Commie-block (slabsville) capital of Canada

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by Cambridgite

I will say this... ALL Ontario cities are horrible for the profileration of commie blocks.

Windsor doesn't have many at all (especially compared to London and Kitchener). This is partly because Windsor barely grew between 1970 and 1995 but in general, Windsor is just a different animal than every other southern Ontario city to begin with.

London is the worst for them by far (on a per capita basis).

MolsonExport, I used to live in one of the buildings in your photo at Wonderland and Oxford (where you labelled the "post-2000" towers). They've built a lot in that area in the past 10 years but the ones in your picture were built in the early '80s.

[MolsonExport]

^not my photo/label. But, most of the concrete cube collection across the street from Costco has gone up since I moved here in 2005. There has been a tower under construction always: as soon as one is 2/3 finished, the next begins. Like cells dividing. Or more accurately: The Thing.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Well, the suburban houses typically built across the continent may not have been perfect (nor sustainable or desirable from an urbanity perspective), but they certainly did/do offer a better living environment for humans than most of the slabs ever did.

Disagree. I for one would much rather live a slab and take the access to transit and amenities at the expense of a 4-car garage and giant lawn any day. Evidently, most don't agree with that, but nonetheless, there's no objective reason for why slab towers would offer a lower standard of living than detached houses.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Disagree. I for one would much rather live a slab and take the access to transit and amenities at the expense of a 4-car garage and giant lawn any day. Evidently, most don't agree with that, but nonetheless, there's no objective reason for why slab towers would offer a lower standard of living than detached houses.

I would venture to say that most commie block slabs in North America do not have easy access to transit and amenities. This is even true of many in Toronto (certainly when it comes to amenities), where quite a few are built in the Le Corbusier-ian towers-in-the-park style. A lot don't even have a bloody convenience store on the ground floor!

As far as dense, desirable and humane housing is concerned, most of Paris intra-muros is a pretty good example to follow.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by vid

It's province wide. Even places like Fort Frances and Wawa have them, albeit on a much smaller scale and not necessarily the same construction technique.

Two in Kenora in this photo from 2003; 2009's Streetview footage shows the one on the right has a new vinyl skin! (The other, 5 storeys, is to the left.)

Kenora: Seven floors, no balconies; Not really a slab, but as ugly as one

Fort Frances: Maybe not exactly a slab apartment but it serves the same function: low income housing

One thing that people from abroad almost always scratch their heads at when they come to Canada is why so many people live so close together in slab-type buildings (or even tightly-packed subdivisions) when the country has soooooo much open space.

Goes to show just how far removed the average person is from urban design and sustainability issues and the principles of people like Andres Duany...

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I would venture to say that most commie block slabs in North America do not have easy access to transit and amenities. This is even true of many in Toronto (certainly when it comes to amenities), where quite a few are built in the Le Corbusier-ian towers-in-the-park style. A lot don't even have a bloody convenience store on the ground floor!

On average they definitely have better access to them then houses at least. In Toronto, most of the suburban slabs are built on major arterial streets with frequent bus service and at least a strip mall within a block or two. As opposed to a mid super-block detached house which would involve taking a long walk through a winding network of streets to get to that same transit & retail (hence why most just drive).

As far as dense, desirable and humane housing is concerned, most of Paris intra-muros is a pretty good example to follow.

That would be Paris's inner-suburbs? If so, keep in mind that they're mostly pre-war development, or at least modernist apartments inserted into the old street grid.

Even in Canada, in the cases where the 60s/70s apartments were inserted into an existing urban context (like the Guy-Concordia area in Montreal or Parkdale in Toronto) are of course, much more pleasant and well-designed all around, unlike the suburban greenfield slabs or the developments where entire inner-city neighbourhoods were cleared and rebuilt (like Jamestown, or Pruit-Igoe in St. Louis).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

That would be Paris's inner-suburbs? If so, keep in mind that they're mostly pre-war development, or at least modernist apartments inserted into the old street grid.

Sorry. Intra-muros means inside the walls. I meant inner city Paris.

[flar]

There is a knockoff of Le Corbusier's unité d'habitation style in Hamilton:




The building is even more massive than it looks here. Because the building is so long, it's hard to tell that it's actually a 16 storey building (the balconies are 2-storeys each). It's also T-shaped, the other wing is hidden behind the building.

[Wharn]

Originally Posted by Blitz

MolsonExport, I used to live in one of the buildings in your photo at Wonderland and Oxford (where you labelled the "post-2000" towers). They've built a lot in that area in the past 10 years but the ones in your picture were built in the early '80s.

