Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[Maldive]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Is it just me or are those balconies not straight? If you draw a line connecting them the widths are all over the place. Unless that's intentional?

Really? This is your take-away from a future skyline post? This joint is hopeless sometimes.

It's called an optical illusion (angles, light vs dark, interaction of glass et al).

The horizontal lines below are straight:


Link

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

It's not just the 401. It's bad everywhere. Worst than 10 years ago. Inconceivable from 20 years ago.

The DVP is one to love or hate and I love it.

Traffic will always keep getting worse until congestion is priced. It's like if you have a box of 20 free pens, and your office has 30 people, then 40 people, then 50 people. The box will just run out faster. But if you ask people to even pay 5 cents for each pen, there will probably be some pens left over.

Hopefully we come to our senses and pay for road use with our wallets rather than with our time.

Until that happens, though, the 2020s will also be the last decade in Toronto's boom where traffic keeps getting worse and viable transit options aren't open. Toronto's rapid transit situation is essentially the same as it was in 1979, except with some minor additions to existing lines (yes, Sheppard is effectively just a branch of the Yonge line right now). The Crosstown, Ontario Line and GO-RER system will change all that.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by Maldive

Really? This is your take-away from a future skyline post? This joint is hopeless sometimes.

It's called an optical illusion (angles, light vs dark, interaction of glass et al).

The horizontal lines below are straight:


Link

Is this not a real life condo building's balconies on the left? There's no light vs dark or glass patterning that should be causing this illusion. It's cropped close up. I'm too lazy to do it but if you drew a vertical line in paint or something I guarantee those balcony edges wouldn't line up. Hell, even hold a piece of paper or ruler up to your screen and see for yourself.

Wasn't meant to be a dig at your rendering. Just a question about that building's balconies.

Originally Posted by Maldive

wmedia’s photo before it was desecrated:

wmedia

[GeneralLea]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Is this not a real life condo building's balconies on the left? There's no light vs dark or glass patterning that should be causing this illusion. It's cropped close up. I'm too lazy to do it but if you drew a vertical line in paint or something I guarantee those balcony edges wouldn't line up. Hell, even hold a piece of paper or ruler up to your screen and see for yourself.

Wasn't meant to be a dig at your rendering. Just a question about that building's balconies.

Yea, the condominium complex in question has one of those "neat" balcony designs wherein the balconies undulate. I was very confused by your original comment until i realized you were talking about this specific building. This whole skyline really feels like a rip from Miami.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6237222,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

[kool maudit]

Chicago's Aqua was really influential with that detail. I guess because it lets your standard condo-with-balconies, largely unchanged since its first 70s iterations in Don Mills, have a kind of flourish.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by GeneralLeeTPHLS

Yea, the condominium complex in question has one of those "neat" balcony designs wherein the balconies undulate. I was very confused by your original comment until i realized you were talking about this specific building. This whole skyline really feels like a rip from Miami.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6237222,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

Ok that makes sense. What threw me was that the wavy patterning isn't visible from that straight edged side giving the appearance of an unintentionally asymmetrical floorplate. I should have guessed it was one of Toronto's millions of random patterned balcony condo towers. Aqua in Chicago may have been the forebearer but Toronto ran with it and made it all their own.

Also, what a depressing and oppressive podium environment between those towers. Not a single CRU that I could see.

[GeneralLea]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

I should have guessed it was one of Toronto's millions of random patterned balcony condo towers. Aqua in Chicago may have been the forebearer but Toronto ran with it and made it all their own.

Also, what a depressing and oppressive podium environment between those towers. Not a single CRU that I could see.

It seems like this will be the one of the more definite features/identifiers of this building boom.

I agree wth you about the street level experience. I've never been to this part of town (except passing by on the Gardiner), but the podiums of many of the buildings is sure lacking.

[TorontoDrew]

To be fair that area started as a commuter community and the draw is the lake not street life. The new massive master planned area will take care of that. That street view image you showed was of U/C podiums so a little unfair to judge them from it.

[J.OT13]

A few Ottawa skyline pics from Harley613.

Originally Posted by Harley613

Update:

Originally Posted by Harley613

Not much has happened in the last few weeks!

Originally Posted by Harley613

Tunney's today:

Originally Posted by Harley613

Today's progress on the Cliff Plant:

[Maldive]

• Video Link

Neat drone 360 degree views posted by Logan at Urban Toronto.

Some screenshots from the video:

Hitting ‘pause’ during the south view of the skyline = a ghost.


3D

St. Clair + Yonge-Eglinton


3D

Yonge-Eglinton + North York (far left)


3D

Hazy Humber Bay (on the left) and skylines in the distance.


3D

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Ok that makes sense. What threw me was that the wavy patterning isn't visible from that straight edged side giving the appearance of an unintentionally asymmetrical floorplate. I should have guessed it was one of Toronto's millions of random patterned balcony condo towers. Aqua in Chicago may have been the forebearer but Toronto ran with it and made it all their own.

Also, what a depressing and oppressive podium environment between those towers. Not a single CRU that I could see.

