Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Quite an abrupt contrast. Are the cleared areas part of the old airport lands?

Further to what coldrsx said, there used to be a rail line running along what is now the CN Tower (used to be the train station), Rogers Place and MacEwan University. That was basically the hard boundary between downtown Edmonton and the area to the north. Even though the area in the foreground of that picture is a stone's throw from the CBD, it may as well have been in Leduc.

With the rail line long gone now and development creeping north from the existing CBD, it may be that this area will fill out a little more.

[WhipperSnapper]

There's so much development potential in and around the Edmonton core. It will take several lifetimes at 20 to 40 storeys per lot. My problem with the 4 storey wood framed projects isn't their scale. It's how they meet the street and their designs with pitched roofs and cladding copying tract housing in suburbia.

The 35 to 40 metre scale north of the Legislature is ideal for creating a downtown environment and gobbling up available land ensuring a major dent is made during the next 25 years. I don't care what happens after 25 years. I'll hopefully be in Montreal North shacking up in a new place every night.

[Airboy]

You can see the Blatchford Lands in the upper left corner. The Coldrx photo was from the area about the lower right in this photo from 3 years ago.

[IMG]JDS_0318 by Tim Taylor-Smith, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Coldrsx]

https://twitter.com/Coffee_Baileys/statu...reads%2Fedmonton-skyline.23898%2Fpage-41

[giallo]

^ Beautiful scene.

Here are a couple of pictures of Kelowna's distant skyline from yesterday.

[saffronleaf]

Those night time Montreal pics are amazing

[The Great Scaper]

I was driving down the Pat Bay Highway today and noticed how clear the Olympic Mountain Range looked so I a quick detour to Mt. Tolmie to get some skyline photos and The Mountain Range photos. I was happy with 10 of the photos I took and edited them. I'll upload one a night. I've not taken any new photos now for such a long time it was nice to have some new photos to share on Flickr. Here's my first one. I'm not sure why when posting on SSP from Flickr that the photos lose quality.

Victoria B.C. Canada skyline by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

[ue]

Originally Posted by esquire

Further to what coldrsx said, there used to be a rail line running along what is now the CN Tower (used to be the train station), Rogers Place and MacEwan University. That was basically the hard boundary between downtown Edmonton and the area to the north. Even though the area in the foreground of that picture is a stone's throw from the CBD, it may as well have been in Leduc.

With the rail line long gone now and development creeping north from the existing CBD, it may be that this area will fill out a little more.

Unfortunately, because they opted to not connect the grid north and south of the old railyards, the entire corridor of new projects built on the old yards is full of massive projects that lack human scale - Brewery District, Unity Square, MacEwan, Ice District, and Stationlands. Not that everything needs to be nicely fine grained but the entirety of 104 Ave really lacks it. The lack of connections between 104th and 105th Ave make for a lot of barriers that mean the 'North Edge' (the stuff on the other side of 105 Ave) are a lot more disconnected from the downtown proper (unless near one of the major streets that cut through) and is probably why there is a very obvious "end" to the core at 105 Ave. It's the back end of all of those massively scaled projects and they produce massive walls that feel impermeable (and often literally are).

[biguc]

That Epcor tower is downright hostile to the area to the north. This looks like something from a developing country.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5483041,...zPVIS8BpC_7h5CLk8hitQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Macewan is stupid because it's a bunch of block-sized buildings; they could have made the whole thing permeable. Instead they put veritable turrets in the way.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5473177,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

And I don't know who decided this was appropriate downtown-adjacent development. I guess it's all cheap, easily replaced junk. The Valley Line west should provoke that very replacement.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5462854,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

It's not great west of Downtown either. Edmonton should really add a stop to the Capital line at 95th. There's a real chance at vibrancy on both sides but instead the LRT runs over two kilometers between stops and bisects a community it should unite. Shows where the city's real priorities lie.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by ue

Unfortunately, because they opted to not connect the grid north and south of the old railyards, the entire corridor of new projects built on the old yards is full of massive projects that lack human scale - Brewery District, Unity Square, MacEwan, Ice District, and Stationlands. Not that everything needs to be nicely fine grained but the entirety of 104 Ave really lacks it. The lack of connections between 104th and 105th Ave make for a lot of barriers that mean the 'North Edge' (the stuff on the other side of 105 Ave) are a lot more disconnected from the downtown proper (unless near one of the major streets that cut through) and is probably why there is a very obvious "end" to the core at 105 Ave. It's the back end of all of those massively scaled projects and they produce massive walls that feel impermeable (and often literally are).

Yeah, I think the timing of the redevelopment of the old railyard had a lot to do with how it took shape. Things were in the doldrums in the early 90s with not a lot happening in Downtown Canada in general, and there was probably a sense of "how are we ever going to fill all this space with something useful?" That in turn led to all sorts of questionable decisions like the Oliver Square type strip mall stuff, the wood-frame apartments, the sprawling bunker that is MacEwan, etc. I don't think there was really any thought given to connecting the north and south at all.

