Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[TorontoDrew]

[IMG]One Spadina by Marcanadian, on Flickr[/IMG]

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

[IMG]One Spadina by Marcanadian, on Flickr[/IMG]

Take out the glass condos towers and this kinda look like a (Eastern?) European city. Wide boulevards with 4 planted strips and streetcars/tramways running in the middle are not very common in North America.

[Beedok]

How many lanes is Spadina effectively? 8 or 9?

Really a shame...

[TorontoDrew]

2 driving lines each side, 2 streetcar lanes, staggered parking and narrow bike lanes. Nothing a shame about it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Beedok

How many lanes is Spadina effectively? 8 or 9?

Really a shame...

Very wide avenues don't have to be "bad". Think of the Champs-Élysées, or Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires.

[TorontoDrew]

I was never a real fan of the Champs-Élysées, 10 lanes of insane traffic. Also I just had to look up Avenida 9 de Julio and that's insane and something that should never be copied. It makes the Champs-Élysées look like a small back road.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

I was never a real fan of the Champs-Élysées, 10 lanes of insane traffic. Also I just had to look up Avenida 9 de Julio and that's insane and something that should never be copied. It makes the Champs-Élysées look like a small back road.

It's not unpleasant to walk along either street as a pedestrian, however.

[TorontoDrew]

That makes sense. I do like their Washington Monument.
Posted on: http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

Even at the height of its power and influence, Montreal wasn't a "skyline city". Vancouver and Toronto had us 'beat' in that department since the beginning of the 20th century.

HUH!?!

Who cares about turn of the century. What matters is the modern era. Montreal was crushing it in the early 1960s and was well on its way in becoming the tallest skyline outside of New York. Let's not fool ourselves that the skyscraper bug and being a "skyline city" wasn't very strong in Montreal or continues to be.

Tallest in North America outside New York in 1963
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=77458081

[SkahHigh]

Kanada (87) by Markus Schinke, sur Flickr

[SkahHigh]

Edit

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

HUH!?!

Who cares about turn of the century. What matters is the modern era. Montreal was crushing it in the early 1960s and was well on its way in becoming the tallest skyline outside of New York. Let's not fool ourselves that the skyscraper bug and being a "skyline city" wasn't very strong in Montreal or continues to be.

Tallest in North America outside New York in 1963
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=77458081

Calm down. And you don't need to lecture me about the history of the Montreal skyline.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

HUH!?!

Who cares about turn of the century. What matters is the modern era. Montreal was crushing it in the early 1960s and was well on its way in becoming the tallest skyline outside of New York. Let's not fool ourselves that the skyscraper bug and being a "skyline city" wasn't very strong in Montreal or continues to be.

Tallest in North America outside New York in 1963
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=77458081

I honestly don't think the average person in most any city really cares about skylines, be they Montrealers, Torontonians, New Yorkers or Shanghaites...

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I honestly don't think the average person in most any city really cares about skylines, be they Montrealers, Torontonians, New Yorkers or Shanghaites...

Are you saying that SSPers are not average???

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Are you saying that SSPers are not average???

Most would probably be insulted if I called them average.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Whippersnapper

Tallest in North America outside New York in 1963
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=77458081

Wow. I wonder how Montrealers who were alive during Expo must feel today.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by dleung

Wow. I wonder how Montrealers who were alive during Expo must feel today.

99% of the population don't know or/and don't care about that info.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I honestly don't think the average person in most any city really cares about skylines, be they Montrealers, Torontonians, New Yorkers or Shanghaites...

While people don't geek out about the specifics like we do, I actually think that there's almost an innate attraction to skylines.

One of the most popular attractions in any city is an observation deck. Lookout points with sweeping views of a city's skyline are associated with romance and courtship. People pay premiums for homes with views of the skyline and are angered when those views are lost.

Most people can't help but stare at skylines the same way they are mesmerized by a campfire.

[dleung]

For 100 years people flocked to the Eiffel tower to look out over a sea of 6-storey buildings. The key in most cases is the view over the city, not necessarily of other buildings. In Vancouver, the water/mountain views cost many times the premium of "city views"

lol, and I wasn't just thinking about the tall buildings, but the city's relative prominence at the time. One would reason that pessimism for the future might be the cause for that unique brand of socially-acceptable racism

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by dleung

Wow. I wonder how Montrealers who were alive during Expo must feel today.

They feel fundamentally CRUSHED. PVM was the tallest skyscraper in the world outside of the (still high and mighty and authoritarian and if-you-don't-believe-me-you're-a-traitor-to-our-epoch) USA and (we now finally run-the-world-in-all-but-name) (former) USSR. Now, our tallest isn't even worth a damn in Deadmonton, nevermind Cowgary.

Everyday, Montrealers walk the streets of Beaubien, Gouin, St-Laurent and Jarry in dismay. They weep: (in an Othelo-like way) "If only we were subjugated again by the English from Westmount! We would rule the world once more!"

They go on:

"You know when I was your age lad, our tallest skyscraper was one of the top 25 tallest buildings in the world (and sure, half of our population lived in destitution, third-world level poverty because they were led my an autocratic clergy, backed by financial institutions that supported them) and now look at us, the masters of Canada's only corrupt jurisdiction, full of foreigners and THE FRENCH living on their own land."

Yeah. Last night on the streets of Montreal, the masses wept at the absent sight of 75-storey condos and missed opportunities of top-ranking insurance company CEO positions.

Believe me, we scream and shout about that EVERYDAY.

That's a true story.