Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy6
I just don't see how the city is any better for this. Toronto is actually becoming as bland as it was once (mostly wrongly) claimed to be by those who'd never explored it.
The one that got built near me this past year, and at which I'm now permanently condemned to gaze, is plug ugly and will spoil the view until it's hopefully imploded by some future regime.
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Toronto gets rightfully criticized for low quality, sterile, bland looking high-rises but standards continue to improve. The latest crop of proposals are far nicer than what we saw just 5 years ago. You may not like the direction Toronto is heading but the city is massively better/nicer than it was 10 years ago. It's astonishing how much was a ramshackle mess, functionally obsolete, low brow, and depressing.
There's no way in hell I'd have stayed if it was going to remain how it looked before and I'd not stay if I thought the boom had run its course. Toronto is only 15 years in to what I'm hoping is a 50-60 year re-build, re-work, and re-imagining of the city from one end to the other. There's TONS more work to do before we get where we need to go.
The downtown core alone will need another 200+ buildings before it starts to feel built out and the 'ugly' is wiped away. Heritage buildings are getting restored and streets are busier/more vibrant each passing year. Attention will eventually turn to laneways and the public realm: narrowing many of our roads from 4 lanes to 2, tripling/quadrupling the width of sidewalks, installing quality paving/lamp posts, and landscaping 100s of km of street. 90% of them need a complete re-do. Rail Deck Park East, Rail Deck Park West, hopefully another 20 pocket parks by Cormier, another 30-40 buildings the quality of The One, 3-4 more subway lines, 1-2 more transit hubs on the scale of Union Station, 3-4 more museums, and the completion of the Portlands.
It's way too early to be drawing conclusions about Toronto at this early juncture. It will be decades still before Toronto starts coming together.
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