Canadian Cities and Urban Development Discussion Thread

[SteelTown]

Beautiful facade restoration on James St North


https://twitter.com/CoreUrban/status...272704/photo/1
Core Urban Inc.

[ue]

Looks beautiful, what did it look like before the renos?

[SteelTown]

Before

[kwoldtimer]

Very nice! Where is that in relation to the Armouries?

[Dwils01]

It's almost right across the street from the armouries, about 25m south of it.

[SignalHillHiker]

Wow, nice!

[GreaterMontréal]

Quartier de l'innovation de Montréal QI Montréal

Located in the heart of the city, the QI intends to be a creative, dynamic platform dedicated to the needs of innovative players in Montreal, Quebec and the rest of Canada. The QI represents a modern ecosystem that responds to the new realities of the innovation challenge on a worldwide scale.

20,000 jobs in some 350 companies

...The QI has the highest concentration of IT workers in Canada.

...Planned realty projects worth an estimated 6 billion.


''The QI is located in the South-West of Montreal (Griffintown, Saint-Henri, Petite Bourgogne and Pointe Saint-Charles), a neighborhood filled with a rich heritage that is important to put forth as it is situated at the crossings between the cultural, artistic, economical, technological and multimedia forefronts of Montreal.''



http://quartierinnovationmontreal.com/en/discover-qi/

[caltrane74]

I haven't been in Montreal in over 10 years so I may have forgotten, or may have been too wasted and rowdy on my last trip here, but I can say that Montreal has some very nice streets, where pedestrians come first. I would like to see some of the same kind of urban engineering in Toronto. In Particular on Yonge Street, that would help us to equalize to a degree with Montreal. The most important step for Toronto is definitely widening sidewalks on all the main streets in the core to a similar style as Bay Street. Yonge Street should be pedestrian only between College and Queen, or Queen and Dundas. This is my feeling after spending a very rainy and soggy weekend in Montreal.

[SignalHillHiker]

Fantastic news.

Suburban St. John's is awful, as you can well imagine - but much of it is located in separate municipalities over which the City of St. John's has no control.

One of the few offensive suburbs that is located within our borders is Kenmount Terrace, a sprawling residential area with nothing but single-family, detached homes. There is not a single store, not a single duplex. Nothing. It is very atypical of suburbs within St. John's proper.

Luckily, council just voted against NIMBYs protesting the construction of an apartment building there. And they plan to keep filling it in, increasing the density, creating green space (there's not even a park there, really), and all the rest.



http://davelanestjohns.ca/blog/posts...ents-proposal/

[SignalHillHiker]

Great TO solution profiled in this one.

Updating St. John’s accessibility

Urban environments can provide access to a variety of services for citizens with accessibility concerns — for example, Toronto’s new ground-level streetcars, or buildings, like the Ottawa Convention Centre, that combine world-class design with inclusive access. But they can also present challenges, particularly when it comes to the areas of a city that have been around since before phrases like “urban planning” and “wheelchair access” were used.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s capital city is a prime example of that conundrum. The big-box stores and newer office developments have automatic doors and access ramps, but lack the charm of the city’s iconic colourful rowhouses. But the waterfront downtown area where those rowhouses are found is a maze of hilly streets — where the sidewalks often have stairs — and inaccessible older buildings, often with narrow aisles and two or three steps at their entryways.

StopGap, which began three years ago in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood, is one of those grassroots solutions. The idea for StopGap came from founder Luke Anderson’s own experiences navigating the city after his spinal-cord injury about a decade ago. “I was immediately introduced to a world that’s not really well suited to someone who uses a wheelchair,” Anderson said.

That world included six years spent relying on fellow coworkers to help Anderson deploy a ramp to get up three stairs to enter the office building where he worked. That and his other experiences led to the start of the StopGap Community Ramp Project, which provides simple wooden ramps to Toronto businesses and other buildings that request them.

The colourful ramps, built by volunteers with materials donated by local hardware stores, provide an accessible and affordable way for citizens using wheelchairs and other mobility devices — as well as strollers and delivery dollies— to easily enter buildings that could otherwise be inaccessible because of just a single step.

