Canadian City Proposals

[WhipperSnapper]

Fixed what? Missing Halifax, Quebec, Ottawa and, Montreal.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by LeTravailleur

Espace Montmorency will be soooo hated and loved at the same time.
I personally think it looks amazing.

I'll post again this little sketch I made a few months ago, where we can see the three major projects side by side.
It's not perfect (especially for all those cubes), but it gives an idea of what the whole thing could look like (from Du Souvenir overpass) :

Too bad it won't completely surround the Clocktower of Doom and block it from sight. They need to build a Chernobyl style containment structure to hide it with.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Fixed what? Missing Halifax, Quebec, Ottawa and, Montreal.

Which of those four has a suburban city with a "ton" (as you said it) of development going on? If there are big proposals in Kanata, Levis, etc. I certainly haven't heard about them, and if you're talking about Dartmouth as suburban, I might as well call all the development going on in Kensington, Inglewood, and Bridgeland suburban Clearly Montreal has some impressive proposals in its suburbs, hence my kudos.




Here's a new one for Calgary at 17th Avenue and 14th Street SW, the end of the "Red Mile". Between 300 and 400 000 sq. ft. of commercial and retail space, and 270 rental apartments 1 floor of retail, 2 floors of office, and 23 floors of residences(per the render).

The Sentinel


http://www.arlingtonstreet.ca/?p=0&action=property&ID=591

[WhipperSnapper]

I'm not calling Dartmouth suburban. I'm calling it a suburb. Moot point as there is a crapload of suburban towers under development in the Halifax region. Gatineau has the tallest proposed in the Ottawa Region. Now, Ste-foy is undeniably suburban.

[Chadillaccc]

So now you're just pulling hairs even though it was fairly clear what I meant? Alright. You win! So then Calgary is doing pretty well too then University City, The Groves, London, etc... I had no idea!

[dleung]

Laval project looks like a rather unresolved version of an otherwise great concept, but like a recent QC proposal, seems unbelievable given the suburban context.

Enjoyed the squabbling from a few pages back. I had come to realize a while ago that Andrew actually has higher standards for architecture than almost every other former (besides me of course ), just that he lets his emotions get the best of him when he perceives my critiques as city-vs-city-based.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Urbmtl

Espace Montmorency: A $420-Million Investment in the Largest Commercial Real Estate Project Ever Built in Laval

Aiming for LEED Gold certification, Espace Montmorency is an iconic project that will seek to maximize the potential of this area, which revolves around transit-oriented development.

The four-phase Montmorency project will consist of about 10 buildings of up to 20 storeys each, offering over 1 million square feet of leasable space.

Would it be a stretch to say this seems to take some design cues from the Halifax Central Library? The atrium kind of reminds me of a cross between that, and the Greektown area of Detroit (not necessarily a bad thing) but it might not work very well in practice depending on the dimensions involved and how much activity it gets.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

So now you're just pulling hairs even though it was fairly clear what I meant? Alright. You win! So then Calgary is doing pretty well too then University City, The Groves, London, etc... I had no idea!

To be fair, there are residential/mixed use towers (15-20fl) going up/recently constructed in basically each of Halifax's inner ring suburbs: Armdale, Fairview/Dutch Village, Clayton Park, Wright's Cove, etc, along with the major developments in central Dartmouth like King's Wharf (Wright's Cove is a small pocket of waterfront access in Dartmouth's main industrial areal). The Bedford Highway could also eventually be lined with towers, along with the reclaimed-land area in Bedford Basin I don't expect many people to know what these places are or what they're like, but the first three are kind of like Cochrane, but closer to downtown, and with transit. Wright's Cove and Bedford are suburban/industrial waterfronts..

The suburbs that are geographically equivalent to Cochrane aren't where the towers are being built. But metro Halifax seems to be taking a lot of cues from the Vancouver region lately, whether intentionally or coincidentally.

[Hali87]

Examples:


Source


Source


Source


DSC_0394 by Hali87, on Flickr

There have also been some uglier/boring ones over the last decade or so but you get the picture.

This one's less of a tower but shows the recent shift in design aesthetic towards the contemporary and experimental (even in the suburbs - this one's in a greenfield development on the far end of Fairview):


Source

[Chadillaccc]

I understand that, but it was fairly clear that I was talking about suburban cities and he just wanted to make an argument about it. If I meant the things like you were talking about, I wouldn't have said that it's nice to see it spreading across the country, since it's been happening in Calgary, Halifax, Ottawa, Edmonton, etc fairly strong for the past while as well. Calgary alone has built/is building 15 towers outside of the Downtown/Beltline/Mission core in the last 5 years, one of them being 100 meters tall. The nearest one of those 15 to the the core is still over 2 km north of downtown. I just wasn't counting the stuff inside core cities. Though in retrospect, with Calgary and Halifax's Unicity Model, I probably should have considered that as well. Not a big deal regardless

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

I understand that, but it was fairly clear that I was talking about suburban cities and he just wanted to make an argument about it. If I meant the things like you were talking about, I wouldn't have said that it's nice to see it spreading across the country, since it's been happening in Calgary, Halifax, Ottawa, Edmonton, etc fairly strong for the past while as well.

