condovo
Senior Member
I understand. It seems like a cumbersome, ideological constraint to place on societies though. Just my opinion, of course.
- Thread starter Northern Light
- Start date
adHominem
Senior Member
Surely the current status quo – the fact that large swathes of the city core are untouchable because so much extant two-storey low-density housing is sacrosanct – is itself a cumbersome ideological constraint, one that drives proposals to tear down large, handsome concrete buildings which are nowhere near their useful end of life, because we've limited where new density is "allowed" to go. By those lights, I'd argue that respecting the embodied carbon argument is the more pragmatic choice, not the more ideological one.
(yes, pragmatism is also ideology. The opposite of ideology is ideology, etc)
Northern Light
Superstar
In respect of the true 'City Core' Spadina to Jarvis, Bloor to the Lake, this argument does not work.
There are very few streets where this built-form exists, and fewer still where it is currently zoned to be preserved.
There's a few small pockets east of Yonge, north of Gerrard; and some west of McCaul between College and just north of Queen. That's it.
By my math, there's about 0.5km2 subject to preservation of SFH residential, out of 8km2.
It's an entirely fair argument when discussing bungalows on St. Clair Avenue East or Victoria Park Avenue etc etc.
But we need not to over-reach with arguments.
adHominem
Senior Member
Point taken. 
3Dementia
Senior Member
P.S. on my everGreening Toronto soapbox/obsession... and then I'll try and shut-up about it for a couple months.
If we can cut up, ship and reassemble 700 tons of Muskoka granite from cottage country, for a beloved little park in Yorkville, why can't we have a flippin' bosquet (or better yet, twenty-seven) of everGreens in the city?
Evergreens grow in Muskoka (15 years of summers at the cottage... saw 'em).
And every shopping centre in the GTA is redeveloping massive parking lots into mixed-used(?) residential towers/communities... surely there's a bit of room to start planting there.
If we can cut up, ship and reassemble 700 tons of Muskoka granite from cottage country, for a beloved little park in Yorkville, why can't we have a flippin' bosquet (or better yet, twenty-seven) of everGreens in the city?
Evergreens grow in Muskoka (15 years of summers at the cottage... saw 'em).
And every shopping centre in the GTA is redeveloping massive parking lots into mixed-used(?) residential towers/communities... surely there's a bit of room to start planting there.
ProjectEnd
Superstar
That's a arbitrary distinction of where the 'city core' starts and stops. Why not Bathurst? Or Dufferin? Or Parliament? Or the Don?Point taken.
Even by the City's own standard (the OP), the 'Downtown Urban Growth Centre' is this:
TO Core defines it as this:
Within either of those definitions, there's a *shit ton* of SFH I'd argue is far more disposable than this gem.
Bjays92
Senior Member
Maybe I'm changing, becoming more nuanced and understanding of good city building, who knows... but the city needs to shoot this down. It's just bad on so many levels, the tower looks awful, loss of heritage and so on. I will be sorely disappointed if this gets the nod of approval (as is at the very least)
CharmAlarm
Active Member
Sadly, if they can demolish the 52 storey modernist Union Carbide building in NYC, we shouldn't be surprised at what's happening here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/270_Park_Avenue_(1960–2021)#/media/File:270_Park_Avenue.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/270_Park_Avenue_(1960–2021)#/media/File:270_Park_Avenue.JPG
Northern Light
Superstar
I freely concede there's lots of SFH protected buildings in the City that don't merit protection.
Any designation of the central core is necessarily arbitrary; I chose the one that was in effect in the old City of Toronto at the time of Amalgamation, more or less.
With perpetual population growth (whether or not this is desirable); the boundary will keep moving, and the core will one day be the old City of Toronto, the point is moot.
I wasn't suggesting there aren't buildings that are protected and shouldn't be, merely that they don't dominate the central core in the immediate vicinity of this proposal.
None of which changes my agreement w/others, which I noted in my very first post, that this building should at least see facade/character preservation.
It's not like we're on opposite sides here.
I simply don't like arguments which overreach.
We, do, of course, place different levels of value on some of the areas you're prepared to trade in........how about we save this, and nice tree-line residential streets with interesting character?
How about we instead tear down strip plazas on Eglinton, Lawrence, Ellesmere etc.; bungalows on Victoria Park, Warden, Royal York and Jane, big boxes anywhere, and some of the uglier 1-5 storey stuff that no one particularly values on main streets in the core; with the proviso that we preserve human-scale at street level.
There are some side streets in the extended core I might write off, and suggest tabula rasa; but not all that many.
