Torontovibe said:
Those small intimate spaces would be perfect in areas like the Entertainment District. With all the new development there, it would be quite easy to incorporate thees, yet the city is doing nothing to make it happen. Every chance we have to create unique, interesting neighbourhoods seems to just be squandered. I guess it would just take too much effort for our planning department and city council to implement. Then we wonder why Toronto has a problem marketing itself.
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Couldn't agree more. The thing is is that these lanes in Melbourne were only established in the 90's because a few city officials had some vision and some balls. It's frustrating as someone who goes there every year to see a city that is so similar in so many ways to Toronto....and yet the attitude towards these things, not to mention the will and imagination to get it done, is nowhere to be seen here.

Informative article about this:http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/between-the-buildings-a-beating-heart-20130607-2nuru.html
 
Is it just me or does this building look like it's going to be using curtain wall? The concrete floors on the north side of the building and south side (where it peaks out on the east side of the brick facade) seem to have notches in them that look like curtain wall (hybrid wall) anchoring points.
 
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I think our climate probably has something to do with it as well. We can only have outdoor patio spaces for 4-5 months of the year whereas Melbourne like the rest of Australia has patio season all year long.
 
If only we had a warmer climate like Quebec City, we too could have cobbled pedestrian lane ways with patios, and fountains, and such.
 
Or Helsinki, Moscow (or most of Russia for that matter), hell even North Korea uses cobblestones. All of them have similar or harsher climates.
 
So then why don't you all stop whining on message boards all day and go move to one of those cities. Sarcastically attacking anyone that offers a different view point is childish and not conducive to a healthy message board
 
urbanexplorer said:
I think our climate probably has something to do with it as well. We can only have outdoor patio spaces for 4-5 months of the year whereas Melbourne like the rest of Australia has patio season all year long.
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Melbourne gets fairly chilly and wet in winter.
 
urbanexplorer said:
So then why don't you all stop whining on message boards all day and go move to one of those cities. Sarcastically attacking anyone that offers a different view point is childish and not conducive to a healthy message board
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Being overly touchy when your point is shown to be incorrect isn't exactly conducive to adult discourse.
 
There is a plan in place to do a "Melbourne" on O'Keefe laneway:

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2012/05/25/a-new-life-for-historic-okeefe-laneway/

The site says the transformation is "completed" but also that construction is ongoing till 2015 (I haven't been down there recently so I don't know what the actual situation is.)

http://publicspaces.ca/okeefe-laneway/

In any case, some people in Toronto ~are~ thinking about Melbourne's laneways, but as the O'Keefe example suggests, there are a lot of structural barriers in place to prevent more examples of this spontaneously sprouting up.
 
Parkdalian said:
There is a plan in place to do a "Melbourne" on O'Keefe laneway:

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2012/05/25/a-new-life-for-historic-okeefe-laneway/

The site says the transformation is "completed" but also that construction is ongoing till 2015 (I haven't been down there recently so I don't know what the actual situation is.)

http://publicspaces.ca/okeefe-laneway/

In any case, some people in Toronto ~are~ thinking about Melbourne's laneways, but as the O'Keefe example suggests, there are a lot of structural barriers in place to prevent more examples of this spontaneously sprouting up.
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Well that's interesting...dare I say hopeful! Thanks for posting this. I hope there continues to be more info about this and similar projects.
 
There's been a bit of a boo-boo on site. A small section at the top of the preserved facade has collapsed. Looks like maybe it was pushed outward from the construction activity behind.
 
Can't see them in the dataBase file? They're there!
 
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