Quote:
Originally Posted by Prometheus
Stop getting hung up on Edmonton. The original reference to Edmonton was to make two simple points:
1) That if a small town like Edmonton can handle tall skyscrapers, then so can a much bigger and sophisticated city like Vancouver, which has the hottest real estate market on the continent. Indeed, the First Baptist proposal wanted to create a new landmark for Vancouver at 750 feet. It wasn't physics or the economy that cut it down to only 550 feet. It wasn't even the city-fabricated viewcones, since none go over the site. It was the small town mentality of city council and staff.
2) Although you may not like the design of Edmonton's first foray into tall skyscrapers (something to be expected given the city's relative immaturity), these skyscrpaers are nevertheless creating an impressive skyline and bringing levels of urbanity to the public realm not before seen in that city. Imagine what can be done in a more advanced and architecturally refined city like Vancouver, in the absence of political interference and contrivances.
Regarding Vancouver, the essential point is that the choice between height and quality is a false one. Indeed, greater height and density are what usually finance bolder designs, higher quality materials, and more ambitious public realms. This crop of bolder towers we are seeing in Vancouver, for example, is a direct result of the city's recent relaxation of height limits along the corridors where the proposals are being made, in conjunction with Vancouver's growing architectural maturity.
Given these latest proposals, one can only imagine the qualtiy and number of proposals we might be seeing if the city were to relax their controls on height and density even further and in other parts of the city too.
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Well, our "new wave of amazing towers" downtown may look great, but they lack the awesome public realm potentially materialize at Brentwood Mall and the Edmonton Arena neighbourhood. Those proposed towers are only residential, with hardly any commercial or entertainment outlets in the podiums included. The kind of project found in Edmonton takes guts, foresight and leadership by the City as well as developers to initiate. Sadly we lack such tenacity here, and worse still, people who insist that short buildings are actually good for us.
In recent times, we've already missed not just one but a few opportunities for such grand projects to take off. The Stadium district was mentioned, but more importantly, Olympic Village was a huge wasted opportunity.
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