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  #1  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 2:13 AM
SENS ROOKIE SENS ROOKIE is offline
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How would you rebuild Ottawa

If you got the chance to rebuilt Ottawa like Albert Speer attempt's for Berlin what would you do
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  #2  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 2:32 AM
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Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.
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  #3  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 2:37 AM
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no Do you know how Albert Speer is

just look at wiki
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  #4  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 2:49 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SENS ROOKIE View Post
no Do you know how Albert Speer is
how would you speer Albert?

while we're nitpicking, could a moderator fix the typo in the Thread title? Now that we have Godwin's Law out of the way, this could be a fun thread, let's hear from all the closet Corbus, Enfants and Haussmen out there!
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Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 5:10 PM
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Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.
I don't like this thread, I'm getting depressed thinking what could have been lol
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  #6  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 8:58 PM
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how would you speer Albert?

while we're nitpicking, could a moderator fix the typo in the Thread title? Now that we have Godwin's Law out of the way, this could be a fun thread, let's hear from all the closet Corbus, Enfants and Haussmen out there!
No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision
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  #7  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 9:18 PM
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No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision
Yes, I know who Albert Speer is, I've even read (and recommend) his book Inside the Third Reich; but I don't know 'how' he is, so I was poking fun at your spelling. One of the words you're looking for is "rebuild" with a 'd', by the way, and Hitler only has one 't'.
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Old Posted Jun 21, 2011, 9:45 PM
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Yes, I know who Albert Speer is, I've even read (and recommend) his book Inside the Third Reich; but I don't know 'how' he is, so I was poking fun at your spelling. One of the words you're looking for is "rebuild" with a 'd', by the way, and Hitler only has one 't'.
Word Nazi! (how's that for upholding Godwin's Law?)

Last time I checked Albert Speer was still dead.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2011, 12:47 AM
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why your plan in making Ottawa a dream city
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  #10  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2011, 3:56 AM
Uhuniau Uhuniau is offline
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Originally Posted by citizen j View Post
Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.


BRING BACK HOLT! BRING BACK HOLT!

Next street to be re-canopied: Wellington, right in front of Parliament, like it used to be.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2011, 12:25 PM
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BRING BACK HOLT! BRING BACK HOLT!
This map always gives me a semi:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3mJoEEHrV...252520no6B.jpg
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  #12  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 2:45 AM
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Only a semi? TMI! TMI!
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Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 3:37 AM
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No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision
Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®

It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.
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  #14  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 1:38 PM
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That's quite the map. I guess underground light rail was just as impossible a dream back in 1915 as it is now.
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  #15  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 6:50 PM
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I wish I had a blank street map that could be used for a possible TMP (it comes up for renewal in 2013?). It includes a mixture of road and transit projects (I don't put all the eggs in the transit basket).

Some key elements:

Transit

* LRT to the suburbs as soon as funding is available, not just "beyond 2031"
* BRT corridors defined across the city with bus lanes on main arterials
* Surface trams on busy routes (i.e. Carling via QE Drive proposal to Montreal Road) when ridership warrants
* Redesign of key non-BRT bus routes with additional features
* More use of smaller buses and developer funding for local routes to reduce costs and taxes

Roadways

* Upgrades of several key arterials, including widening, transit priorities and in some cases, access management and interchanges
* Newly defined freeway corridor along Hunt Club Road from 417 to 416 which could also partially function as an outer ring road (although none is specified)
* Mixture of mainstreet arterials and traffic-focused suburban/urban arterials
* Collector and local roads in new communities would be controlled by developers
* Focus on intra-Ottawa and travel from Ottawa to neighbouring communities
* Interprovincial trucks not doing local deliveries would be prohibited from downtown Ottawa immediately to put pressure on the NCC (which should be abolished IMO) to approve a new bridge and encourage Gatineau-Montreal trucks to use 50/148
* Alternatively, encourage the NCC to toll the interprovincial bridges

Last edited by eternallyme; Jun 23, 2011 at 7:10 PM.
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  #16  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 8:47 PM
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Originally Posted by vid View Post
Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®

It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.
At the time, the east bank of the canal was occupied by rail freight yards along with the station tracks. The Holt Plan would have been an improvement on what was there at the time since it would have removed the freight yards. From the looks of it, the west bank of the Canal between the plaza and Laurier was to be improved considerably. We also can't rule out the possibility that the covered-over plaza section was to be made more appealing somehow.