Though I'm very open to repurposing 2.5 storey Victorians as 2-3 rental units.
condovo
Senior Member
I think the debacle of St. James Town and the destruction of 1/2 of Cabbagetown 60+ years has left an indelible mark on this city. Now there are those advocating in their twitter feeds and elsewhere for the very same thing in 2022, ie, the demolition of established, inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of high-density residential towers, in this case to save a building with debatable architectural merit. That's overreach. It's never going to happen nor should it.
ProjectEnd
Superstar
Yes it should.
Lyphe
Active Member
From a conversational view ... or perhaps that of people engaging on forums only, the existing grade level has some cool elements. That said, this building at grade is completely invisible when you walk past it in real life. It has no engagement. It is normally empty, dark, and irrelevant. And personally, once you get past the interesting design elements such as the ceiling, it feels oppresive and slightly claustrophobic imo. Interesting yes. Engaging in real life? No.
That said, I acknowledge that the renders for the new building at grade level are no peach either. Just pointing out that the existing design is far from 'working well' in its current iteration ...
That said, I acknowledge that the renders for the new building at grade level are no peach either. Just pointing out that the existing design is far from 'working well' in its current iteration ...
Northern Light
Superstar
There are three levels to this discussion/debate.
1) Objective facts; those are far and few between on matters of architectural merit. The objective, such as it is, is largely limited to 'does it function for the user'; and 'environmental performance/cost of operation/maintenance'.
But here, even those limited, in that, assuming we had all those numbers, what it would really come down to is 'the value' of any such expense and/or any replacement/retention project and that is essentially, a personal call.
Certainly one could argue, pseudo-objectively for replacing anything where the economic work; but that would apply equally to this tower and to cabbagetown Victorians.
2) Personal Preference. As noted above, personal preference is just that and one is not inherently more virtuous than the other, in the absence of either objective fact, or supporting opinion.
3) Community Preference: Essentially, if we put it to a vote of every resident over the age of 18 (or 15 or whatever) and said any of ' Do you like this building?'; 'Which of these buildings would you prefer?' or should we
demolish this for reason/purpose 'x'?; then got a clear, majority response, that's an objective consensus of a subjective value.
There's really nothing give definitive to merit to either of the first two, the last, at least has the virtue of being vaguely democratic or consensus-based. On that, I'm afraid, virtually every Parkin/Modernist/Brutal building would lose to Victorians in Cabbagetown every time.
I'm not going to suggest we starting holding refrenda on these things, that would be rather a bit much. I do think it's important that we all acknowledge the subjectivity of architectural taste; and even the subjectivity
of how to rank community priorities apart from that (Is clean, breathable air/drinkable water more important than housing? Is violent crime more important than jobs? Is high GDP more important than a living wage?
Is work/life balance more important than income? ). I have clear opinions on some of these, I would rank environment number one, on the premise that absent breathable air/drinkable water, we're pretty much all dead.
But not everyone would even agree on that choice. Let alone others that I would find difficult to weigh in the abstract, never mind the particulars.
Sometimes it's ok, or at least necessary, just to accept, that we don't all agree.
ProjectEnd
Superstar
Of course we're not going to agree - I don't think anyone here is suggesting we will.
That said, there's the objective reality that there are places where we can absolutley clear cut single family homes for larger, multi-unit buildings. @condovo is parroting the old Diamond / Meyers line about how bad St. Jamestown was / is, and there is some truth to that, but there's also truth to the fact that there are *thousands* of homes there now where previously there were fewer than 200. We also shouldn't judge things like St. Jamestown without focusing on what was truly problematic - it wasn't the loss of homes, it's not the architecture it's the urbanism - we know now that removing streets and creating anonymous superblocks isn't the right way to do things, so we don't really do it anymore.
There's much to fix in St. Jamestown, yes, but the classic, classist, Toronto-armchair-urbanist opinion, that we were right to encase the rest of the city in amber while saying "but look over there" in blood-curdling tones is just as myopic as some of the 2020, nouveau-YIMBY, nonsense about it being perfectly fine.
That said, there's the objective reality that there are places where we can absolutley clear cut single family homes for larger, multi-unit buildings. @condovo is parroting the old Diamond / Meyers line about how bad St. Jamestown was / is, and there is some truth to that, but there's also truth to the fact that there are *thousands* of homes there now where previously there were fewer than 200. We also shouldn't judge things like St. Jamestown without focusing on what was truly problematic - it wasn't the loss of homes, it's not the architecture it's the urbanism - we know now that removing streets and creating anonymous superblocks isn't the right way to do things, so we don't really do it anymore.
There's much to fix in St. Jamestown, yes, but the classic, classist, Toronto-armchair-urbanist opinion, that we were right to encase the rest of the city in amber while saying "but look over there" in blood-curdling tones is just as myopic as some of the 2020, nouveau-YIMBY, nonsense about it being perfectly fine.
steveve
Senior Member
Additional context:
