Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
Can you imagine a French city of 400,000 building that in their downtown? I doubt they'd even contemplate it in some poor neighbourhood on the outskirts. Can you even buy ugly brick like that in France? It's hideous.
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When this was proposed there were barely even any renderings of the buildings produced, and the cladding was described as "brick and sandstone". The developer-funded city councillors that voted in favour of it basically thought it would look the same as the historic brick and stone buildings in the area, or thought that the design was equivalent. They were not really literate at all in terms of architecture or urban design.
In those days the planning rules were the same as in 1980 and they mostly dealt with quantitative aspects of the development like building height, square footage, and of course parking. The rules were put in place to keep population densities low (the idea was that this would avoid slums) and to ensure that traffic and parking worked well (everybody will get around by car, even downtown). There was nothing in the planning rules that ensured that buildings would look good and many of the rules were actively harmful.
Since then the planning rules have changed somewhat. A bunch of the 70's-era parking/density stuff is gone and there are some more requirements in terms of design and materials (rules like "thou shalt not use vinyl siding"). There is also a design review committee, and the approval process is normally handled by the bureaucracy instead of politicians (if you follow the rules you get approved). It is still far from perfect but the quality has gone way up and lots of new buildings are quite nice.