Canadian skylines of the past

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by esquire

It's interesting to see how many railyards were repurposed in the 80s into successful urban redevelopments. Winnipeg has the Forks, but Toronto has a new high-density urban neighbourhood anchored by a stadium and an arena, Edmonton has a university, housing, office towers and soon an arena, Montreal has a dense urban neighbourhood... it's pretty impressive. A lot of these projects have done quite well.

Neither Ottawa nor Kingston did much with former railyards. In Ottawa one is still vacant land to this day five decades later, the other turned into a power centre. In Kingston the old railyards are a string of hotels and apartment towers along the waterfront--nice but nothing special.

I'd hesitate as to whether or not Concord CityPlace in Toronto can be called a successful urban neighbourhood. Sure its got great density but the street life and overall neighbourhood feel is lacking. It also feels very contrived. You can tell someone master planned the whole thing. To me, urbanity has to be organic.

That's why I'm such an insane NYCC fanboy. It's got it all and its all modern development.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

I'd hesitate as to whether or not Concord CityPlace in Toronto can be called a successful urban neighbourhood. Sure its got great density but the street life and overall neighbourhood feel is lacking. It also feels very contrived. You can tell someone master planned the whole thing. To me, urbanity has to be organic.

That's why I'm such an insane NYCC fanboy. It's got it all and its all modern development.

Toronto's old railyard is moving slowly, but it's going in the right direction. Considering that almost nothing happened for a decade after Skydome was built, you could say it was moving at a snail's pace for a while. But now you have a bit of a neighbourhood emerging around ACC that connects the area to the Waterfront (which used to be a bit of an orphan neighbourhood), and as more buildings pop up west of there you will see a more organic, less contrived neighbourhood emerge.

I agree, it would have been better had it not been master planned by a single player, but it is still going to give Toronto something great in the end. Just think, 30 years ago it looked like this:

[MolsonExport]

^the turbo train! I travelled it often in the 70s

[DLLB]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

The Forks really is a phenomenal urban space, especially for a smaller city!

Been there and it is an amazing area.

[Darkoshvilli]

1991

[Dr Awesomesauce]

^Is that the former/ proposed Labatt Park site?

[Rico Rommheim]

Between the 60's and the early 2000's, downtown was a real mess. It's insane. Thanks, modern age.
We're only getting our dense downtown back now.


Here's the east end of downtown in the 70's. We're only recovering from this automobile-centric 'development' scar today with the construction of the CHUM (and a few other underwhelming low-rises that aren't worth a mention)

[MonkeyRonin]

1930



http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot...1_archive.html

[Darkoshvilli]

Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce

^Is that the former/ proposed Labatt Park site?

Yeah. Its now been filled with 20 storey cookie cutter condos instead.

[Rico Rommheim]

^perhaps, but the Windsor court development has brought thousands of residents to what was before a no-man's land. It has undeniably helped bring that part of town (northern Griffintown or whatever) to life, and in the process brought in shops and services, as well as raised land values all around. I doubt a stadium that would have housed a baseball team (really nobody cares about baseball anymore) would have had as much of an impact.

[Darkoshvilli]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

^perhaps, but the Windsor court development has brought thousands of residents to what was before a no-man's land. It has undeniably helped bring that part of town (northern Griffintown or whatever) to life, and in the process brought in shops and services, as well as raised land values all around. I doubt a stadium that would have housed a baseball team (really nobody cares about baseball anymore) would have had as much of an impact.

Agreed except for the bolded. Close to a 100k people showed up for two pre-season games. There's still some interest. I think a brand new stadium downtown would have been perfect.

[Rico Rommheim]

Yeah well never once did I ever attend an expos game that had more than 20,000 people. And by the time they left, it was with a whimper. AND, absolutely nobody I know (that is people in their mid-twenties) cares about watching MLB. Nobody. Do I like playing baseball? Sure, I've played a couple times in my life and it was amusing, watching it though is fuckin' boring as hell. Unless you're drunk, or talking with your friends.

