Brasilia? We should be so lucky! To me, they speak of:

With all due respect to ganj, I do agree with taal. The terms "urban" or "suburban" are used here more or less as epithets, or shorthand for something that can only be defined in the eye of the thinker. I, too, would be happy if they were never used as descriptors again. I suspect what Ganj...

The restaurant row was all added to the inventory of heritage properties last year, probably in response to development pressures in the area. I would be surprised if MEC abandoned a 12-year-old purpose built structure any time soon - I think they would get some bad press over that.

I agree that it looks better with this iteration. With a project like this, of this scope and scale and in this location, the appearance of the building is far less important that the fact the proposal exists. Whether or not the roofs slant slightly means little.

What I see in the photo that has been posted is a building that, through its colour, calls a certain attention to itself apart from all the other buildings nearby. To me, this is not a good thing, for an ordinary condominium tower. There is no particular reason why this building should stand out...

A Popular Science cartoon ca. 1955 updated for our current era. Huge amounts of ugly infrastructure for no particular purpose. The illustrations all show unidirectional lines, by the way, which relegates this to a Detroit - or Miami - style "people mover", the chief purpose of which was to fill...

In cities that I have visited in the far east, including Tokyo and other Japanese cities, Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong, it's not at all atypical to have many very large, very traffic heavy streets (like those shown above) snaking through a city, which are often only crossable in parts by...

I'm all in favour of an ugly tax. We could get Urban Shocker to patrol the streets of our fair city and slap additional tax levees on eyesores. No appeal process. Anywhere from 2% (the bad Quadrangle) to 10% (Cheddington).

There were several big moves of ministries to smaller local communities during the 1990's. The Office of the Registrar General went to Thunder Bay, and big new buildings were built in Peterborough and Guelph for MNR and OMAFRA (though I think some of those jobs existed there already). There are...

CDL, thanks for your exhaustive explanations. They are much appreciated and provide real insight.

I have to say, though, that is one butt-ugly city, from those images.

I appreciate that the lower end of College Park is almost at ground level, but if I had to I could find some contextually sensitive way of blasting a hole so that the two buildings are connected underground. Although, it's not entirely clear to me why I would care so much.

Observer, many ministries, including my own, now have space in North York. I think the rents up there are slightly cheaper, which is probably why so many have moved up there. I would think that before that relatively cheaper space is cleared out, that we might wholeheartedly abandon 777 Bay...

So it's true that Aura and the existing College Park mall will not be internally connected? That's a shame, I think, especially because the lane of the existing College Park complex that leads towards Aura is the part of the complex most in need of some revitilization, and it also means that...

I've sent these images to all my colleagues up here on the 5th floor of 880, explaining as best I can what they are, and they generated a lot of interest, let me tell you! It's a massive building compared to the others in the Queens Park Complex, but I suppose that is to be expected. There...

Get thee back into town, there, kiddo. Lots happening here. You can recover from Vancouver, I know, I did it.

Hume: Brantford will live to regret the tragedy of edifice wrecks Toronto Star, February 15, 2010 Given its troubled relationship with the past, Brantford's faith in the future is touching. Even after nearly destroying its downtown through a series of nasty self-inflicted wounds, the city...

You know, lion, lamb, and all that.

There are lots of places to raise a family in the city. People's expectations of what they need are temporal and subject to change. I grew up in a wartime house in Ottawa with no dining room, and three bedrooms, and one tiny bathroom. We had six kids. That was normal. Without suggesting that you...

Though I think it is amusing to poke fun at the size of some of the units, I have no problem with small units and think it is an economic fact of life, as Mike states. I also think that cities that historically have small or expensive housing (New York, Hong Kong) have as a result a more vibrant...