Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[240glt]

Montreal looking quite amazing in these past few pages.

Haven't been out there since my grandparents passed 15 years ago, planning a Montreal / QC trip for the fall

[Wpg_Guy]

Spot the cranes in Winnipeg


https://instagram.fybz2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/...58528934788226_6080342745195479040_n.jpg
Justin Landry (@justinmyjeep) on Instagram

[OTSkyline]

^Those Edmonton shots belong in the "Ugly Canada Thread". Not the best angles or buildings.

Those towers on square podiums?
Those empty lots downtown?
That barber shop tower?


I mean, every city has some ugly or mediocre buildings and such but it just looked like they were all concentrated in those few shots ..

[Mrs Sauga]

Does Edmonton have any walkable areas like, say, Yonge St? I've done a very brief look using google maps and pics and it seems like they have their skyscrapers, then they have those short office buildings, then parkinglots/plazas.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Mrs Sauga

Does Edmonton have any walkable areas like, say, Yonge St? I've done a very brief look using google maps and pics and it seems like they have their skyscrapers, then they have those short office buildings, then parkinglots/plazas.

104 Street is quite nice, lots of mid-rise brick buildings and hipster restaurants and stuff.

Jasper Avenue is in my opinion the closest thing to Yonge Street in terms of it being a busy travel street, with a wider road, the LRT underground, and lots of people walking around, though it's not quite as pedestrian-oriented as 104 street is.

But really I think all of downtown Edmonton is quite walkable. It might not have active streetfronts on each street, but they're all pretty pleasant and all have some nice things to see at some point along them.

The only place where I think Edmonton lacks critically is its riverfront access from downtown. It's damn hard to get down there, and you have to cross a bunch of highway-like streets. Someone who's spent more than 2 weeks total in Edmonton might have a more complete picture though haha

[240glt]

^ you haven't had to walk around here lately. The whole downtown is a dirty construction ridden mess. Jasper Ave is still pretty barren outside normal working hours, 104 street (is what I think you mean) is busy with the market on Saturdays but still pretty sleepy. Whyte Ave is still the defacto walkable street in this town and the downtown has a long ways to go to even come close to catching up. A lot of events have moved out of downtown due to the perpetual construction and are not coming back, having found far nicer venues elsewhere.

Maybe in a few years it'll be better but at the moment being downtown is not a pleasant experience.

[niwell]

There's also 82nd (Whyte) ave on the south side of the river in the Old Strathcona historic area. It's more analogous to a Queen W type area, with bars, restaurants and smaller stores. Not sure if things have changed but when I spent more time there it was my favourite part of Edmonton. https://goo.gl/maps/SvtsNvQg6e82

Edit: I see I posted at the same time as 240GLT!

From what I remember there are a few other areas that seemed to have good bones, such as 124 st and 118 ave, though they were considered kinda sketchy back in the day (late 90s / early 2000s). Not sure if they have gentrified since.

[itom 987]

124th street is completely gentrified, 118 avenue still has a long way to go. Lots of improvements have been made in the downtown area over the last 5 years. Those surface lots are slowly been eaten up by new development.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by 240glt

^ you haven't had to walk around here lately. The whole downtown is a dirty construction ridden mess. Jasper Ave is still pretty barren outside normal working hours, 104 street (is what I think you mean) is busy with the market on Saturdays but still pretty sleepy. Whyte Ave is still the defacto walkable street in this town and the downtown has a long ways to go to even come close to catching up. A lot of events have moved out of downtown due to the perpetual construction and are not coming back, having found far nicer venues elsewhere.

Maybe in a few years it'll be better but at the moment being downtown is not a pleasant experience.

I was last in Edmonton in February, and I definitely meant 104 Street, I don't know why I always get them mixed up.

None of the downtown streets are super busy outside of working hours for sure, but they're still walkable. You're not passing by seas of parking or anything, and there are lots of places to duck in for food and drinks, or parks and plazas or whatever.

Obviously the construction is having an impact, in particular the LRT. But I think the question was less about if downtown is a destination as much as if it's just a decent place to walk around.

