Public Realm in Canadian Cities - Developments

[J.OT13]

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[Nite]

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[TownGuy]

^ By far my favourite project Toronto has ever undertaken. How many places have created a river valley? Can't wait til the plug comes out and the water stars flowing. Should be soon.

[niwell]

In terms of landform recreation the Port Lands is one of the most ambitious projects in North America that flies under the radar a bit. I expect the public realm to be top notch. The buildings will likely be more of the Lower Don Lands I'm guessing - pretty nice (better than the average condo) and a bit of a Scandi vibe but not the fine grained urbanism that makes great cities. Still, I'll take it.

The City needs to find funding to get transit in place. I'm cautiously optimistic. Big things are happening in terms of Toronto finances.

[WhipperSnapper]

I count on the buildings being three times taller and denser should they proceed in the next 5ish years. Consider the West Donlands. The master plan has been recently revised with two developments with 40 storey towers and the planned high rises along the rail corridor are now 50 storeys. East Bayfront was planned with skyscraper (Monde) sites along the Gardiner. The new plan for Quayside is a wall of tall buildings along the elevated high way and the mid rise structure along Queen Quay is a literally wall. They hired architects to produce architectural buildings with lots of greenery to offset the choking Entertainment District densities envisioned on the waterfront.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

I count on the buildings being three times taller and denser should they proceed in the next 5ish years. Consider the West Donlands. The master plan has been recently revised with two developments with 40 storey towers and the planned high rises along the rail corridor are now 50 storeys. East Bayfront was planned with skyscraper (Monde) sites along the Gardiner. The new plan for Quayside is a wall of tall buildings along the elevated high way and the mid rise structure along Queen Quay is a literally wall. They hired architects to produce architectural buildings with lots of greenery to offset the choking Entertainment District densities envisioned on the waterfront.

I'm hoping we get past the current phase of megadevelopment before the Port Lands really kicks off. But yeah I imagine the early phases will be much taller than originally envisioned. It should remain mostly midrise in my perfect world.

[WhipperSnapper]

Mid rise would be nice just as a change from everything else being propsed. The site is close to things and yet disconnected from those things

6 to 8 storeys with a half dozen 12 to 15 storey thigh rises and maybe one feature tower up to 25 storeys. I expect a half dozen 40 to 50 storey towers with another half dozen 20 to 30 storey towers on 10 to 15 storey podiums.

[TorontoDrew]

At least on the central section they won't be able to go to high because of the flight paths at Billy Bishop.

source: encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com

[WhipperSnapper]

The image shows the flight path South of the Keating Channel which is staying industrial

[YYC1954]

The results of the City Of Calgary’s Riverwalk West competition have been announced. The winning submission. “Exchange” by landscape architecture firm ground cubed and architecture firm HEREBY (with Jared Tailfeathers, Bunt, RJC and Martinson Golly) was selected from a shortlist of submissions from W Architecture, Dub, Hapa, Space2Place, Moda and Public City.

This is the final stretch of the Bow River Promenade from the east village to 14th st. and will replace a very congested stretch with little amenity or engagement with the river.

Images and Project Information:
https://engage.calgary.ca/riverwalkwest

Existing Site




Proposed Concept


Promenade


4 Season Pool


Riparian Boardwalk


Amenity Pavilion


Grassland Bowl


New Creek


Surf Beach

[WhipperSnapper]

There seems to be a lot of useless hardscape in the first pic and more sitting and walking in which Calgary has an overabundance however, this is really nice quality compared to the previous phases. Let's hope there isn't any value engineering with the intro of cast in place concrete.

[Truenorth00]

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...-they-replaced

[niwell]

After an initial debacle that delayed things unnecessarily the actual execution of patios this year seemed to be better in quality. Also a lot of places where it was an afterthought didn't add them, which is probably for the best. To avoid a repeat this year they have already started working on grandfathering in plans for approved patios. It's another example of things that have actually started working a bit more smoothly behind the scenes (I've heard this from multiple areas) which is encouraging.


In other public realm news the public areas around the Well development in Toronto designed by Claude Cormier (RIP) are looking good. Development itself is private of course but here's some of the street treatments on Wellington (there's also an awesome new cycletrack) and works for the park on Draper around the street - still some work to be done though. Overall the development looks great too, though still early days and a lot of businesses are still setting up, particularly the food options.

Wellington St




Draper Park - will eventually connect through from Draper street to the Well development where the black wall is now:






All images from twitter: https://x.com/Walk_TO/status/1723864356935303552?s=20

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by niwell

Draper Park - will eventually connect through from Draper street to the Well development where the black wall is now:

Toronto has some great looking new parks, but then has to go and ruin them with signage that looks like it's been borrowed from a 1990s suburban middle school.

[shappy]

Yup, the signs are horrible. The garbage/recycle bins just behind complement nicely... fuck.

[Innsertnamehere]

Toronto's parks department is famously awful for maintenance, etc. They are run on a shoe-string budget as well which doesn't help..

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by niwell

Wellington St

Like the cat park, they went to considerable time and expense to build a gorgeous public realm only to have it ruined by horrendous overhead electrical. This is so typical of Toronto. The kicker is this particular project actually installed beautiful heritage lamp posts running down both sides of the pathway with buried electrical.

If we're to ever have a top notch public realm, what passes as acceptable at Toronto Hydro needs to change. When it comes to design they have no sense whatsoever. It needs an overhaul and co-ordinated with a City Plan for our public realm. If we don't, crap like this will continue to happen. Why is Toronto so terrible at this very fixable thing?

[Nouvellecosse]

I actually didn't notice the power lines. What stood out to me is the excess of hard paved surfaces. Wellington isn't a major thoroughfare like King, Spadina, etc. so I can't see the need for that much sidewalk space. Perhaps it will look better once the trees are bigger. Well assuming that they can get much bigger in that setting.

[WhipperSnapper]

Yeah, the wires look bad however, it needs to be considered that they aren't for street lighting and the public realm improvements are tied to The Well development. The north side of the street's landscaping remains individual building frontages including parking space. The smaller properties have above ground service connections.

The green corridor master plan included doing both sides which is publicly owned space.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I actually didn't notice the power lines. What stood out to me is the excess of hard paved surfaces. Wellington isn't a major thoroughfare like King, Spadina, etc. so I can't see the need for that much sidewalk space. Perhaps it will look better once the trees are bigger. Well assuming that they can get much bigger in that setting.

The idea is probably cafe patios.