The Great Canadian Skyline Thread!

[OTSkyline]

Seems like there are a few big cities in Canada which, unfortunately I find, are limited skyline-wise due to height limits and restrictions..

-Ottawa
-Montreal
-Halifax

Any others?

[Nouvellecosse]

Vancouver, Quebec City, Victoria?

[Razor]

Kudos for the latest shots of both Victoria and Halifax.

Victoria, Halifax, and St. Johns are all little Gems of their respective coasts.
There's just that something extra that Port Cities have , regardless of their size... History maybe?..Character through having busy dock yards, a wharf, and constant transient people passing through.?

Originally Posted by OTSkyline

Seems like there are a few big cities in Canada which, unfortunately I find, are limited skyline-wise due to height limits and restrictions..

-Ottawa
-Montreal
-Halifax

Any others?

There are some tradeoffs I suppose..Great inner city neighbourhoods, scenery,etc...All three seem to do well in that department..

[11a2b3]

Gatineau:
Ottawa night city scape by Isabelle Gagnon, on Flickr

[le calmar]

Interesting how you see that tall building in Westboro popping out in the middle of the Gatineau skyline. Almost looks like it is part of the city.

[logan5]

Without height restrictions in place, Vancouver would likely have residential towers as tall as what Toronto is building.

[Martin Mtl]

Downtown Montreal by Fred Plante on flickr


Rooftop Hour by Fred Plante on flickr


Blue Royal by Fred Plante on flickr

[Nouvellecosse]

Montreal's skyline seems to be improving!

[Hali87]

I think the viewplanes/ramparts bylaw could be rejigged (honestly I don't get the point of the ramparts bylaw) but I think the view of the Citadel from the water - not just the waterfront - is worth protecting. A grassy hill with chimneys and flags poking out of it is an interesting feature to have, and the Citadel is a fairly integral part of Halifax's existence.

The bylaws create a tabletop effect in some ways but IMO they have actually helped make the skyline interesting overall because there are distinct clusters of highrises with varying heights in between, and the (built-up) hillside shapes the skyline in other interesting ways. If there were no height limits it might look something like Quebec City, with a few very conspicuous towers in a mostly lowrise landscape, and I'm not sure this would look better. Or it might look more or less like what we have now.

It's worth noting that HRMbyDesign is about much more than height limits and also has controls over the rest of the building envelope and spaces between towers, etc. The Nova Centre was kind of grandfathered in, but in the future most towers will be pointier or oriented so they have less N/S frontage.

Honestly I think one of the coolest things that could be done for the Halifax skyline would be enlarging/embellishing and lighting up the Citadel's signal masts at night (maybe they could even have observation decks?). I doubt Parks Canada would ever let it fly though.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Razor

There are some tradeoffs I suppose..Great inner city neighbourhoods, scenery,etc...All three seem to do well in that department..

Cities only really put height limits in place if there are good views of cultural or physical landscapes that are seen as enough of an asset to be worth protecting. So putting in height limits doesn't necessarily make a city great, it has to already have some great feature for the height limits and views to become a concern in the first place. (That's not to say that cities without height limits don't have great features, they just wouldn't necessarily be affected by building heights/envelopes). They have also helped distribute development geographically a bit better across the Peninsula that would otherwise be the case, I think.

I'm pretty sure San Francisco and Philadelphia both have fairly strict height controls and their skylines are generally seen as being pretty iconic despite that.

[someone123]

The 70's-era bylaws in Halifax like the ramparts bylaw are interesting. They were implemented in a very ad hoc way and created a lot of unintended consequences, some good and some bad.

There was a conservative group in the city that basically just wanted to prevent new development and promote the preservation of heritage. Unfortunately this only really got going after a lot of demolition already happened, but I think they came up with rules like the ramparts bylaw. I suspect that one was at least partially a pretext for putting far-reaching limits on new development. Basically they promoted anything they perceived as a roadblock for developers and then there was effectively a role of the dice to see whether or not council went for it.

It's different now downtown but the old approval system used to have a 40 foot cut-off beyond which you needed to get an expensive development agreement. If you stayed below the threshold it was much easier to get a building permit. This was celebrated, somewhat misleadingly, as a "40 foot height limit", and if you read old statements from heritage advocates they'll talk about how great this policy is. If you limit development to 40 floors there will be no incentive to tear down old buildings and people will have to use them, etc. Most of the benefits they talked about were dubious and never really materialized. On the negative side, there was a distortionary effect because it was prohibitively expensive to go through the motions to build, say, a 45 or 50 foot building. So you just got short buildings or tall ones. I think this policy actually encouraged the construction of highrises, because those were the only projects with the profit margins to justify running the gauntlet of obstructions put in place by the NIMBYs.

To make matters worse there weren't very strong rules about how ground floors had to look or how tall the floors had to be so developers started sinking their buildings into the ground and reducing ceiling heights in order to pack more square footage into the allowable building envelope. This is why there are a bunch of buildings in downtown Halifax where you have to go down a flight of stairs to get in the front door.

[itom 987]

Originally Posted by logan5

Without height restrictions in place, Vancouver would likely have residential towers as tall as what Toronto is building.

Vancouver shouldn't have a height limit.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Razor

Kudos for the latest shots of both Victoria and Halifax.

Victoria, Halifax, and St. Johns are all little Gems of their respective coasts.
There's just that something extra that Port Cities have , regardless of their size... History maybe?..Character through having busy dock yards, a wharf, and constant transient people passing through.?

Let's not forget the big port cities of the southern coast, Hamilton and Thunder Bay. Neither's really a gem though . . . Maybe lumps of coal?

[ainvan]

Originally Posted by itom 987

Vancouver shouldn't have a height limit.

Yes, please tell that to the NIMBYs with their precious protected view corridors.

[Hali87]

Lol @ "Southern Coast"

I've never thought of it in those terms before but.. true I guess. What about Montreal though?

The industrial ports at Hamilton and TBay are cool in their own way but in a way that's kind of the opposite of "urban charm". TBay in particular, with all the grain elevators, has some interesting opportunities for postmodernism.

[Prometheus]

Vancouver Sunset by Wayne, on Flickr


Skykine by Wayne, on Flickr

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Razor

Kudos for the latest shots of both Victoria and Halifax.

Victoria, Halifax, and St. Johns are all little Gems of their respective coasts.
There's just that something extra that Port Cities have , regardless of their size... History maybe?..Character through having busy dock yards, a wharf, and constant transient people passing through.?




There are some tradeoffs I suppose..Great inner city neighbourhoods, scenery,etc...All three seem to do well in that department..

Another major factor is that they're all provincial capitals... they're also all very old cities in Canadian terms, with proportionately large pre-auto-traffic cores. But yeah, each does have a certain charm, and there's a certain something in common between all of the coastal cities, beyond just being on the coast (although I'll admit I don't know much about Nanaimo). The leftist slant of every major coastal city both reflects and perpetuates this, and the type of entrepreneurialism/commerce seems different from inland parts of the country.

[Martin Mtl]

Superlune sur le centre-ville by Sylvie Lebeuf on flickr

[TallBob]

Calgary has height limits in regards to "Shadowing" on several areas DT and other Central areas!

[Surrealplaces]

Originally Posted by TallBob

Calgary has height limits in regards to "Shadowing" on several areas DT and other Central areas!

I always forget about that, but it did coast the Bow some height, so I guess it has had its effect.