This comment may have little to do with the discussion (possibly because I haven't read it), but there is little double the district will be very successful in the future.

West Donlands across the street, East Bayfront to the south, likely rehabilitation of areas to the north..... there's tons of connections to future neighbourhoods.

It's an island right now, but in a decade it will be a groovy oasis smack dab in the middle of the exploding east Toronto renaissance.

Pedestrian-friendly, lots of one-of-a-kind vendors and kaboodles of new residents reserving their U-Hauls.

Seems like the neighbourhood will do just fine. As for the rack houses... shrug.
 
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Urban Shocker said:
adma raises the "campus" model, but I'd go more for the Tuscan hill town one: a destination, different from the surrounding lands, rooted in history, and alive with new life - both residents and visitors. At the creative, conceptual re-think level it's useful to select such analogues ( several of them even ) and take things that already work as inspiration for what the imagination can create in a new development. The other road - alarmist as Andrew describes it - is to try and link this development to other places that are different in order to prove that the Distillery District can't possibly work because it isn't just like them.
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I don't think anyone would suggest building 50 storey glass condo towers in San Gimignano, even if they helped pay for a nice restoration.

As for the Cityplace retail, some of it is extremely successful (like the Rabba) while other places don't seem to do quite as well, like some of the shops down on Bremner.
 
I don't think anyone would suggest building 50 storey glass condo towers in San Gimignano, even if they helped pay for a nice restoration.
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Well if it were to be an aA tower, someone might.
 
The distinctive, almost surreal, skyscrapers of San Gimignano - only a small proportion of the original number has survived - might serve as inspiration to a creative person to produce any number of things, and not necessarily a condo tower. They're a relic of a style that was once common in that part of Italy and they've become a tourist attraction because of their scarcity and the visual delight they offer. They were built by rich families as refuges in times of conflict, and as status symbols; given the antiquity of some of these hill towns it isn't unreasonable to suppose that earlier structures had to be demolished to make way for their construction - I doubt if they were the first things built atop those hills.
 
I'm well aware of San Gimignano's history. Well that just illustrates a fundamental ideological difference that motivates your beliefs in this thread. You believe that if a building is "creative" (Modern with a capital 'M'), it should be built no matter where it is or what is torn down to build it. I personally can't fathom anyone thinking it would be a good idea to build modern structures in a place like San Gimignano. I believe that some buildings, and in particular some historic neighbourhoods and communities, are worth preserving in their entirety. We can build new buildings elsewhere, but some places should be reserved so that we can experience the buildings of our past without major modern intervention.
 
Nothing that I have written on this thread could sensibly tip anyone over the edge into making such florid and windy accusations.
 
Oh for heaven's sake, US. Your post right above mine was not suggesting that a "creative person" could be "inspired" to do something great by the surroundings in San Gimignano?
 
Gimmigny! I have never suggested building tall modernist towers in San Gimignano. Nor that Modernism ( neo-Modernism, surely? ) is the only option for creative designers to work in ( my support for Gehry's AGO, Libeskind's ROM and Alsop's OCAD proves that ). Nor that any building anywhere should automatically be torn down and be replaced by a Modernist building on a whim.

Italians are actually very good at combining resolutely contemporary buildings with adjacent historically important ones. There are examples, sometimes quite small in scale, all over their country - sometimes in small Tuscan hill towns.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
That's far more likely than having a few hundred residents who spend all their money in the Distillery (which still won't be nearly enough to stave off disaster during the off-season). How many people are in your entourage?



The interiors would have to be changed to accommodate a theatre, naturally. Plumbing updated, dividing walls moved, etc.
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Thank you for confirming that you're not interested in preservation - only in opposing apartment buildings.
 
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