Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[Coldrsx]

It's going to be a wild ride for Kelowna's skyline over the next decade.

[Denscity]

Nice to see a skyline rising here in the BC Interior!

[q12]

[FrAnKs]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKtrMNmgmvw/

[Monolith]

Vancouver 2021-12-08 by Anthony Maw, on Flickr


West 4th Avenue and Downtown by Anthony Maw, on Flickr

[The Great Scaper]

Originally Posted by zoomer

Wow, those TO shots from Hamilton Beach Trail is like looking at digital art (1’s and 0’s) or a bar chart! Cool!



Interesting observations! Halifax looks like it’s along a coastline versus a traditional or smaller harbour, like say St. John’s or Victoria. Here’s a shot from a couple years back that shows the narrow entrance to the harbour at the top right. At the bottom left the harbour continues past the Johnson Street bridge into the Gorge Waterway, which is a salt water tidal waterway that extends about 6 or 7 km inland. The inner harbour which downtown radiates is relatively large and a key focal point of course. Victoria doesn’t do tall office buildings, most buildings are on a smaller scale - there are of course large government office complexes, but not highrise and only one that I can think of you would call midrise. Employment, retail and residential is evenly spread so no obvious central business district. Of course you could say the main exceptions re: large scale buildings are those built well over a hundred years ago - the legislature buildings and the Empress Hotel.

Victoria BC October 10 Harbour Air by JohnnyJayEh, on Flickr

I just saw this photo Zoomer. Just a fantastic photograph. Was this from a seaplane?

[Hali87]

A different flavour of city than Victoria, though they offer a lot of the same things. The emphasis is just different, and the architecture that dominates in Halifax tends to be somewhat bolder more stark and less graceful than its BC counterpart. As noted, the Harbour here is a very different shape from Victoria's and the downtown waterfront is more linear. Overall though I struggle to think of a city that's more similar to Halifax than Victoria is, either on paper or in person. In simpler times I might have compared them along gender lines.

To answer an earlier question, there's been a proposed ferry route to Boston for about a decade but it's never gotten much traction; the distances involved would turn it into an overnight mini-cruise compared to a 1-hour flight from YHZ and there doesn't seem to be any convenient dock space on either end (we're already running out of space for cruise ships and sometimes they just have to moor in the middle of the Harbour when there's nowhere to dock - I'm not sure how common a practice this is elsewhere? )

Currently there are ferries between North Sydney (Cape Breton) and Newfoundland, New Glasgow and PEI, Digby and Saint John NB, Yarmouth and Bar Harbour ME (before pandemic times at least). Each of these are 2-5 hours from Halifax. There are also air links with St. Pierre (French islands near NL) and I think Iles de la Madeleine (not sure, although it is accessible from somewhere in the Maritimes). I believe float planes were common here at one point but they really aren't anymore; I've only ever seen them in the suburbs and they're kind of a niche thing. I don't think they can land in the harbour.


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[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by LFC

Kelowna, B.C

I would not have guessed that to be Kelowna. Wow! What a difference from the last time I visited 6 years ago.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

The emphasis is just different, and the architecture that dominates in Halifax tends to be somewhat bolder more stark and less graceful than its BC counterpart.

This has a pretty big impact on the feel on the ground. These bigger developments have had pluses and minuses. I think Purdy's Wharf is somewhat iconic in a way that no Victoria office tower is. Nor does Victoria have a Nova Centre (I don't really see Victoria allowing a giant glass box with LEDs and outdoor screens, though who knows), Scotia Square, or Maritime Centre. Scotia Square is much less successful and has a bunch of dead zones you don't find so much in Victoria. But these buildings also create more of a city feel. If you go to the SSP diagrams and plot the 2 cities I think Victoria has 2-3 existing structures in the shared top 25.

I was in Victoria again recently and it's surprisingly hard to find one-to-one mappings between the more interesting or character-rich parts of the two cities. Halifax doesn't really have an equivalent of the City Beautiful style legislature/Empress area in Victoria (and up until recently it had a pretty lackluster selection of hotels without many nice ones); it instead has compact Georgian-era streets and landmarks. Then the rowhouse parts of Halifax don't have a Victoria equivalent. I think having a rowhouse-era core vs. Craftsman-era core is probably one of the bigger urban distinctions in North America. By the time you argue it doesn't matter if you have office towers or rowhouses or not you've pretty much hit SSP nihilism as far as the built environment goes.

[Denscity]

Rowhouses are an Eastern thing I've barely heard of the term.
Are they the same as a townhouse?

[ue]

Victoria also feels more downtown-focused. Ironic, because I agree that Halifax's downtown is more substantial feeling. But Halifax has better neighbourhoods and main streets, like the South End, Quinpool, Hydrostone, inner North End, and the Dalhousie Campus. There's nice neighbourhoods in Victoria too, like Oak Bay, Fernwood, and Rockland, but the Downtown core has a much bigger pull. And aside from Oak Bay and a few shops in Fernwood, there aren't any commercial main streets. There's the highly urban Downtown and then suburban shopping centres in Victoria.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Rowhouses are an Eastern thing I've barely heard of the term.
Are they the same as a townhouse?

Yes.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Yes.

Technically townhouses use shared walls whereas rowhouses have separate walls right up against each other.

