Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
Montreal is an interesting place, but its appeal stems from more than its built form. If it all boiled down to "lowrises and rowhousing that are built right up to the sidewalk", then Baltimore would be a better urban experience than Toronto. I can assure you that it's not.
What's wrong with Vancouverism? Building townhouses at the podiums of condo towers keeps the sidewalk to a human scale, and provides an opportunity to animate the surroundings and break up what would otherwise be expansive, monotonous walls. It's true that people can't personalize things too much, but that's the fault of strata rules, not the built form per se. The only other way to animate the street is with retail, and that's neither desirable in all contexts, nor is it really supportable. Even in the densest environments - maybe especially in the densest places - residential sidestreets should be a respite from commercial activity.
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The lack of personalization is part of it, but another part is that the townhouse podiums just don't tend to be very interesting since they're often a long expanse of identical-looking street front. To be fair, this can be an issue in cities with old town or row houses too, but in most cases it's lessened in old developments due to gradual changes with the passage of time. Buildings being renovated, demo'd and rebuilt, etc.
To continue the Montreal comparison, look at the buildings on
this street. They're all very similar but with slight differences in materials, style and trim. Then by comparison, look at the podium townhouses on
this development. You're basically taking one building with one set of materials and one design, and extending it almost the entire length of the block rather than just the footprint of the tower which is already wide compared to a house. If you're going to have a single building with a single style stretching that far it better be something
spectacular. Ordinary contemporary building styles will not cut it.
To be fair, we're probably never going to get new developments that immediately look as appealing as the best of the old stuff for a variety of reasons. But Vancouverism could be made more aesthetically appealing by separating the townhouses from the towers and making them into separate developments. Perhaps groups of two or three townhouses could be identical, but beyond that they should be separate, each group with it's own design even if they're similar.
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