Actually it was neither of our photos, technically it's copyrighted by Google. But yeah those were my labels; I can assure you at least two of those towers were built since 2000, possibly far more. Take a look at this thread on Skyscrapercity:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...427026&page=72

It actually looks like a third one is receiving some finishing touches in the photographs (partway down the page, posted by Whisper09), so I'm tempted to say 3 were built in the last two years. Why they would continue copying the mistakes of the 1980s I can't say.

[P Unit]

I've lived almost exclusively in commie-blocks since moving to Toronto 5 years ago and when I move, it will probably be to another similar apartment. The unit sizes are typically much bigger than what you can get in a newer building and, as long as it's a well-run building, they can be very pleasant to live in. They also don't tend to mind that I have a dog, which tends to be an issue in smaller buildings and rental homes.

Like any other style of development, the real thing to watch out for is building maintenance. This varies greatly depending on who owns the building. I've had great experiences with Realstar and Briarlane, and an AWFUL experience with Capreit. From the outside, all of these buildings have looked the same, but on the inside they're worlds apart.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by P Unit

Like any other style of development, the real thing to watch out for is building maintenance. This varies greatly depending on who owns the building. I've had great experiences with Realstar and Briarlane, and an AWFUL experience with Capreit. From the outside, all of these buildings have looked the same, but on the inside they're worlds apart.

This is important to note. I've seen vast differences in quality between various apartment slabs. The worst are generally those under ownership by an independent (usually numbered) company that was formed to purchase the building as an investment after it was built. While not always the case, they tend to put the absolute minimum into maintenance and are ok with vacancy rates approaching 50% in some cases, as it's cheaper to deal with a half empty building than actually fix stuff up. Large property management companies vary quite a bit as well.

On the high end of the scale the condo versions of slabs can actually be quite nice, particularly the interiors. I've actually seen identical slabs where one is rental, the other condo with a huge difference in interior quality. Plus the condos offer way more living space than new-builds at much lower cost. When I was in Ottawa my ex and I lived in a 3 bedroom (owned absentee by her parents) that was easily three times the size of a comparable new build in the inner-city.

[WhipperSnapper]

There are relatively few isolated slabs far from anything out of the thousands in Toronto. Most are built in clusters not only close to a strip plaza but usually an enclosed mall. The useless lawn or at grade parking is an urban nightmare to us but it's quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This is far from my idea of living but for a lot of people, their home is their castle and they only leave it for work and food.

[dleung]

I remember reading an article somewhere that showed Torontonians had way above-average walking-induced stress, because while most of the city's area is highly hostile to pedestrian use, the kind of suburban development here (whether cookie cutter tract homes or slab towers) is nonetheless so dense that good transit coverage is feasible. So while in most other cities people give up and drive, Torontonians will walk insane routes through the cul de sacs, across the parking lots and sidewalk-less arterials, etc, to get to those bus stops, lol.

So in other words, high density/transit-use doesn't necessarily mean pleasant

[Xelebes]

I like the little lawns in front of the commieblocks here. Comboed with trees and you have something to dampen the extremities of the concrete (cold echo, heat radiation) as one walks by.

[MolsonExport]

The great slab collection that is Cherryhill Village (London, Ontario).

http://www.cherryhillrentals.ca/

Interactive map of commieblockusRex: http://www.cherryhillrentals.ca/map.html

[vid]

Originally Posted by Xelebes

I like the little lawns in front of the commieblocks here. Comboed with trees and you have something to dampen the extremities of the concrete (cold echo, heat radiation) as one walks by.

It also buffers the building's environment from the street. The trees help to buffer the noise of the road from reaching lower apartments, though they don't really improve the view. Much better than the ones surrounded by nothing but a parking lot.

[AuxTown]

I lived for 4 years in Ottawa's commie-block central on Riverside Drive. The buildings were well-maintained, clean, and the units were HUGE (my 2 bedroom was 1100 sq ft). In the Winter, the area looks like something out of suburban Moscow.

A couple of shots of my building (the tall one) during the Gatineau Balloon Festival.


from www.inottawa.ca


from www.inottawa.ca


from www.gwlra.com

Post pics of your current or former commie-block home if you got them!

Oh ya, and check out this thread from 2009, commie-blocks in all their glory! http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=163859

[MolsonExport]

St. James Town has nothing on Hong Kong:



wikipedia (both images)

[MTLskyline]

My virgin eyes!

[Wharn]

Looks very pleasant, doesn't it? Unfortunately, Hong Kongers don't have any alternatives. The only way to cram 7 million people into that tiny area is to make extensive use of commieblocks (besides it's China, they're allowed to use commieblocks). London still has no excuse.