[Hali87]

Didn't realize there was a distinction! Although that makes sense.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ue

Victoria also feels more downtown-focused. Ironic, because I agree that Halifax's downtown is more substantial feeling. But Halifax has better neighbourhoods and main streets, like the South End, Quinpool, Hydrostone, inner North End, and the Dalhousie Campus. There's nice neighbourhoods in Victoria too, like Oak Bay, Fernwood, and Rockland, but the Downtown core has a much bigger pull. And aside from Oak Bay and a few shops in Fernwood, there aren't any commercial main streets. There's the highly urban Downtown and then suburban shopping centres in Victoria.

I think it is reminiscent of Vancouver-Montreal or maybe Portland-Boston. Not too surprising since those are geographically similar comparisons.

[ue]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think it is reminiscent of Vancouver-Montreal or maybe Portland-Boston. Not too surprising since those are geographically similar comparisons.

Well, both Vancouver and Portland have more fleshed out neighbourhoods and main streets. The latter in particular I feel is a more neighbourhood-focused city. This phenomenon in particular reminds me more of Kingston or Charlottetown, just bigger.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ue

Well, both Vancouver and Portland have more fleshed out neighbourhoods and main streets. The latter in particular I feel is a more neighbourhood-focused city. This phenomenon in particular reminds me more of Kingston or Charlottetown, just bigger.

I think Charlottetown is a lot like Victoria, but comparisons like that tend not to play well on SSP because they have different populations. Halifax is actually pretty similar in layout and structure to Montreal, but smaller.

If Victoria were bigger it would have more developed neighbourhood commercial streets like Vancouver does. But it is not old enough to have developed the older fine-grained mixed-use neighbourhoods outside of downtown, a style of development that was on its way out even in 1890 as cities developed electric streetcars. Urbanites had very limited commuting options in 1850 and land prices were in real terms probably a lot higher than today even in what we'd now consider to be small towns. So even a small-ish city could have 3-4 floor tenements inhabited by workers who would walk to their industrial sites or shops. In 1920 they'd take the streetcar and in 1970 they would drive to work.

One reality in Halifax is that a lot of the urban core had degraded heavily and is just coming back now. In the North End you are seeing maybe 50% of the original buildings with perhaps 80% of the bigger old brick buildings gone. Some of it was Detroit-like in the 90's.

[ue]

Originally Posted by someone123

think Charlottetown is a lot like Victoria, but comparisons like that tend not to play well on SSP because they have different populations. Halifax is actually pretty similar in layout and structure to Montreal, but smaller.

If Victoria were bigger it would have more developed neighbourhood commercial streets like Vancouver does. But it is not old enough to have developed the older fine-grained mixed-use neighbourhoods outside of downtown, a style of development that was on its way out even in 1890 as cities developed electric streetcars. Urbanites had very limited commuting options in 1850 and land prices were in real terms probably a lot higher than today even in what we'd now consider to be small towns. So even a small-ish city could have 3-4 floor tenements inhabited by workers who would walk to their industrial sites or shops. In 1920 they'd take the streetcar and in 1970 they would drive to work.

One reality in Halifax is that a lot of the urban core had declined heavily and is just coming back now. In the North End you are seeing maybe 50% of the original buildings with perhaps 90% of the bigger old brick buildings gone.

That's all true, but electric streetcars still spawned commercial main streets. Look at Toronto's still extant streetcar suburbs or its remnants in Vancouver's trolleybuses as evidence of this. Victoria also wasn't an insignificant city before 1940 either. It had the grand, leafy suburbs like the Uplands, which is relatively far from the core.

Kingston might be a better comparison than Charlottetown. It's still much smaller than Victoria, but they are both fairly old cities (for their respective regions) and are known for their old buildings (the Pen and City Hall in Kingston, the Empress and BC Legislature in Victoria) and have more vibrant and walkable downtowns than cities much larger than them. This downtown is surrounded by charming old residential streets, but not much in the way of alternative commercial areas, until you hit the suburban shopping centres.

[Nouvellecosse]

Victoria to me is like a mini London (minus the financial district) while Halifax is like a mini Montreal (with more wood and less brick).

[zoomer]

In 1890 Victoria became the third Canadian city with a streetcar system, ending with the final streetcar run in 1948. It was a fairly extensive system, here’s the map in 1939:



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As for comparables - interesting comments previously! Someone123 has done a good job comparing Victoria to Halifax - similar, but not really. Yes, similar population, coastal cities with naval bases, both and adding significant new density to an existing heritage base but that’s pretty much where it ends. Here’s a weird mix for a comparable for me, both Saint John and Fredericton gave me vibes of Victoria - yet other elements weren’t even similar. Saint John downtown felt very familiar, although much hillier, rougher, far more industrial especially along the harbour. But it’s a great downtown, more ‘weighty, historic and grand’ than Victoria (excepting the Parliament Buildings and Empress Hotel) although it doesn’t have the same new mix of condos/offices, etc. Fredericton in terms of scale felt a bit like Victoria, although obviously smaller, and is more refined and polished than Saint John. Yet, at the same time both these cities also had elements that make it feel nothing like Victoria, whose downtown heritage is born from the gold rush and for several decades after - modest, yet gorgeous and quirky one to six storey buildings predominate, with many three or less. Other than the main streets in Charlottetown I didn’t find it that similar to Victoria - again a quick judgement from a day visit a couple years back.

Moving forward most Victoria mid to high-rise development will stay focused on downtown and immediate neighbourhoods, leading to an expanding and increasingly dense core.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it, check out this streetcar video of Victoria and Vancouver. The first 3 minutes and 16 seconds are in Victoria - you can even see the Empress Hotel under construction at the end.

• Video Link