But yeah, Whyte Avenue is of course the flagship urban street in Edmonton, far above anywhere downtown.

[Coldrsx]

Originally Posted by 240glt

^ you haven't had to walk around here lately. The whole downtown is a dirty construction ridden mess. Jasper Ave is still pretty barren outside normal working hours, 104 street (is what I think you mean) is busy with the market on Saturdays but still pretty sleepy. Whyte Ave is still the defacto walkable street in this town and the downtown has a long ways to go to even come close to catching up. A lot of events have moved out of downtown due to the perpetual construction and are not coming back, having found far nicer venues elsewhere.

Maybe in a few years it'll be better but at the moment being downtown is not a pleasant experience.

Oh 240, BC won't come soon enough for you.

We have a lot of construction happening in the Downtown right now with ICE District, a new LRT line, multiple towers going up and some infrastructure projects happening concurrently, not a bad thing. Downtown has come A LONG way in the last decade and while not 'there yet' in some regards, not quite the apocalyptic nightmare that this 240 character is portraying.

We have had a lot of new food/bev open up, similar to most cities in recent years, but still are struggling from a retail perspective as we split thing with Whyte Avenue in many ways. It too has shifted to a food/entertainment area again with less and less true retail, but does a good job with its mix.

A couple of festivals were forced to move due to LRT construction, they will return to Downtown as of next year.

Downtown is coming along nicely, but lots of work still to do... but once again, don't let someone who cannot wait to get out of dodge talk about his disdain for this growing core.

Read this:
http://www.edmontondowntown.com/uploads/source/Business_Reports/2017.pdf

*full disclosure, I am with the Downtown Business Association.

[Mrs Sauga]

Originally Posted by niwell

There's also 82nd (Whyte) ave on the south side of the river in the Old Strathcona historic area. It's more analogous to a Queen W type area, with bars, restaurants and smaller stores. Not sure if things have changed but when I spent more time there it was my favourite part of Edmonton. https://goo.gl/maps/SvtsNvQg6e82

Edit: I see I posted at the same time as 240GLT!

From what I remember there are a few other areas that seemed to have good bones, such as 124 st and 118 ave, though they were considered kinda sketchy back in the day (late 90s / early 2000s). Not sure if they have gentrified since.

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Surprised its so far from the downtown (across the river and further south).

I checked out the other street mentioned (104) and it doesn't' look too appealing. I just saw parking lots and plazas.

[Coldrsx]

Edmonton and Strathcona were two distinct cities until they merged in 1912.

104st, not 104 ave.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Mrs Sauga

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Surprised its so far from the downtown (across the river and further south).

I checked out the other street mentioned (104) and it doesn't' look too appealing. I just saw parking lots and plazas.

It's not downtown, but that's really not uncommon. At least in Prairie cities:
- One of Winnipeg's primary active streets, if not the main one, is Osborne Street, across the river from downtown.
- In Saskatoon one of the most active streets is Broadway, also across the river from downtown.
- In Calgary, though it has a few, 17th Avenue is a major street for activity and its on the other side of the railway from downtown.
- Even in Vancouver, though downtown has a few destination streets itself, West 4th Avenue and Broadway are both destination streets themselves, despite being across the inlet from downtown as well.

It's not that surprising to me because those (at least for some of these) were the retail streets of the streetcar suburbs, so they had the local people-based activity while downtown became more commercial and business-oriented. That legacy kind of continues today.

[Vixx]

As mentioned, Whyte Avenue is and will continue to be Edmonton's flagship urban street. It's pretty awesome and whenever I have friends from out of town visiting for the first time they all love it.

104 Street is solid, a little sleepy during certain times, but is a pleasant place to hangout. Jasper Avenue has come a long way, and I like the direction its headed, but a lot of work is still needed for Edmonton's main commercial district street.

