Quote:
Originally Posted by ue
You're assuming office buildings need to be bland, when that's simply not the case. Some of the buildings in St-Foy aren't that bad, for example.
|
I'm assuming that some office buildings will be tasteless, yes. It's almost unavoidable, and the case in all cities. That's why I like the idea of this CBD being somewhat of a blank slate, an ideal playground for these corporations and their shiny glass dicks. Plus, it's at a very strategic location (the very top major nexus for the Greater City area by far) and not that far from the core anyway (a few km, and there can easily be very fast transit options on that axis if needed - it's very wide, as you know).
Quote:
Ignoring the obvious human health and efficiency issues to this
|
Sitting at a downtown desk while breathing polluted air isn't exactly optimal for human health, either. What you eat and the amount of exercise you get are the main factors, and it's perfectly possible to be in great health without living in downtowns.
Quote:
Oh, and I know sometimes CBDs move around. Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York, even Boston, are good North American examples of this. But moving the CBD to an auto-suburb is very uncommon for a major North American city. It's a bit more common in Europe, where the designs are less auto-orientated, but that's about it.
|
But having a modern CBD in the city's old walled core would also be completely unheard of for a Canadian/American city, given that it's the only city that has one. So in any case it would have been blazing a new trail (its own) for a North American city for how to handle its CBD.
Ste-Foy isn't exactly the middle of nowhere - it's not that far from the core, actually.
Just for fun, defining the center as the Parliament building in both cities (a decent standard IMO, you can pick your own if you want to nitpick this
), the Ste-Foy CBD would be approximately around Rexall Place... and that's as the crow flies; in Edm, there isn't a wide axis going straight to Rexall Place.
If Edmonton's core was several centuries old and considered a fairly unique architectural gem for this continent, it would make total sense IMO to put the glass towers around Rexall Place instead of spoiling the core with them.