Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

In terms of heft and street business:

Toronto = Berlin
Montreal = Stockholm
(Vancouver+Calgary)/2 = Helsinki
Hamilton = Chernobyl

Granted, Canadian cities don't have as much polish as say Stockholm, but we're still very much going through a growth spurt with all the acne and awkwardness that entails. Regardless, we do have our polished places, they're just not the uniform norm across our cities. Wait till things slow down after the next recession, and we'll reinvest in urban form, burying wires, and building more sculpted spaces. Yonge-Dundas Square was built during a rather dead time in real estate terms, yet it now feels like the hub of street life in the big smoke.

I just spent 9 days in Berlin and the level and scope of street vibrancy there is way above Toronto’s by a large margin, except in a few downtown spots in TO. Never been to Stockholm but I bet the same is true compare to Montreal. It’s that Koolmaudit « european urban fabric » factor. Toronto is very dense in a few places, while Berlin’s density is much more spread and continuous. The level of activity found in and around Dunda’s Square, you find in many many more squares and streets in Berlin all over the place and it’s relentless, days and nights.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by giallo

The culture is awesome, of course, but I absolutely agree to disagree on the architecture. I'd wager it's the best-looking city on the planet at street level. Nothing in Canada even comes slightly close. Not even a faction. A single square mile of Montmartre in central Paris is ten levels beyond anything Canada can offer architecturally and urbanity-wise.

Indeed. Paris impressed on many levels and for many reasons, and architecture is certainly one of them.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Yep, that would be possible. Clearly there are a bunch of factors that have caused the two places to have different urban forms, and consequently I guess Stockholm didn't evolve much of the sort of skyline that's much more common in North America.

(Maybe somebody will dispute the idea that Halifax has a nicer highrise skyline than Stockholm too. I really don't have a strong opinion on that. I'm just assuming it's true for the sake of discussion and because it seems plausible.)

Stockholm no doubt has more "urban heft", but that doesn't necessarily need to enter into a discussion on skylines. Cities have a bunch of separable characteristics such that sometimes smaller or less important ones will be more distinguished than bigger ones in some ways.

Although I think the idea of posting a picture of Stockholm and asking "where would we put the highrises" is similar to what could be done with an aerial picture of Halifax from the 1960s. We didn't have room for such a thing either until urban renewal clobbered us.

[hipster duck]

Ah, the usual SSP hand wringing about how we're not European.

There are things to admire about North American urbanism, too, beginning with skyscrapers themselves. The skyscraper is a North American form, and we still do it best. When Europeans attempt to build skyscraper cities, there's something "off" about them. I was excited to escape Amsterdam for a day and visit Rotterdam to see how skyscrapers integrated into their landscape.



I spent three and a half hours walking around environments like this and then got back on the train.

I might as well have visited North York Centre. The streets would have been more lively and the food better, too.

[Nouvellecosse]

It isn't a matter a admiring Europe; it's a matter of admiring quality street level urban form, which is possible to have with or without skyscrapers. We were just as much in North America as we are now before widespread urban renewal programs and autocentrism damaged our street level urban form. Not about the continent, but about the built form.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

It isn't a matter a admiring Europe; it's a matter of admiring quality street level urban form, which is possible to have with or without skyscrapers. We were just as much in North America as we are now before widespread urban renewal programs and autocentrism damaged our street level urban form. Not about the continent, but about the built form.

Well, I sometimes think that we are too generous when it comes to the urban form of European cities - including stuff that was built before the war. I also think we tend to underestimate how much of an impact the automobile made on European cities after the war, and sometimes overestimate the impact of the automobile on Canadian cities.

For example, this traffic sewer follows the route of the old city wall in Nuremberg, effectively cutting the old town off from the rest of the urban parts of the city. I don't know any intersection like this in any Canadian downtown.

Here's Place de la Concorde in Paris. Is this saved by the grandeur of the buildings? I can tell you that, grandiose or not, walking around the square is an ordeal.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Well, I sometimes think that we are too generous when it comes to the urban form of European cities - including stuff that was built before the war. I also think we tend to underestimate how much of an impact the automobile made on European cities after the war, and sometimes overestimate the impact of the automobile on Canadian cities.

