Your block

[kool maudit]

this one comes up from time to time here, but since it's been a while and since i just moved, let's do it again: what does your street look like? what does your block look like?

i live on viborggade in the østerbro district of copenhagen. the neighborhood is a mixture of late-19th century tenements and the villas that preceded them. many of the villas are now embassies or schools, but a few of them are still maintained as private homes.

it's a pretty quiet neighborhood, given its density. it has a kind of serene feel, which is nice after living in the never-serene center of pristina for two years.

our block is between the quiet, leafy "bopa plads" square (named to honor a world war two resistance movement, you can see its trees in the photo) and the busy østerbrogade, which is the main street of the area.

[SignalHillHiker]

Very beautiful street, kool maudit.

I live on Spencer Street in the Rabbittown neighbourhood of St. John's. Traditionally, it was a rough, lower-class area - but gentrification and international immigration has pushed it over the threshold into lower-middle class.

It's still an area one wouldn't buy if they were looking to impress, but it has its charms. A crackhouse a few down from me was intentionally torched three times last year. The neighbour lady's date passed out drunk and she had to run through the street screaming for someone to call an ambulance. There's always someone scouring the street for cigarette butts. Lots of immigrants from Africa and gay men, though, so that's nice.

The clapboard rowhouses in this neighbourhood are only about 100 years old. They were built for Newfoundland soldiers returning from Europe during the Great War. Most are owned, some are rented, and a significant percentage are still resided in by the families first given them. There are lots of commercial and institutional facilities in the neighbourhood, and there's even a major hospital just outside its border.

Anyhow, Spencer Street is part of one of my favourite intersections in the city:



And it looks like this:



It's right at the edge of the downtown - just over the crest of this hill when viewed from down there. The bell tower of the Central Fire Station is in Rabbittown, the houses in the foreground are not (they're part of Pennywell-Central; on the bottom left, the space between the flat-front apartment/rowhouse building and the triangular one with corner windows in front of it is the border between Pennywell-Central and the Downtown. It might look arbitrary, but, hilariously, it's actually a giant cliff):

[kool maudit]

great perspectives of st john's. that city has a unique character.

i am a real fan of the sort of mid-rise urbanity that exists here in copenhagen, but i'm still canadian, and i do miss a good skyline. copenhagen is not a big city — i think in terms of metropolitan population, it's around the size of ottawa, although the whole øresund/malmö thing complicates that a bit. because of its density, though, it is satisfying in a way that even montreal sometimes strained at. i can walk across the inner city in two hours and that's it, that's all. but the whole time i am doing so, i am in this sea of 5-8 storey buildings and houses that doesn't really let up. it's not linear, or something where you have to choose your route — you're just in it the whole time.

that said, i do miss the sort of views that you get when you are approaching a canadian downtown, like coming into downtown montreal along de la gauchetiere in chinatown, or walking down queen from leslieville into central toronto. i love the layering that you get from those views, and the sense of impending gigantism. copenhagen doesn't have that.

but my neighborhood is pretty analogous, in terms of the lives lived and the shops and restaurants you see, to something like lower outremont in montreal. the funny thing — or maybe it's not so strange, given that montreal is a big city of four million people — is that streets like laurier avenue or parc are every bit as busy, as bustling and as full of life as østerbrogade, but the buildings just sort of end after two, three or four storeys. it's like a wild west kind of town, big sky country. in copenhagen they don't really dip below five or six floors, and it gives it a visual heft.

i suppose i ended up in a decent place given my preferences, but i really think mid-rise urbanity is sometimes overlooked in canada, especially in newer cities where you have these 40 storey condos, but they're sitting on two or three storey podiums. the density is there in spades, but there's an airiness that can be off-putting. i'll be in new york in a few weeks, and i am really looking forward to it. new york is a rare city in that it has these built-up, chunky neighborhoods but in a north american vernacular, and with this amazing skyline always peeking through the gaps. it is a very visually striking city in that sense. sometimes, back in montreal, i wished we had just one or two districts of six- and seven-storey, mansard-roofed quebec tenements surrounding old montreal — a sort of canadian lower east side for the bell and aldred buildings to loom over.

the animated film "les triplettes de belleville" mashed up paris and new york in a way i always wanted montreal to approach:

[SignalHillHiker]

I agree. I prefer the Montreal style of density to, say, Vancouver. And Europe does it on a whole another level. It's being walled in by city that I love. Obviously, given my background, I don't need 5-6 floors to get that feeling - but I do prefer that height.