In St. John’s, some things can’t be changed–those hills are there to stay — but others can be improved with an eye on both short, and long-term solutions. Some of those solutions will be outlined in the city’s Envision St. John’s municipal plan, which is currently under development. But grassroots projects like StopGap show that while bylaws and provincial legislation ensuring accessible communities are important, engaged citizens don’t have to wait for politicians to get on board to make their neighbourhoods more inclusive.

http://spacing.ca/national/2014/11/1...accessibility/

[SignalHillHiker]

Best news ever.

Happy City has been great and making a real difference thus far - and we have one of our SSP members on council. This could really be the beginning of a wonderful change for a city that is sprawling to death.



http://happycity.ca/density

[SignalHillHiker]

Happy City's survey results are out and St. John's is overwhelmingly in support of densification. Yay! But with conditions.

More than 60% want small-scale commercial and mixed use development near their homes.

94% want a grocery within a 10-minute walk.

88% want to be within a 10-minute walk of parks and restaurants.

71% want to live in a row house, 55% want to live in an apartment or condo building.

77% want a place between 1,000-2,000 sq. ft. 38% would go down to 500 sq. Ft. 11% would go lower.

[MolsonExport]

So nice you wrote it twice.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Beautiful facade restoration on James St North


https://twitter.com/CoreUrban/status...272704/photo/1
Core Urban Inc.

Nice. Our main DT streets (Dundas and Richmond) have very similar buildings, but alas, they have deteriorated and are dominated by head shops and other low-quality Indian buffets.

Back in the day:

ourontario

The potential is there:

atwestern

[caltrane74]

New Development plans to use space under the Gardiner Expressway



http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02...go-to-council/

A new condo and retail development in Toronto’s southern core aims to render the Gardiner Expressway irrelevant by breathing new life into unused, forgotten space below.

The project, on a plot of land owned by Loblaw Properties Ltd. at Lakeshore and Bathurst, centres around an art deco building that served as the grocery giant’s main operation centre until the 1970s.


Architects AllianceSketch of new development project on a plot of land owned by Loblaw Properties Ltd. at Lakeshore and Bathurst.
The proposal is to dismantle the existing heritage building and reconstruct it using salvaged components of the same site, in order to house a new Loblaws.

http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/129...er-expressway/

Forget condos, they’re just an easy way to make money. You could put all sorts of things under there,” said Alexander Josephson, an architect at the Toronto-based firm Partisans.

Josephson lists off cities like Tokyo and Marrakesh, which have filled spaces underneath their roadways with snaking shopping malls, pedestrian walkways and Escher-shaped housing co-ops.

“Fundamentally, these kinds of projects only happen in places where land is scarce,” Josephson said. “Otherwise, there’s not a lot of incentive for someone to rent land under a piece of aging infrastructure.”

While Toronto isn’t Tokyo, Josephson said the rising cost of housing and artificial scarcity created by the Greenbelt – 7,200 square kilometres of protected land surrounding the GTA – means more density will be added along the Gardiner.

[niwell]

^Nice. This is what I have been saying for years about the Gardiner. It's not the barrier, just need to use the space underneath. Lakeshore Blvd is the real barrier.

[caltrane74]

Underpass Park is. Pretty Nice Also

Urbantoronto.ca

[SignalHillHiker]

Suck it, NIMBYs.

It's shitty that this had to go ALL THE WAY TO THE FUCKING SUPREME COURT, because that's how it is here, but voila... level heads prevailed.

This is right across the street from the famous Georgestown Bakery and it's only a few minutes walk from me. It's going to be awesome.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by niwell

^Nice. This is what I have been saying for years about the Gardiner. It's not the barrier, just need to use the space underneath. Lakeshore Blvd is the real barrier.

So true.

I think the best bang for the buck would be to turn Lakeshore into a 2 lane, one way westbound road. Harbour street would serve as the one way eastbound equivalent. With the space they free up, they could easily turn the area under the Gardiner into animated public space.

The Gardiner itself should be rebuilt, but maybe as a four lane through road on modern concrete pillars that are much skinnier than the hulking 50s behemoth we have now. A lot of space is wasted by having on-ramps and off-ramps, so maybe we should eliminate any exits between Spadina and Jarvis.

[SignalHillHiker]

I'm not hopeful yet... but I'm definitely encouraged by how much traction this idea seems to be getting.