I agree. Another factor is that Europe has about 20x the population of Canada. Stockholm isn't an average city there, it's one of the nicest cities in its class.

We have our two mini cultures on SSP. There are the threads where people get excited about whether a skyscraper should technically be considered 280 m or 285 m tall, and then there are discussions where people assign a value of ~0 to anything that doesn't look like a medium height Paris apartment building from circa 1900.

Canadian cities have really improved by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years. I have a feeling that the more liberal development model that incorporates large highrises is eventually going to produce areas that are a lot more vibrant and interesting than will ever be possible in European neighbourhoods that have stayed about the same since 1940.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Well, I sometimes think that we are too generous when it comes to the urban form of European cities - including stuff that was built before the war. I also think we tend to underestimate how much of an impact the automobile made on European cities after the war, and sometimes overestimate the impact of the automobile on Canadian cities.

For example, this traffic sewer follows the route of the old city wall in Nuremberg, effectively cutting the old town off from the rest of the urban parts of the city. I don't know any intersection like this in any Canadian downtown.

Here's Place de la Concorde in Paris. Is this saved by the grandeur of the buildings? I can tell you that, grandiose or not, walking around the square is an ordeal.

But that's the thing. The use of European cities as examples isn't to suggest that every streetscape and every example is good or that because a particular scenario exists in Europe that it's attractive. It's just that Europe happens to have a greater number of examples - both in raw numbers and proportions - of attractive streetlevel form. Take the examples you linked to for instance. No one is suggesting that because they're in Europe that they're automatically de-facto pedestrian friendly settings. Just that pedestrian unfriendly settings tend to be more common in NA and if those links are the worst examples for Europe, NA is like, "Hold my beer" and pulls out examples of barren interchanges emptying cars directly into downtown. I mean, how common is it to have stuff like this right in the heart of the city centre in NA compared to Europe? If given the choice between that or the Nuremburg example, I would honestly choose the latter.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I mean, how common is it to have stuff like this right in the heart of the city centre in NA compared to Europe? If given the choice between that or the Nuremburg example, I would honestly choose the latter.

How common is it to see this in a small European city?



The Cogswell example is bad but it's nearly 50 years old now and is the sort of project that's getting demolished in North America today rather than built.

[Nouvellecosse]

Solid, mid/high density urbanism and quality pedestrian environments? I'd say pretty common?

Need I remind people that the whole conversation was started in the first place by a couple of forumers who were discounting European cities on the basis that they lacked a few NA attributes causing others to respond to remind them that European cities have their own benefits? This isn't a case of people under-appreciating NA and over praising Europe, it was a case of people being corrected for doing the reverse.

[softee]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

I just spent 9 days in Berlin and the level and scope of street vibrancy there is way above Toronto’s by a large margin, except in a few downtown spots in TO. Never been to Stockholm but I bet the same is true compare to Montreal. It’s that Koolmaudit « european urban fabric » factor. Toronto is very dense in a few places, while Berlin’s density is much more spread and continuous. The level of activity found in and around Dunda’s Square, you find in many many more squares and streets in Berlin all over the place and it’s relentless, days and nights.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, Berlin's population density is actually very similar to that of Toronto and Montreal. I doubt that Berlin has many, many more spots that are as busy as Dundas Square.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Solid, mid/high density urbanism and quality pedestrian environments? I'd say pretty common?

There are some 20 storey buildings in this shot and there are 2 mixed use complexes that are probably over 1 million square feet or so each. And lot of this was built over the past couple years.

In typical smaller European cities (sub-500,000) you will find city centres with many streets of 3-6 storey apartments and office buildings, with a pleasant mix of shops and some nice public spaces. But not much of a larger scale than that.

Need I remind people that the whole conversation was started in the first place by a couple of forumers who were discounting European cities on the basis that they lacked a few NA attributes causing others to respond to remind them that European cities have their own benefits? This isn't a case of people under-appreciating NA and over praising Europe, it was a case of people being corrected for doing the reverse.