This a hockey town through and through. The two footballs are way down the pecking order. Baseball as a pro sport is on it's way down even in the USA. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that big open air stadiums aren't necessarily a positive generator of street/urban life. The olympic stadium and canada's other great stadia are great examples of that.

[MTLskyline]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

^perhaps, but the Windsor court development has brought thousands of residents to what was before a no-man's land. It has undeniably helped bring that part of town (northern Griffintown or whatever) to life, and in the process brought in shops and services, as well as raised land values all around. I doubt a stadium that would have housed a baseball team (really nobody cares about baseball anymore) would have had as much of an impact.

Not so sure about that. The buildings that are there are essentially a slice of suburbia in central Montreal. I'm pretty sure most of the people who live there are drivers, not transit users. It was a project that was meant to appeal to people normally enticed by the suburbs. There is very little pedestrian traffic, and tons of cars parked in the area.

Baseball would have a bigger impact in this city than almost any other sport (aside from maybe hockey) as there are 81 home games a year in a stadium that would hold upwards of 35,000 people.

Compare that to the Impact, which can't even sell out every game (and they often have a home game only once every 2 weeks!) Quite pathetic, considering that they are only 2 years old, with a brand new stadium of only 20,000 seats. If they played 81 home games a year, I imagine that only a few thousand might show up on a regular basis...

Regarding the swipe at baseball, perhaps the hipster crowd isn't into it, but it is still quite a popular sport, including among young adults (I'm in my mid-twenties, and I know plenty of people in my age range who love the sport). Sure if you're a hyper kid with ADHD and require constant stimulation, you might be bored. But then, what's so exciting about soccer or football? They're not really any better.

On a side note, a Montreal team won the national baseball championship this year for players aged 16-18. Montreal is now representing Canada in the world championships.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sport...614/story.html

[Darkoshvilli]

Thats the thing though, the big O is NOT an open air stadium and its a dump, no wonder it was always empty. And just because your group of friends isn't into baseball doesn't mean the whole city isn't. I know plenty of young people who would love to have a team back. Anyway, its a topic for another thread, but im of the opinion that a new ballpark downtown would attract people (especially West-Islanders who couldn't be bothered to travel way out to the east-end to watch a game in a crappy stadium) enough to keep the team alive this time.

[Darkoshvilli]

Originally Posted by MTLskyline

Compare that to the Impact, which can't even sell out every game (and they often have a home game only once every 2 weeks!) Quite pathetic, considering that they are only 2 years old, with a brand new stadium of only 20,000 seats. Even if the Expos got only a paltry 5,000 a game, they would draw more attendance over the course of a single week than the Impact.

Thats not really surprising considering the Impact are utter crap this year.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Darkoshvilli

1991

Wow, I had no idea 1000 de la Gauchetiere was such a recent office tower. I was sure that it was a 70s building.

[Rico Rommheim]

For me le 1000 screams out late 80's pomo. Used to be my favourite tower in the world as a boy, now it's not even close to be my favourite in the city.

Also: take le 1000 and le 1250 away from that picture and it's shocking to see how retarded (literally) the downtown skyline looked in the late 80's. Unbelievable that before those two were built the tallest building in town was tour de la bourse....built 1964.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

For me le 1000 screams out late 80's pomo. Used to be my favourite tower in the world as a boy, now it's not even close to be my favourite in the city.

Also: take le 1000 and le 1250 away from that picture and it's shocking to see how retarded (literally) the downtown skyline looked in the late 80's. Unbelievable that before those were built the tallest building in town was tour de la bourse....built 1964.

Well to be honest I don't know anything about architecture It just reminded me of something I'd see in a New York crime movie which we were all set around then.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Darkoshvilli

1991

cool shot. My second year of undergrad studies. I watched these skyscrapers rise from the dreary windows of the 7th floor cafeteria in Concordia's Hell Building.

[esquire]

^ Love that picture of Montreal... it reminds me of my first visit to that city in 1992. I think just about every city in Canada had a tower or two going up around 1990/91 that was pretty much the last one built until the 2000s construction boom took off. It was quite a lull as I recall.

That picture is also a scary reminder of my advancing age that the early 1990s are now considered the distant past