The Great Canadian Skyline Thread!

[koops65]

Yes... but NYC makes almost every city on earth look puny...

[Prometheus]

View of Downtown Vancouver, Burnaby & Surrey by jenn chan, on Flickr


View of Downtown Vancouver, Burnaby & Surrey by jenn chan, on Flickr

[Chadillaccc]

http://www.wondersphotography.com/category/main-menu/street-and-urban/

[caltrane74]

Originally Posted by koops65

Yes... but NYC makes almost every city on earth look puny...

New York has been building more skyscrapers than Toronto for 80 or 90 years. It has only been very recently Toronto started building more towers than New York (albeit, not taller and not better) and we are still 3X times smaller than New York, so the odds of keeping even that title are slim.

[mistercorporate]

Meh, NYC is an important cultural trend setter and one of the best collective advocates for the urban agenda, but realistically, it's the most overrated city out there in terms of actual urban experience and quality of life. Heck, even Miami sometimes feels rundown and depressing compared to TO. The US does small towns better than us but something went wrong in the past couple decades, it's like they can't decide whether to maintain the character and grit of their big cities or go whole hog with gentrification (which removes the character but can't quite remove all the grit either). London seems to do urban heft with urban character quite well, we could learn a lot more from them in that dept.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by caltrane74

New York has been building more skyscrapers than Toronto for 80 or 90 years. It has only been very recently Toronto started building more towers than New York (albeit, not taller and not better) and we are still 3X times smaller than New York, so the odds of keeping even that title are slim.

Yeah, Toronto's definitely had a quality advantage for a while.

[kool maudit]

Interesting points of the type that only occur in Canada- and Toronto-focused fora.

But I get it.

It's like how Paris is wonderful, but after a while all the beige brick blends together and there are only like three decent Guyanese places and, honestly, the whole "monumental" thing is really kind of 19th century anyway. The future is decentralized tech individualism.

After an admittedly fun afternoon on the Canal St-Martin, you start thinking about those new condos in Griffintown I find.

It's less clichéd.

People from Vienna to Beijing to Montreal are all saying this.

[kool maudit]

(But seriously... we are such strivers! This is the thing I was talking about wrt provincialism etc. You just don't see people here actually rolling their eyes about Berlin, even if they actually do prefer Copenhagen. It wouldn't scan right...

And, no – this doesn't mean I think Denmark is better than Canada. I am really not some sort of Denmark patriot – I just live here. It just means I am Canadian and am sensitive to our excesses, just as Danes are to their own.

Come on... how many people in the world roll their eyes wearily at New York while hailing Toronto? Just estimate a number.

Now: what percentage of that number would have no ties to Toronto or Canada? Simple thought exercise.)

[kool maudit]

Ah, what the hell. I am swimming against the tide and I know it. Why can't I just let Canada have its bumptious, boosterish 1910s? It's a normal phase for a young country.

Here's a picture of the Toronto skyline.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

(But seriously... we are such strivers! This is the thing I was talking about wrt provincialism etc. You just don't see people here actually rolling their eyes about Berlin, even if they actually do prefer Copenhagen. It wouldn't scan right...

And, no – this doesn't mean I think Denmark is better than Canada. I am really not some sort of Denmark patriot – I just live here. It just means I am Canadian and am sensitive to our excesses, just as Danes are to their own.

Come on... how many people in the world roll their eyes wearily at New York while hailing Toronto? Just estimate a number.

Now: what percentage of that number would have no ties to Toronto or Canada? Simple thought exercise.)

Once again you're making blanket statements which are simply untrue. When I lived in Paris they were constantly comparing themselves with London (French families with centuries-long roots in the Bordeaux region) and didn't hold back on the snide remarks. Bern was no different with respect to other continental cities. This is nothing peculiar to Canadians. New York in many ways is a comparable to Toronto in terms of urban and cultural vibe at street level and frankly I know quite a few New Yorkers (no idea how many generations) and usually critical and obnoxious Californians (5th generation) who have remarked at how much more polished Toronto appears. New Yorkers (both upstate and city) are some of the largest groups of tourists to Toronto so getting their unsolicited opinions is pretty easy. My observations were my personal opinion and these observations overheard were anecdotal yet part of a trend I've observed. You'd never hear me state that Toronto's urban experience was more polished than San Francisco or any other mid-size Californian city (because it's not), but comparing it to New York, yes, even Wall Street feels underwhelming compared to the hype. New York has more of just about everything (including certainly cultural influence) but in totality it sure feels less impressive than the hype surrounding it, like an 8 million-strong Hamilton with big skyscrapers.

It's one thing to be sensitive to Canadian excesses as you see it, but being totally blind to similar behaviour in your chosen environment is exactly why a lot of the posts above sound so pretentious. It's nice that you're dazzled by all these new cultural experiences but seriously, Europeans are human too and clearly susceptible to the same dynamics, quite evident and visible if one is willing to take the romantic goggles off even for a moment.

[kool maudit]

Alright. You can count me in on the perception that New York's 1990s and 2000s scrubdown has left big parts of it feeling a little neither-here-nor-there, but I don't think my tastes and predilections will ever, given the scale and nature of New York's infrastructure and built environment, allow me to see Toronto (Toronto!) as being the more polished city.

When I actually sit here and give it some thought, like "Bloor and Avenue vs. 5th and Central Park South" or – to align with your Wall Street example – "Looking down Wall from Trinity Church (built in 1697) vs. looking down Temperance from Cloud Gardens (trying to find a similarly central little green)", I find I understand it even less.