Unfortunately, St. John's is taking the Canadian approach to growing up - just at a lower level. For us, lowrises (2-4 floors) form the density, while midrises and "highrises" are scattered about like condos-on-podiums. Some are completely detached from the surrounding street (not even oriented toward it) such as the new Fortis Building. Others are on top of parking garage podiums, such as 351. The older ones have horrible street fronts - generally a whole block long with a single entrance and limited public purpose.

I think it's much easier to create the type of city I want starting with the European style, than it is to build a typically Canadian city into something I'd love. Paris is a bit too homogeneous and colourless for me, but their urban planning is the ideal for my tastes. Of course, I also need a little more chaos, a little less Western European rigidness. An area of town similar to Sarajevo or Dubrovnik would never go astray in my dream home.

[esquire]

^ Good points. That is what is really missing from North American cities relative to European ones... that sort of low-rise but dense urbanity that is somewhere between the typical skyscraper-filled CBD and the SFH suburbs. There isn't much in between in all but the largest cities on this continent.

The first time I really explored a neighbourhood like kool's was in Poland... it blew me away that there were neighbourhoods like this in a fairly ordinary mid-sized city. I had never seen anything like that in North America... maybe NYC, but that's about it. Just street after street of this sort of thing. I have to admit, it made me pretty jealous.

[kool maudit]

building height isn't as important when you have narrow streets. philadelphia is very good like this, and parts of st. john's appear like they are as well. but like you, i like to be "walled in" a little bit. i suppose this is a very subjective thing. just typing it out, i can imagine a lot of people thinking that it sounds kind of unpleasant.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Good points. That is what is really missing from North American cities relative to European ones... that sort of low-rise but dense urbanity that is somewhere between the typical skyscraper-filled CBD and the SFH suburbs. There isn't much in between in all but the largest cities on this continent.

The first time I really explored a neighbourhood like kool's was in Poland... it blew me away that there were neighbourhoods like this in a fairly ordinary mid-sized city. I had never seen anything in North America... not even NYC had something quite like it. Just street after street of this sort of thing. I have to admit, it made me pretty jealous.

that's a really cool view of wroclaw. too bad so much of warsaw was levelled in the war, as it has both a big skyline and a little bit of this sort of thing.

[SHOFEAR]

104 Street. Likely Edmonton densest block and has just about every service you would need within the immediate area.

It was named one of the finalist in 2013 for greatest streets in Canada. http://4thstpromenade.ca/2013/10/104...ces-in-canada/

The farmers market that occupies the street during the summer was named as the "best farmers market" of the year by a writer for National Geographic. http://city-market.ca/wp/2014/01/cit...phic-traveler/






http://city-market.ca/wp-content/upl...ermaq_640w.jpg

[kool maudit]

that's a great looking part of edmonton, reminds me a bit of yaletown in vancouver.

[MexiQuebecois]

Nice idea for a thread.

I live on Saint-Kevin Avenue, in the predominantly immigrant neighbourhood of Côte-des-neiges. This neighbourhood is kinda weird, neither English nor French dominate, and you can speak whatever you want. I've read stats saying that it's one of the most multicultural neighbourhoods in the country; add to that the numerous universities and colleges in the area (HEC, UdeM) and you have a very vibrant neighbourhood with a lot of cheap restos and emerging pubs. Rent here is relatively cheap and I purposely searched for an apartment in this area. I live in front of parc Mackenzie King, which is quite beautiful if you ignore the annoying seagulls:




Demographically, this area is full of Filipinos and Anglophone Jews with a few Chinese here and there. There is a Jewish YMCA at the end of my block (amazing facilities) that I go to and also a Jewish elementary school and a Synagogue. The Jewish General Hospital is only a 10 minute walk away and the metro is easily accessible with Cote-Ste-Catherine and Snowdon stations being 5 and 8 minutes away on foot. I also have a 24hr bus line that brings me home from the Plateau if I'm ever around that area late at night.

The buildings themselves are nothing to write home about, just an endless sea of 4 storey, brown buildings. I always romanticized living in a classic Montreal apartment with the outdoor staircases, and maybe one day I'll move to one of those, but as of now I'm quite happy with my location and the price I'm paying.

Here's how most buildings in the area look:



As you start going south you start seeing more detached houses, though.

[Acajack]

My block is so suburban I won't dare show it on here. I am too embarrassed.

But it was still nice sitting by the pool last night, glass of wine in hand, listening to the birds sing and smelling the flowers.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

My block is so suburban I won't dare show it on here. I am too embarrassed.