I won't lie, at times I'm pretty critical of Edmonton. Yeah downtown is a bit of a mess right now but I don't see how one can shit on that because it highlights the city's construction boom is going strong and when all the current projects are done it will take downtown up another level. Downtown has a long ways to go still, but it has/is undergoing the biggest transformation of any Canadian city right now (not Toronto levels by any means, but from what it was to what it is today is pretty remarkable considering so little development was happening for decades).

There are still a lot of parking lots to be filled and conversions of old beige boxes that are needed, but on all honesty the city is doing alright when you look at the big picture.

[Hali87]

Edmonton just seems to exist at a somewhat different scale than most Canadian cities. It strikes me as a place that has a few places that are decent to walk around in, but none of them really feel "great". I was there in June and wandered around Whyte with my cousin, it was a pretty good mainstreet but tbh felt kind of underwhelming for such a big city (as others have noted, the fact that it's detached from downtown is probably part of this).

On the other hand it was a really impressive city to drive around in - driving down Jasper Ave, for example, you don't really get streets like that in most Eastern cities, with that scale of buildings over that long of a stretch. Edmonton also does "wider, farther-apart" stuff (for lack of a better term) really well and as a result seems, for the most part, best enjoyed from a vehicle. Of course there are exceptions, and clearly there's been progress on the pedestrian-oriented side of things. The other thing that Edmonton seems to do well is interior spaces, and well they have the WEM which is also something other Canadian cities don't really have, and this probably ends up competing with the outdoor "mainstreet" type areas a bit more than regular malls.

I can understand the comments about downtown being a huge construction site (witnessed it), Halifax has been similar - lots of interesting new architecture/retail/venues + increased density, but in practice downtown has been a chaotic mess for the last few years, hard to get around, and with construction dust flying everywhere. One of the major access points to Downtown (the MacDonald Bridge) has been closed on/off for the last couple years as well, and once that project's done the Cogswell Interchange (another major access point) is getting redeveloped, so it's going to be a long time before everything's back to "normal".

[q12]

The 5,000 passenger Anthem of the Seas is in Halifax today, currently 6th largest cruise ship in the world. You can see Halifax's tallest in this photo as a comparison.


https://twitter.com/pwl101/status/1035133995523211264

[J.OT13]

The most walkable areas in probably the vast majority of cities are the streetcar suburbs. The same in Ottawa; Beechwood Avenue, Wellington West, Richmond (Westboro), Bank (Centretown, Glebe and Old Ottawa East. Beyond that, it's mostly post-war suburban.

[TorontoDrew]

[IMG]Moonshine by Jason Cook, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]Downtown Toronto by ian_carney, on Flickr[/IMG]

[someone123]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

The most walkable areas in probably the vast majority of cities are the streetcar suburbs. The same in Ottawa; Beechwood Avenue, Wellington West, Richmond (Westboro), Bank (Centretown, Glebe and Old Ottawa East. Beyond that, it's mostly post-war suburban.

In older cities the streetcar suburbs are about midrange. There are much more pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods that were built before 1870 or even much earlier. Even by the 1860's wider roads were built to accommodate larger carriages ("omnibus" carriages driven by horses that may have run on roads or rails).

Aside from narrower streets there was also considerably more mixed use back in the days when most people had to walk to whatever they needed on a typical day. This would have been upleasant back then in a lot of ways but it's a lot nicer now that we've replaced coal and horses with electricity.

Canada has few neighbourhood residential areas like this because what little there was to begin with has been mostly redeveloped into modern business districts or destructively reconfigured for vehicles.

Some remaining examples are old parts of Quebec City like St-Jean-Baptiste or St-Roch or the central parts of North and South End Halifax. These areas would have been fairly built up by about 1850, but weren't completely redeveloped since the cities didn't grow enough for that to happen.

[Monolith]

Fishermen's Warf view from Burrard Street Bridge, Vancouver by paul.wasneski, on Flickr


Among Giants 🏦🚢🏪 Vancouver, BC by SeaSide Signs ~ Vancouver, Canada, on Flickr


Vancouver's Valiant Vanguard by Justin Kenneth Rowley, on Flickr