-1.1860294

[J.OT13]

First off Ottawa looks way better than Astana. I only saw one building that looks decent on your pics and a few others looking it up on Wikipedia. Otherwise, it's all white and/or tacky (gold towers framing Presidential Palace). One thing we often use to compare cities is rapid transit: with a population very similar to Ottawa, construction hasn't yet started as of April 2013 on a light rail metro with an estimated opening in 2017 for Astana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astana

Ed said that if we took out the Parliament Buildings, people would think OT was Astana and vis-versa, but that's not fair. Why can we count everyone else's monuments, but not Ottawa's?

Ottawa has a lot of monumental buildings:

• Pretty much everything on Parliament Hill
• Connaught Building on Sussex
• National Art Gallery
• Old War Museum
• New War Museum
• Museum of Civilization
• Victoria Museum
• Langevin Block
• James Flaherty Building is pretty decent
• Transportation Building
• Old Union Station
• Château Laurier
• World Exchange Plaza
• Place de Ville (needs some work, but is still a classic mid century office complex)
• Willis House on Rideau
• Cathedral Hill
• Freiman Building
• Convention Centre
• Lord Elgin

Sure these buildings aren't on the same scale as other G7 capitals, but they have millions of people and have existed for much longer than Ottawa. And sure we also have a lot of crap like the Claridge Plazas and a lot of concrete boxes. News flash, so does every other city.

And since we are way off topic, I'm posting pictures we've already seen of a mall that could potentially become the best looking mall in Canada (fro the outside) with two awesome historic corners.



http://www.rideaucentre.com/en/Redevelopment/Pages/Renderings.aspx

[EdFromOttawa]

If you think Ottawa looks better architecturally than some of those masterpieces in Astana, I want what you're having.

I never said Ottawa wasn't improving. Starting last year, the next bunch of years will drive Ottawa forward by leaps and bounds to a huge degree compared to the stagnation of the 1990s and early 2000s. I'm ecstatic personally.

As to your comparisons...well all I can recommend is you travel more. Try wandering the back alleys of London UK, the boulevards of Paris, Old Montreal, the Brewery District in Toronto, Lower Manhattan...makes it really REALLY tough to go back to empty Sparks Street, sad Bronson, boring Queen.

[Sean1337]

http://ottawacitizen.com/storyline/ridea...ourt-and-replacing-it-with-a-dining-hall

the new dining hall

[Mikeed]

If you ask me Astana looks chintzy as hell.

And Ottawa is organic.

EDIT: to expand on what I'm saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4C7gWEpEU
I'm glad the NCC didn't turn Ottawa into a disaster of modern planning like Brasilia.

[mac_junkie1]

wow.... off topic so much!! take it to a PM guys its getting hard to follow the proper feed now...

also, I hate when people reply to posts with those huge pictures... so much useless clutter ensues

[EdFromOttawa]

Originally Posted by mac_junkie1

wow.... off topic so much!! take it to a PM guys its getting hard to follow the proper feed now...

also, I hate when people reply to posts with those huge pictures... so much useless clutter ensues

Sorry about that, still figuring out how to format pictures. I'll call it quits on this convo. Though I think it's a valid topic

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Sean1337

http://ottawacitizen.com/storyline/ridea...ourt-and-replacing-it-with-a-dining-hall

the new dining hall

I like how they're bringing in a lot of smaller Canadian restaurants (several of which don't seem to be in the food court business), it should give it a different feel.