I think a lot of the time what you think will be clear or naturally assumed by people, isn't. Sometimes people just like arguing, but sometime they're arguing against a point that they thought you were trying to make (but weren't). Just an observation.

I know very little to nothing about contemporary suburban development in Edmonton or Ottawa, or even what would properly be considered "suburban" in either (or exclusively outside of either?)

Calgary I'm slightly more familiar with, but again I'm never 100% sure what people mean by "suburbs"/"suburban" WRT most Western cities. And I don't mean that as an urbanist slight - "suburb"/"suburban" is just very ambiguous because suburbs are different across the country and because not all suburbs are "suburban" and some suburban areas are "within cities", and then a tendency for people to assume that the norm in their region is applicable everywhere, or conversely that their region is very exceptional but that the rest of Canada is all the same. Which makes it hard to really have a clear conversation about these things at a national scale.


It's also definitely seen a boost here in modern years (suburban towers), and there's a new urbanist influence present in varying degrees, but most of the (suburban) neighbourhoods I mentioned earlier were building towers in the 60s, 70s, 80s... (the same might be true in places like London or KCW but the same neighbourhoods might not necessarily be considered suburban there for the reasons mentioned above)

So the implication (/direct statement) that only Toronto and Vancouver's suburbs were really building towers up until now seemed incorrect. And that was what I thought you meant (WRT the "fixed it for you" and all that).

[Chadillaccc]

This is true, but I think we understand each other now Sorry for the confusion!

[Hali87]

I'm honestly just surprised when people from the ROC know any esoteric details about the architectural history/geography of Halifax beyond "Peninsula" and "heritage". The idea that someone who (to my knowledge) has never been here would know much about any of the suburbs here didn't really cross my mind, TBH, and I mean that in a self-deprecating/realist way if anything.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

There's a ton happening in Canada's suburbs.

Indeed, there's a ton going on in Montreal's suburbs, but not over 20 floors... We Montreal posters just don't post them here. I personally don't find the construction of a Holiday Inn in Blainville very interesting...

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

So now you're just pulling hairs even though it was fairly clear what I meant? Alright. You win! So then Calgary is doing pretty well too then University City, The Groves, London, etc... I had no idea!

You have me confused. I guess, in your opinion, Jersey City, isn't a suburb because it is directly across the Hudson from downtown Manhattan.

[vanman]

Poor Laval can never catch a break.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

Indeed, there's a ton going on in Montreal's suburbs, but not over 20 floors... We Montreal posters just don't post them here. I personally don't find the construction of a Holiday Inn in Blainville very interesting...

There wasn't much over 20 storeys outside of Mississauga City Centre here either. The craptastic World on Yonge cause a height explosion in York Region north of Toronto.

The architecture is mundane and repetitive. I agree. Not much value in discussing.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

You have me confused. I guess, in your opinion, Jersey City, isn't a suburb because it is directly across the Hudson from downtown Manhattan.

I'm not sure Dartmouth could ever really be called a suburb in a technical sense as it originated as a separate and independent city with its own historic downtown and economy before the bridges were built. And now of course Halifax doesn't technically have any suburbs due to them all being part of a huge regional municipality (like if Jersey City and peers were suddenly within NYC limits). Maybe for a short period after when the bridges were completed and it became very popular to live in Dartmouth and commute to Halifax, and before the amalgamation.

But "functionally" yes, it is pretty much a suburb. And unfortunately most of it is to some degree suburban, downtown excepted of course.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I'm not sure Dartmouth could ever really be called a suburb in a technical sense as it originated as a separate and independent city with its own historic downtown and economy before the bridges were built. And now of course Halifax doesn't technically have any suburbs due to them all being part of a huge regional municipality (like if Jersey City and peers were suddenly within NYC limits). Maybe for a short period after when the bridges were completed and it became very popular to live in Dartmouth and commute to Halifax, and before the amalgamation.

But "functionally" yes, it is pretty much a suburb. And unfortunately most of it is to some degree suburban, downtown excepted of course.

The one I'm least familiar with which is why I gave an alternative. Haven't being outside of Halifax airport for a good decade or so. I have tracked development there as part of my editor duties with first building and than maintaining the city's high rise SSP database for the better part of a decade.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

You have me confused. I guess, in your opinion, Jersey City, isn't a suburb because it is directly across the Hudson from downtown Manhattan.

From the standard definition, Calgary has very few suburbs...