Let's Play Build a Metro.

[LakeLocker]

Imagine you have infinite wealth and power. You want to build a city of your dreams.


Where would you do it? What would the population be like? What sports franchises? What would the infrastructure look like for transit, commerce. What would be the real estate styles? What would be the history/ethnic composition etc.

RULES:

You can't alter the climate.

It has to be in Canada.

You can't erase current cities, nor can you hijack capitals, teams etc.

The metro Can't be larger than Toronto.

You can't do anything that'd flip the social fabric of the country, like sticking an english speaking city the size of new york in central quebec.

You can't do anything that wouldn't plausibly happen, i.e. it'd have to be something you could convince a non Canadian that it exists.

[ShavedParmesanCheese]

I wish I had the graphical skills for this I'd like to build a city in the centre of the BC interior, near 150 Mile House.
Hopefully somebody else can, this'll be an interesting thread.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by ShavedParmesanCheese

I wish I had the graphical skills for this I'd like to build a city in the centre of the BC interior, near 150 Mile House.
Hopefully somebody else can, this'll be an interesting thread.

Interesting choice. Its a bit cold up there but has endless flat land and as you said centrally located.

[Truenorth00]

Move Toronto to where Windsor is and move Montreal to where Halifax is. Maximize our trade relationships with the US and Europe.

[urbandreamer]

I'd build a continuous city strung along the 401 4 km wide on either side within a dense grid - with a strict height limit of six storeys. Population: 10 million. Then high speed rail would be possible.

[casper]

Lets start with a costal destination. Preferably on an island with lots of lakes. Something like Gilford Island. Islands always make for interesting destinations.

A population of around 1 million. Not to big not to small. Our little island city las lots of lakes to break things up. We should have town centers of sort with higher density at its center and becoming lower density as you move away.

Our Island city would need to have a metro system. Something like skytain, except all underground. Ban on highways, since they are generally evil.

[MonkeyRonin]

Fun idea for a thread.

I've always fantasized about a Stockholm-like city strung across a rocky archipelago of Georgian Bay.


https://islandqueencruise.com/georgian-bay/


https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/98657048060254316/

[ShavedParmesanCheese]

Originally Posted by casper

Lets start with a costal destination. Preferably on an island with lots of lakes. Something like Gilford Island. Islands always make for interesting destinations.

A population of around 1 million. Not to big not to small. Our little island city las lots of lakes to break things up. We should have town centers of sort with higher density at its center and becoming lower density as you move away.

Our Island city would need to have a metro system. Something like skytain, except all underground. Ban on highways, since they are generally evil.

I like the premise! with a population that big, and no monster highway connections, it'll need rail connections. The historic central station will serve 3 routes; 1 passing through and 2 terminating.

The west coast, in this alternative reality, has a mainline to connect Vancouver, This City, and Prince Rupert. If we're being extra imaginative, it'll carry on to Whitehorse, perhaps connecting to the WP&Y.

From the central station, served historically by CN, CP, & The GNR, but now by VIA, Amtrak, and The Rocky Mountaineer, you can catch a train to all these major destinations;

NORTH -> Prince Rupert
SOUTH -> Vancouver -> Seattle (an extension of Amtrak's Cascades service)
NORTHWEST -> Edmonton by way of Jasper
SOUTHWEST -> Calgary by way of Banff



The station itself could look like, in full or in part, Vancouver's dearly departed Great Northern Terminal:

[ericmacm]

Well, this thread is surprisingly relevant to something I was working on earlier this year during my free time.

I decided to try my hand at planning a street grid for Churchill, Manitoba using AutoCAD. I got inspired by the "Roblin City" map from 1912, which was an urban plan for a city of 500,000 in Churchill. The grid here uses blocks roughly the size and shape of those used in Calgary. Additional features of this "plan" include designated natural spaces that the grid works around, a railway corridor leading to the port area, and additional reclaimed areas for more port/docking facilities. I was planning on creating a bridge across the mouth of the river, but I couldn't find a spot I liked.

Maybe I'll have to flesh this one out some more.

[goodgrowth]

The Cranbrook/Kimberley area.

[ue]

Originally Posted by casper

Lets start with a costal destination. Preferably on an island with lots of lakes. Something like Gilford Island. Islands always make for interesting destinations.

A population of around 1 million. Not to big not to small. Our little island city las lots of lakes to break things up. We should have town centers of sort with higher density at its center and becoming lower density as you move away.

Our Island city would need to have a metro system. Something like skytain, except all underground. Ban on highways, since they are generally evil.

Gilford Island is quite hilly... I have trouble picturing anything more than a Juneau or Prince Rupert sized city there. The area between Powell Lake Lodge and Desolation Sound Marine Park has more flat land to sprawl onto. Or, probably closer to what you were looking for with Gildford, somewhere like Bella Bella would probably work.

