Nanaimo's (near) future skyline?

[twoNeurons]

There appears to be some Island rivalry going on.

[ilford]

No, Langford is tops. Hands down. It's got Nanaimo-style sprawl but with great views of the city of Victoria in the distance.

[The Great Scaper]

Hey great things are built and achieved in rivalries and competitions.

[officedweller]

That's the Fiesta Theatres site? That site should be able to support something bigger than what is pictured. It should really be retail/commercial office space, not a lowrise condo.

[Dylan Leblanc]

The ground floor units are live-work.

[ilford]

Originally Posted by The Great Scaper

Hey great things are built and achieved in rivalries and competitions.

Or, in this case, Nanaimo and Langford were built.

[The Great Scaper]

Now that was funny!

I took some cool photos from a property I am going to be landscaping in Vic West today. I won't start the job till October, however as I was talking to the strata president a friend came by who lives on the top floor of that big white princess building in Vic West, next door to the property that I will be installing irrigation and a new lawn. I started talking to this guy and he said I could take some photos from the top floor of the building over looking the harbor!

I think this will make for some cool photos! It will be interesting to see how they turn out!

[GUB]

The pics of Victoria remind me a bit of Halifax.
I've heard they're similar port/touristy cities--would love to get out west someday.
As far as the pics of development proposals go for the city of Nanaimo---they look a bit foolish. Just being honest.

[aastra]

For an official vision of things to come, the rendering is pretty weak. But the basic idea of significantly upping the density in downtown Nanaimo is a good one, I think. It's got a great little harbourfront and two or three striking (or even decent) tall buildings packed into the core there could really make for a dramatic visual impression. Nanaimo needs to develop an identity and some atmosphere because it's not really on the map re: tourist destinations in BC. Actually, it doesn't have much of an identity at all even for British Columbians. It's known mostly for its malls.

Here's a hypothetical skyline containing some duplicates of Nanaimo's few existing highrises:



It gives off a bit of a New Westminster vibe, for better or for worse:

image from www.newwestbia.com

[djp]

The pictures posted of "south Nanaimo" are very misleading. First of all, they don't even show "downtown." And the neighbourhoods surrounding downtown are very dense, because a lot of the housing is rental and there are many people living in illegal suites.

[Jarrod]

You've gotta love it when the Victoria people have to go "my dick is bigger than yours" type thing... HAHA... *lame* <_<

[The Great Scaper]

I had coffee/lunch/shopping with Dylan yesterday. It was funny cause we talked about city sizes and I mentioned how weird it is when you look at cities in terms of sizes in comparison to each other.

I mentioned that

Victoria is 3x the size of Nanaimo,
Calgary is 3x the size of Victoria,
Vancouver is 2x the size of Calgary,
and Toronto is 2x the size of Vancouver!

I just find it really intriguing for some reason....

Oh but I guess that makes me lame! Well I guess that's why I'm on a development and city building website. Oh Well......


I didn't make it upisland this weekend as I was working everyday straight through....maybe next weekend. I really want to get some good photos from different places up island.

[ilford]

And the neighbourhoods surrounding downtown are very dense, because a lot of the housing is rental and there are many people living in illegal suites.

But there are surely many more illegal suites in Victoria than there are in Nanaimo, not just because Victoria is bigger/more densely populated but also because it's so much more expensive.

If you have pictures of Nanaimo's density, we'd love to see them. I'm not being sarcastic. Here's a decent picture of downtown Nanaimo by tnano of flickr.com:



Large version is available here: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/123/3...ef22b8f5_o.jpg

Here's another aerial from Waite Air (www.globalairphotos.com). I'm just not seeing the density:


Here's Kelowna. Densification is much more evident in this picture than it is in any pictures I've seen of Nanaimo. There are plenty of lowrise apartment blocks and also some highrises:

[Holden West]

"New Westminster vibe" is a good Googlenope. (Or it was, before aastra coined it.)

[Dylan Leblanc]

wow that picture really shows that downtown Nanaimo is a toxic waste dump!

[ilford]

Yeah, it's unfortunate that there's an oil spill of some sort in the picture.

[The Great Scaper]

I'm still kinda disappointed to not see a main city center that's really visible in that Kelowna photo. At least in the Nanaimo photo there's a dense city center. Kelowna looks more like a sprawl. Though it's obvious in the photos that Kelowna has more density spread out.

Also what's the population differences between Nanaimo and Kelowna? They must be pretty close. Last time I checked the Greater Nanaimo area was around 125,000 people.

plus that oil spill is gross.

[aastra]

Here's a pic of Nanaimo's waterfront by alumroot at flickr.com:

[aastra]

pic from www.ise.sd68.bc.ca


pic from www.ise.sd68.bc.ca

[The Great Scaper]

That last one's cool!!!