Even the grandest experiences, the great hall at Union Station for instance...



Well you know where I am going.



Cumberland Street/Yorkville Park vs. 40th Street / Bryant Park...

Toronto is a wonderful, eclectic, robustly expanding Canadian city but... nah. We're just not going to be able to get on the same page here.

Hamilton with sky...

nope. Forget it. We're too far apart on this one.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Interesting points of the type that only occur in Canada- and Toronto-focused fora.

But I get it.

It's like how Paris is wonderful, but after a while all the beige brick blends together and there are only like three decent Guyanese places and, honestly, the whole "monumental" thing is really kind of 19th century anyway. The future is decentralized tech individualism.

After an admittedly fun afternoon on the Canal St-Martin, you start thinking about those new condos in Griffintown I find.

It's less clichéd.

People from Vienna to Beijing to Montreal are all saying this.

I just honestly don't find New York nice looking. I'd consider most cities to have a quality advantage over New York, I just said Toronto because that's what was being compared. I'd rather have La Défense or the Frankfurt skyline in Canada than Manhattan any day.

I'm also not very fond of the cookie cutter urban renewal of Haussmannian Paris, though I do find many of the less mass produced parts (especially the post war ones) very nice.


The before shot is much nicer if you ask me.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

It's one thing to be sensitive to Canadian excesses as you see it, but being totally blind to similar behaviour in your chosen environment is exactly why a lot of the posts above sound so pretentious. It's nice that you're dazzled by all these new cultural experiences but seriously, Europeans are human too and clearly susceptible to the same dynamics, quite evident and visible if one is willing to take the romantic goggles off even for a moment.

This is mostly a character you have built of me, this off-putting European aesthete construction. When have I ever posted about being dazzled by Denmark?

Denmark is many things, but dazzling isn't one of them.

I post in the Canada forum because I am Canadian. I lived in Canada for over 30 years and it is my home country. It always will be.

Given this, I will always consider it within my rights to talk about cultural trends in Canada, the way Canada is developing and the way Canada sees itself.

I will compare it to other places and ways of doing things because comparisons can clarify things.

I am critical of what I see as a tendency towards US-style boosterism, really US-in-the-late-19th-century-style boosterism ("You tell me what I can find in Paree that we haven't got in St. Louis"), and that's what I am talking about here. I think Canada is weird about who and what it is and that its present bluster is both revealing and unflattering.

You can tell me that this is not a trend, or that it's a necessary and good trend or that something else is going on that I am totally missing.

But this is really the last time I am going to get into this whole "pretentious" thing because there's no pretense here: I am saying what I think.

If you don't like what I think or disagree with it, fine, but at least say what you think and why it's more correct rather than posting about how nauseated you are and how pretentious I am just because I live in Europe and "the European snob" is an easy stock figure to point at.

I don't get personal with you and I'd rather you wouldn't with me. We don't know each other.

We can PM going forward for the sake of the thread if there's anything.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Beedok

The before shot is much nicer if you ask me.

I agree. Haussmann really killed the Ile de la Cité.

Skyline break:

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Montreal's riverfront needs some serious TLC, it's such a let down especially that section near Old Montreal.

You can ask the Feds for that one. The old port is their jurisdiction. Under Harper's decade-long rule, the Feds did practically nothing to develop the old port. Now with local boy Trudeau, hopefully things will get moving again.

[kool maudit]

At least the buildings are fairly close to the water. I find a lot of contemporary waterfront plans tend to put too many things like stadiums and museums and "imagination centres" or whatever the hell in there.

Really you just need: buildings -> street -> sidewalk -> some sort of linear promenade -> water.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

New York has more of just about everything (including certainly cultural influence) but in totality it sure feels less impressive than the hype surrounding it, like an 8 million-strong Hamilton with big skyscrapers.

"New York: an 8-million strong Hamilton with big skyscrapers"

I have to admit, I never quite thought of it that way before.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by esquire

"New York: an 8-million strong Hamilton with big skyscrapers"

I have to admit, I never quite thought of it that way before.

New York has about 20 million though with all the suburbs and such. I guess that's a comparison of relative skyline strengths between Canada and the US?

[caltrane74]

Paris is in another league altogether.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

(But seriously... we are such strivers! This is the thing I was talking about wrt provincialism etc. You just don't see people here actually rolling their eyes about Berlin, even if they actually do prefer Copenhagen. It wouldn't scan right...

And, no – this doesn't mean I think Denmark is better than Canada. I am really not some sort of Denmark patriot – I just live here. It just means I am Canadian and am sensitive to our excesses, just as Danes are to their own.

Come on... how many people in the world roll their eyes wearily at New York while hailing Toronto? Just estimate a number.

Now: what percentage of that number would have no ties to Toronto or Canada? Simple thought exercise.)

Are you saying that these type of opinions about NY are a prevalent perception among Canadians? If so, I'm surprised I've encountered so few of them having spent my entire life in Canada.

One has to be very careful not to confuse the traits of individual or niche groups with those of an entire culture. When observing human culture, the very first reaction upon encountering something curious or novel is, "What an odd/interesting individual". Then after much time, analysis and comparison, one can translate their observation into 'What an odd/interesting group". Getting to the point of examining entire nations on a cultural level of course requires exceptionally more vigour, and I would argue may even be beyond the scope of anecdote, and likely requires examining cultural media.

Now that's not to say that a person shouldn't analyse all of her or his human cultural interactions; there are myriad reasons why one should. I'm only commenting on the context in which one frames such interactions and the conclusions that are to be drawn.