But it was still nice sitting by the pool last night, glass of wine in hand, listening to the birds sing and smelling the flowers.

well, just remember: as nice as rows of 19th-century houses might look, two people can't be in my kitchen at once. if you open the dishwasher, you get trapped between the door and the wall. we only have room for one night table beside the bed, and the shower is about the size of a phone booth.

i bought a watermelon at the market today and it's kind of a situation. i don't know where to put it.

every time i get groceries, i have to walk them up five flights of built-in-1880 stairs.

canadians would think of my fridge as suitable only for camping.

the suburban life exists for a reason!

[Xelebes]

My block, especially now, is a block shrouded in elms, oaks, willows and maples in the fronts with SFH all the way around, save for the corner where a tienda, a sushi bar, a ink supply & copy store, a supplement store, a mattress store and an adult store are found. Yonder south is industrial wastelands (car wash, fabyards, industrial supply, an accountant office and equipment piles, a place that in the next three decades might find itself in a slow conversion to other uses as the buildings there approach twice or thrice the age of their amortisation periods. Yonder north and east is similar to my block and yonder west is a short gap of industrial (sawmill and storage facility) before you hit the main entrance to the city and the accompanying commercial. The age of the block dates to the 1940s, full of early prairie-style bungalow-avec-basements.

[SignalHillHiker]

All of those things sound like a joy to me. I try to replicate it as best I can, shopping every morning for what I'll eat that day, but it's just not the same.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

My block is so suburban I won't dare show it on here. I am too embarrassed.

But it was still nice sitting by the pool last night, glass of wine in hand, listening to the birds sing and smelling the flowers.

when østerbro was built, it was considered a very upper-class area. it's still sort of yuppie, but that's long gone.

the sort of danes who might once have lived in østerbro now live happily to the north, in hellerup, where they have happily forsaken my "visual chunk"-related abstractions in favor of sitting in yards like this:

[esquire]

Here is my block in Riverview, an old inner suburb of Winnipeg surrounded by the Red River on three sides. It's a 40 minute walk from my home to my office in downtown Winnipeg. That time would be much shorter if the river wasn't in the way.



It's basically a mix of 100-year old homes along with an ever increasing number of new infill homes, some of which blend in with the existing stock and some of which are starkly modern. The big elms typical of Winnipeg really dominate the landscape.

Even though the neigbourhood has urban elements like gridded streets and a high street with shops, restaurants, etc. nearby, it is still pretty suburban in character, but definitely in the streetcar suburb manner as opposed to car-oriented suburbs.



So far as I can tell, my block has been predominantly working class but appears to be going a bit upmarket these days as younger generations seek out homes closer to the city centre. A lot of people are either buying and renovating, or buying, demolishing and rebuilding.

The one thing that my block is really missing, IMO, is a vernacular that includes porches or some other place to linger out front. Hardly anyone sits out on their front steps and the only time I really see and talk to my neighbours is when we're doing things in our yards - which isn't often, because the yards are generally tiny and don't take much time to deal with.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

when østerbro was built, it was considered a very upper-class area. it's still sort of yuppie, but that's long gone.

the sort of danes who might once have lived in østerbro now live happily to the north, in hellerup, where they have happily forsaken my "visual chunk"-related abstractions in favor of sitting in yards like this:

That's not so bad, I suppose. But it's still tragic.

We've gone through a similar progression:

Upper Class, pre-1892:



The top floors are for servants. It's called a garrett, which has been immortalized in song many times - my favourite about a female servant who doesn't want to die alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgaixvZXVw4

Upper Class, 1892-1949:



No longer attached, often with large back gardens. Service as a career lost favour; hired help was still common, but generally didn't live on-site and had lives of their own.

Upper Class, 1949-Present:



Car-dependent, far-flung enclaves. Gated communities are illegal, thus they prefer to be out in the middle of nowhere with strict development rules (i.e. it is illegal to have a basement apartment)

[freeweed]

My block is currently full of dandelions, the only things that really grow without a lot of care in Calgary's poor soils and arid climate. The clover will be coming out very soon. The mix of purple and yellow is rather appealing, but of course as these plants grow easily, they're considered weeds and must be removed in order for our lawns to look like golf courses.

Ah, suburbia and its misguided attempts at aesthetics.

I am finding that tulips need almost as little care as the dandelions, so I plan on covering a goodly chunk of my property with them this fall. So there's a small bright side here.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

104 Street. Likely Edmonton densest block and has just about every service you would need within the immediate area.

104 really has come into its own quite impressively. Even a decade ago there wasn't much to it, where now it actually feels like the hub of a real neighbourhood. Love it... it really is Edmonton's Yaletown.

[kool maudit]

winnipeg is very unique with its tree canopy. it really changes the feel of things.