If you look carefully, you can see that one of the locks has been moved up the Canal to where the plaza covers the Canal alongside the railway station. This was to allow the trains to go under Wellington and still remain over the Canal with sufficient clearance for boats to pass underneath.


If I could go way back in time, like to Colonel By's era, I would realign the street grid of downtown Ottawa so that it used the final run of the Canal as its general baseline rather than working off the Ottawa River and the somewhat strange parallelogram survey grid (e.g. look at Scott, Carling and Baseline and compare with Bronson, Parkdale, Fisher, Churchill, Woodroffe, etc). So, given that the first streets were named Wellington and Rideau and assuming the same crossing point of the Canal, Wellington would now run from the Canal southwest to somewhere in the Carling/Preston/Prince of Wales/Dow's Lake area (the northern end of Dow's Lake is a bit of an artifice since it is essentially a dike and could have been placed anywhere). In the opposite direction, Rideau would head across what is now the Byward Market towards New Edinburgh Park, pretty much in line with Keefer St in New Edinburgh (the section of Sussex Dr beyond Boteler is on the same approximate grid as I envision, as is New Edinburgh). Assuming that Ottawa once again became the capital and that Barrack Hill (now Parliament Hill) also once again became the site of Parliament, the street grid would allow for the Parliament buildings to be the focus of two streets, one running up the west bank of the Canal more-or-less as the Queen Elizabeth Driveway does and another running parallel to Wellington, probably two streets over. This latter street would itself skirt the top of the escarpment that separates downtown from Lebreton Flats and the Preston/O-Train/Dows Lake depression, running pretty much through the St. Vincent Hospital site.

Oh yes, I would also have put another canal in along what is now the O-Train/Preston area to Nepean Bay and then through Lebreton Flats and some locks to Victoria Island. The reason for this is that it would have made Nepean Bay into a natural port location between rail and water in the latter part of the 19th century and might have even encouraged further canal building upstream in the Ottawa River (a partial canal was dug in the Fitzroy Harbour area on the Quebec side of the river - it shows up in Google Earth as some oddly straight bits of water channel; one of them crosses under the CN rail line).

To get really revolutionary, I might even have proposed a trihexagonal grid.
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  #17  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 11:27 PM
Uhuniau Uhuniau is offline
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* More use of smaller buses and developer funding for local routes to reduce costs and taxes
How about more use of the RIGHT sized buses?

Some routes, maybe, could use smaller buses.

Many could use bigger: i.e., artics or DD, not 40-footers.
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  #18  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 11:29 PM
Uhuniau Uhuniau is offline
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Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®
It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.
It doesn't really "cover" that much more of the canal than is covered today by the existing bridges that connect Rideau to Wellington and Queen/Sparks.
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  #19  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2011, 11:40 PM
Uhuniau Uhuniau is offline
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the somewhat strange parallelogram survey grid (e.g. look at Scott, Carling and Baseline and compare with Bronson, Parkdale, Fisher, Churchill, Woodroffe, etc).
Aha. That's the original 18th century township survey at work. You can see other vestiges of it in the Bank Street dogleg and in the interrupted Main-Robert-Waller alignment. (Pop quiz: what was Waller Street originally named?)
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  #20  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2011, 2:29 AM
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I know what the 'cause' of the parallelogram grid is, what I don't understand is why it took place at all. Surveying in parallelograms rather than rectangles or squares seems a damned strange thing to do. Within the former Carleton County, it was limited to the geographic townships of Nepean, Gloucester, North Gower and Osgoode. There are examples throughout the province but there are lots of townships surveyed on rectilinear lines as well.

They should have saved themselves some trouble and surveyed it all on equilateral triangles...
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