I guess.. I can't answer for what everyone believes on here. I responded to a post implying that we can't/shouldn't say that Halifax has a better skyline than Stockholm because Stockholm is a better city than Halifax. My original point was that the argument isn't valid; the first part doesn't follow from the second part. And I see this style of argument on all the time on SSP. It ties in with what others have said too in that European cities are sometimes treated as the holiest of holies on here. Stockholm and Copenhagen are to urbanists what Ruth Bader Ginsberg is for "blue tribe" Americans.

[TorontoDrew]

[IMG]John Street by Franklin McKay, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]Harbourfront Centre by Franklin McKay, on Flickr[/IMG]

University of Toronto by Franklin McKay, on Flickr

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

My original point was that the argument isn't valid; the first part doesn't follow from the second part. And I see this style of argument on all the time on SSP. It ties in with what others have said too in that European cities are sometimes treated as the holiest of holies on here.

Yes, this is a skyline thread on skyscraperpage.com. If we are having a debate about skylines featuring skyscrapers, North American cities would win in almost all circumstances. Houston has a better skyscraper skyline than Barcelona. Now, I prefer the urban experience of Barcelona more than Houston, but I don't think that that argument counts on this particular thread. Somebody could counter and say that Houston has better Mexican food than Barcelona, and that would be an equally valid card to play.

But even if we must talk about street level experiences, I think that a lot of what looks good on paper in Europe is actually pretty bad. Walking around a lot of European cities, I'm struck by how a lot of the dense urban neighbourhoods feature unpleasant hardscaped monotony. Things like unbroken masonry walls where the windows begin above your head height, or a lack of greenery or separation from cars in dense areas such that you have to squeeze against a wall while a delivery truck drives 2 feet away from you. Or the endless rows of tall gated walls that separate private residences from the streets, whereas in North America these homes would be unseparated from the sidewalk behind a small lawn or porch.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

But even if we must talk about street level experiences, I think that a lot of what looks good on paper in Europe is actually pretty bad. Walking around a lot of European cities, I'm struck by how a lot of the dense urban neighbourhoods feature unpleasant hardscaped monotony. Things like unbroken masonry walls where the windows begin above your head height, or a lack of greenery or separation from cars in dense areas such that you have to squeeze against a wall while a delivery truck drives 2 feet away from you. Or the endless rows of tall gated walls that separate private residences from the streets, whereas in North America these homes would be unseparated from the sidewalk behind a small lawn or porch.

I think the number one difference that causes a lot of urbanists to like European cities more is that they tended to maintain more of a mixed-use core, while North American cities generally went all-in on reconfiguring their cores into the central business districts that were popular with planners around 1940-1990. The European cores have more foot traffic over a wider time distribution and more interesting stuff to see, but less office space. In many cases the postwar reconfiguration was a sign of economic vibrancy at the time, even if it turned out to be a bit ill conceived.

This is changing pretty quickly in many North American cities. The number of downtown residents in a lot of North American cities is growing by 3 or 4% per year. I doubt this is happening in central parts of Stockholm.

I don't want to sound like a Halifax cheerleader but to take that city as one example, it's growing by around 2% a year and about 50% of all the new construction investment is going into the urban core now according to planners. It would probably rank surprisingly highly on a list of European cities in terms of development (i.e. above cities with 1 million people). Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto are similar, but at increasingly larger scales. Is there any European city that is growing like Toronto? Moscow?

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by softee

I doubt that Berlin has many, many more spots that are as busy as Dundas Square.

Actually it does and many are quite larger and busier.

[kool maudit]

I didn't mean to get all Europe-boostery. I actually love and miss North American urbanism; Toronto was exhilarating this past summer.

I was just emphasizing that Stockholm really is an absolute top-tier urban experience for its own type, much more than the numbers imply.

[Martin Mtl]

Photo credit: @tobrook on Instagram


Photo credit: @ajshotz on Instagram


Photo credit: @gab__marcoux on Instagram

[Acajack]

BTW the quote that started it all was "Calgary shits all over Helsinki".

Likely the first and last time you will hear that.

[mistercorporate]

Calgary shits alllll over Helsinki!

And Toronto eats Bore-lin for breakfast!


by JasonZed on UT


by JasonZed on UT