I'm sure if the railyards had existed until today and redevelopment was just starting now, it would have been approached much differently. We probably would see more fine-grained development.

[905er]

Originally Posted by biguc

That Epcor tower is downright hostile to the area to the north. This looks like something from a developing country.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5483041,...zPVIS8BpC_7h5CLk8hitQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Macewan is stupid because it's a bunch of block-sized buildings; they could have made the whole thing permeable. Instead they put veritable turrets in the way.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5473177,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

And I don't know who decided this was appropriate downtown-adjacent development. I guess it's all cheap, easily replaced junk. The Valley Line west should provoke that very replacement.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5462854,...itch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

It's not great west of Downtown either. Edmonton should really add a stop to the Capital line at 95th. There's a real chance at vibrancy on both sides but instead the LRT runs over two kilometers between stops and bisects a community it should unite. Shows where the city's real priorities lie.

I have been saying this about the EPCOR tower since day one.. it's outright hideous.. glad Stantec minimizes epcors presence a tad, but stil... hideous.. just plain ugly. Edmonton is really a tale of two cities.. you have the view from the north Saskatchewan river which is just simply stunning, and then there's the baron industrial view from the other side which was captured a few posts back here... that side can use some serious layering of towers.

[esquire]

EPCOR is not bad, although those stupid antennas on the top make it markedly worse than it had to be. I guess the real issue with it is that all the stuff that was planned to materialize around it as part of the Stationlands development never happened. All that action ended up in the ICE District instead. So now it just kind of sits there on its own, somewhat isolated from the rest of the CBD.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by esquire

EPCOR is not bad, although those stupid antennas on the top make it markedly worse than it had to be. I guess the real issue with it is that all the stuff that was planned to materialize around it as part of the Stationlands development never happened. All that action ended up in the ICE District instead. So now it just kind of sits there on its own, somewhat isolated from the rest of the CBD.

The original Stationlands proposal would have been a tragedy. It would have created a wall between the main CBD and the area to the North and done nothing to help ease the transition between the two areas. As it stands, the Royal Alberta Museum messed up by not building their development to include reconnecting 99th Street into the Chinatown area. Sure, the development would have been different, but there was lots of space to do that and really work to connect the two areas. There was an opportunity here that was lost and any significant development North of 105th will always feel separated from the core.

Regina did that with the Casino (old VIA station) which now blocks most concepts of trying to reintegrate a road connection or even a pedestrian connection between downtown and the newly developable railyard area. It was always going to feel fractured, but we don't need to make it doubly so.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by esquire

EPCOR is not bad, although those stupid antennas on the top make it markedly worse than it had to be. I guess the real issue with it is that all the stuff that was planned to materialize around it as part of the Stationlands development never happened. All that action ended up in the ICE District instead. So now it just kind of sits there on its own, somewhat isolated from the rest of the CBD.

There is a two-building high rise residential development in the works that will be built over of the fenced-in area adjacent to the north side of EPCOR Tower (i.e. overtop the underground parkade):



This development will help with the transition north to Chinatown, but we need more of this type of stuff all along 105 Ave.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by biguc

It's not great west of Downtown either. Edmonton should really add a stop to the Capital line at 95th. There's a real chance at vibrancy on both sides but instead the LRT runs over two kilometers between stops and bisects a community it should unite. Shows where the city's real priorities lie.

I 100% agree, the distance from Churchill to Stadium is very far and neither station services Boyle Street or McCauley/Little Italy. I've asked the City about adding a stop at 95th in the future and they've said there are no (current) plans to add one there, but I may reach out to the Councilor about changing that.

[Airboy]

Originally Posted by Harrison

I 100% agree, the distance from Churchill to Stadium is very far and neither station services Boyle Street or McCauley/Little Italy. I've asked the City about adding a stop at 95th in the future and they've said there are no (current) plans to add one there, but I may reach out to the Councilor about changing that.

They could build a station just as the LRT at the tunnel entrance. They could have finished the ghost station but that is pretty much at Churchill station anyway.

[Rico Rommheim]

CN 120 by Michael Berry, on Flickr


CN 9454 & CN 9543 trailing by Michael Berry, on Flickr

[The Great Scaper]

Really great photo of the trains. Love it. I had to google the canal to figure this was Montreal.

[The Great Scaper]

Another photo I took from Mt. Tolmie yesterday. This is looking towards Vic West.

Looking towards Vic West by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

[Monolith]

^^ Hi Neighbor! ^^


Sunrise on the Vancouver Skyline by Isaac Borrego, on Flickr


west van with a bullet 2 by Andrew Rochfort, on Flickr