Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout
The city is actively rebuilding all the streets in Griffintown, burying the hydro poles and getting rid of a lot of street parking. There are also a lot of parks and other community facilities under construction. It's a bit of a mess right now but in 10 years I think people who dismissed Griffintown will be surprised to find it's actually an interesting place. The ad hoc hodgepodge way it has developed is actually an asset since it will allow it to feel more lived-in than, say, Coal Harbour in Vancouver. Of course it helps that it's actually quite an old neighbourhood so the streets are narrow and there's a sprinkling of historic buildings that survived 1960s clearance/decay and have been preserved.
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I think a better Vancouver comparison would be Yaletown, which was developed in a similar sort of slightly ad hoc way within an existing historic street grid and now that it's fully built out, is a fairly diverse, interesting neighbourhood; vs. Coal Harbour which was built from nothing and is now basically just a collection of multi-mullion dollar investment condos for the global mega-rich.
Coal Harbour sucks, but Yaletown compares more favourably to Griffintown (IMO). Of course, it's also a few decades ahead in the development cycle - but may be more indicative of how Griffintown will come to integrate into the wider urban fabric.