This tower is in the middle of its long narrow development site. The mixed use midrise on the green lot and commercial building on the opposite facing real streets haven't materialize here. The two tower development on spawling big ass podium across the lane does have CRUs in view. Retail here is not going to make this view any less depressing or oppressive.


as seen here
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6252761,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Traffic will always keep getting worse until congestion is priced. It's like if you have a box of 20 free pens, and your office has 30 people, then 40 people, then 50 people. The box will just run out faster. But if you ask people to even pay 5 cents for each pen, there will probably be some pens left over.

Hopefully we come to our senses and pay for road use with our wallets rather than with our time.

Until that happens, though, the 2020s will also be the last decade in Toronto's boom where traffic keeps getting worse and viable transit options aren't open. Toronto's rapid transit situation is essentially the same as it was in 1979, except with some minor additions to existing lines (yes, Sheppard is effectively just a branch of the Yonge line right now). The Crosstown, Ontario Line and GO-RER system will change all that.

I totally understand why traffic is worse. The city has grown but not its infrastructure. Taxing congestion will certainly reduce traffic. The haves will begrudging pay while the have nots won't be able to afford it.

I can appreciate the autocentric lifestyle hoping in a car and driving 5 to ten minutes to work, shop and play after dating someone in Mississauga and spending years sitting in traffic on a streetcar making the York Street loop or a packed subway for an hour (definitely not an hour anymore) to go 8 kilometres. Mississauga is still not a lifestyle for me. Toronto was build in an era around the car and to say that Crosstown, the Ontario Line and GO-RER and a record number of bike lanes will change all that is too optimistic for me including the veritcal suburbs planned around Crosstown and the GO-RER being intracity than providing improved local transit. Regardless, It's just a start to bring overall transit from the 1980s into the 2000s . None of this is going to give specifically families living in autocentric communities a viable alternative to driving. Neither is stacking 50 storey towers side by side with million of square feet of residential space with ten thousand square feet in ground floor retail

[WhipperSnapper]

You can build a great urban, walkable community with a lot less buildable area than this.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7090876,...T1L3m2Z_cne73TY_eEz_Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

These are an extreme version of urban form. It's not an optimal form in the slightest. It's a sacrifice to live at these densities and what Yonge and Eglinton offers both current and proposal doesn't make that sacrifice worthwhile. Now these two towers on there own are benign given the liberal setbacks for the 1960s mid rises and high rises across the street. The likeliest output are for those 1960s high rises to be redevelopment into similar scaled towers as these. It's denser than the Entertainment District.

Together there's around 1000 units, mostly one bedroom, and, IIRC, 5 CRUs.

[Harley613]

Ottawa today from over Dow's Lake. Little Italy skyline front left, Tunney's Pasture skyline back left, Downtown/Byward Market back right.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

...5 CRUs.

Translation?

[Martin Mtl]

Photo: @herrkemal

[Rico Rommheim]

19th century warehouses, gothic spires, New York-style prewar 'scrapers, mid-century and post-modern towers. Love it.

[Rico Rommheim]

On a not so happy skyline news, I learned yesterday on agoramtl.com that Montreal just lost one of the skyline's major anchors.


by Dom723


by Saben


https://uploads.agoramtl.com/optimized/3...6c90977ed548c043a53f431_2_1760x1320.jpeg

The logo pieces have not been preserved and have been ditched in the dumpster






The tower is going to renovated and the giant parking lots are slowly being redeveloped.



Shameful, they should have kept the logo up, or at the very least preserve it and place it elsewhere. For me the CBC tower, and the logo specifically, is an iconic landmark on the city, just as Molson and Five Roses are.


RIP

The Montreal Skyline (8) by Foofoo MacShoe, on Flickr

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Toronto was build in an era around the car and to say that Crosstown, the Ontario Line and GO-RER and a record number of bike lanes will change all that is too optimistic for me including the veritcal suburbs planned around Crosstown and the GO-RER being intracity than providing improved local transit.

When it comes to urban mobility, we aren't in an era of sea changes anymore.

The automobile period (in Toronto) between 1945-1975 just had everything line up for it. The region nearly tripled in population and there were no acknowledged costs to sprawl (energy, materials/labour, regulatory, environmental expropriation of property, etc.).

Instead of one hegemonic transportation form dominating over every trip for every person like the car did, the future will be a buffet of mobility options that have their own advantages and disadvantages for specific circumstances.

Beyond better transit, I see a lot of things chipping away at car use: working from home, the fact that net job growth is only really occurring downtown and that office parks are dying a slow death, online shopping, the cost of gas, the appeal of e-bikes and micromobility, Uber (may not reduce congestion, but may reduce private car ownership and therefore induced car trips), etc.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

When it comes to urban mobility, we aren't in an era of sea changes anymore.

I don't think the technological changes are really slowing down but there's almost no willingness to accept any pain whatsoever to get to a better place, as well as limitations of red tape.

We have 1970's sci-fi level computational coordination ability, AI, and batteries but we have a de facto high bar in place for deploying them because we will not substantially change the old designed-for-humans-driving-gas-powered-vehicles transport network we have in place.

The energy production is similar. And I am not talking about fusion. We could have much better fission power based on current designs but development died over a 50 year period or so due to a mix of fear and regulations.