[ue]

I've often thought about this more in the context of "if Canada's borders extended into more habitable or otherwise useful territory in the US." Generally this considers if certain disputed areas (like northern Maine and the Alaska Panhandle) became Canadian, or if the border followed the Great Lakes through Superior and Duluth was on the Canada-US border (with Duluth being Canadian). Or if specific states, like Michigan or Maine, ended up Canadian, or if parts of Canada, had become independent, or were utilized by different colonial powers. It generally follows an idea of greater population and development for Canada overall, due to more land that is easily habitable, though not necessarily as populous as in the US (for example, having a Detroit that is more Vancouver sized than Montreal sized). But that's just because that's more interesting, when in reality the lands now in the US would likely be less developed than they currently are in many cases.

But more within the confines of this thread, I've thought about what if Kingston remained the capital and was Ottawa-sized, or if Red Deer (or preferably, Lacombe) had like 300,000 people or so. Or if somewhere in SW Manitoba or the Interlake region (maybe around Boissevain or Gimli) had >150,000.

The Churchill map above is really cool... I would like to see more.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Move Toronto to where Windsor is and move Montreal to where Halifax is. Maximize our trade relationships with the US and Europe.

Don't mind that.

And then lets move Vancouver to Victoria for that southern/on and island locale.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

The Cranbrook/Kimberley area.

Go west one mountain range and you're golden.
But not Golden.

[ShavedParmesanCheese]

This'd be more fun if we all built a city together, who's in?

Adhering to the rules in the first post, how about we use this stretch of not-much-at-all on the Cariboo highway?
It's relatively flat, on a navigable river, and out of the way enough to not interfere with any other city.

[Razor]

I know that I'm going against the spirit of this thread, but I would simply extend lake Superior out to Winnipeg ,give it a nice deep port, and make it the Great Lakes city that it should be! Other then that, North Bay would be a nice location for a large Northern ON city. Why not Sudbury you ask? The notion of a large Sudbury frightens me. Supersizing a spider does to..Just sayin!.

[NewIreland]

For NB, the three major cities could easily be a golden triangle if the populations increased, which should have happened (but we won't get into that *ahem* upper Canada policy *ahem*).

Fredericton would be 1 million
Oromocto would be 200k
Gagetown would be a suburb of 100k.
The Kingston Peninsula would have a population of 300k.

The Saint John Suburbs of Welsford, Grand Bay, westfield, Rothesay, Hampton, Quispamsis would be 100k+.
Saint John would have a population of 3 million.

The central town of Sussex would be home to a huge international airport and have high speed commuter train connections to the tri-cities. Its population would be 400k.

As for Moncton, the towns of Salisbury and Petitcodiac would be home to 100k each. Moncton and Dieppe would have 1.5 million respectively. Shediac would have 300k.

The entire triangle would be heavily populated, but not absurdly dense.

Here's a visual with the enlarged CMA/CA boundaries.

***link won't work but if you go to Google maps you can invisual these places bleeding into each other.***

[LakeLocker]

Originally Posted by NewIreland

For NB, the three major cities could easily be a golden triangle if the populations increased, which should have happened (but we won't get into that *ahem* upper Canada policy *ahem*).

Fredericton would be 1 million
Oromocto would be 200k
Gagetown would be a suburb of 100k.
The Kingston Peninsula would have a population of 300k.

The Saint John Suburbs of Welsford, Grand Bay, westfield, Rothesay, Hampton, Quispamsis would be 100k+.
Saint John would have a population of 3 million.

The central town of Sussex would be home to a huge international airport and have high speed commuter train connections to the tri-cities. Its population would be 400k.

As for Moncton, the towns of Salisbury and Petitcodiac would be home to 100k each. Moncton and Dieppe would have 1.5 million respectively. Shediac would have 300k.

The entire triangle would be heavily populated, but not absurdly dense.

Here's a visual with the enlarged CMA/CA boundaries.

***link won't work but if you go to Google maps you can invisual these places bleeding into each other.***

My idea was having a tri provincial set up sort of like the New York Tri State Area.

PEI would be long island/staten island/Connecticut.

NewBrunskwick would be jersey/manhattan, with nova scotia being upstate new york.

It'd have about 1.8 million people, would have 1 nhl team, 2 cfl team, and a very successful mls team. About 1/3rd of the metro would be Acadian, with the New brunskwick bit being entirely billingual.

[Dengler Avenue]

I’ll just densify the rocky area around Sault Sainte Marie, between Havilland and Desbarats. Highway 417 woohoo~~~

[NewIreland]

Originally Posted by LakeLocker

My idea was having a tri provincial set up sort of like the New York Tri State Area.

PEI would be long island/staten island/Connecticut.

NewBrunskwick would be jersey/manhattan, with nova scotia being upstate new york.

It'd have about 1.8 million people, would have 1 nhl team, 2 cfl team, and a very successful mls team. About 1/3rd of the metro would be Acadian, with the New brunskwick bit being entirely billingual.

We have 1.8 million now.