ProjectEnd said:
I'm not coming at SMT or anyone directly, but 90% of the time, the information (who, where, when) is posted in the appropriate thread weeks before the actual event (and often re-dredged a few nights before it is held).

As an aside to the conversation that was going on earlier, there is exactly no correlation between 'excessive density' and a 'degraded quality of life.' If anything, that degradation comes from densities being excessively low, not high (there is ample research from cities around the world to support this).
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You're definitely right about that, but it's very easy to miss that post, or pay attention to every single thread. Obviously you'd be paying more attention to the threads that interest you most anyway, but lately that's a lot of threads for me ;) A calendar or events thread would make it much easier to keep up.
 
AHK said:
Minor clarification regarding historical content of this area: Basically - it has no history. Everything south of Front Street is landfill. There have been some interim uses, such as the now gone WCB / OPP building at 90 Harbour Street, but it is entirely possible that the parking lot area portion of the 1 Yonge Street property was never used for much more than the harbour's shipping storage, and then parking. I do not know for sure, but I cannot remember ever seeing anything more there in any of the historical photographs I have seen.
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Actually, to niggle, it *does* have a history--maybe not so much what's on ground level, as what might be uncovered underneath, old wharves, etc. (That's why city archaeological staff is a standby benefit when it comes to condo excavation, etc)
 
balenciaga said:
Agree with most part. But why do you think Hong Kong functions well but Shanghai is a "dysfunctional hell"? I simply don't understand. Hong Kong is a lot denser than Shanghai with most people living in tiny apartments, while in Shanghai, most condo projects are geared toward families as most are 2-3 bedrooms. Isn't it what Toronto wants, as you seem to have implied? In Shanghai, there are a very low percentage of one bedroom new condo apartments (maybe 10%) and you hardly see those 400-500sf mini suites that we constantly build in TO.

Additionally, Hong Kong's condo buildings are a lot taller than Shanghai as well. I just don't see your logic here.
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Hong Kong is ridiculously dense because it has nowhere else to expand. I'm not a huge fan of Hong Kong, but the terrain they are working with presents numerous difficulties. I would prefer to not live in Hong Kong if I could help it, in any case.

Shanghai looks nightmarish to me. Endless clusters of suburban high-rises. Each of these clusters is inherently car or transit centric. The whole city is divided by a gigantic network of soul-sucking highways. Commutes are long, crowded, and there's no human-scaled anything along the way.

I believe that when density is handled correctly, it actually slows things down for the better. You can create intimate enjoyable spaces where you feel like sitting by the street and enjoying a cup of coffee, riding a bicycle, walking your kid to school, etc. I think that the ultimate freedom a city is capable of conferring its inhabitants is independence from cars or transit to do everyday chores while providing a beautiful and stimulating setting.

If the GTA doubled its density (replace post-war suburbs with pre-war-style suburbs and that would more than accomplish it), it would be realistic to bike from the edge of the city in any direction to the financial district. Our main streets would be bustling with tremendous retail and pedestrian infrastructure all along. Rapid transit would pay for itself. It would be a wonderful place to live in.

If there is demand to buy thousands upon thousands of units in the city, concentrating them all in gigantic towers with mini-apartments isolated from schools and backing onto highways is not the way to go. We are not facing the pressures of Hong Kong or Shanghai. Our problems are that 1) our suburbs are not dense enough, and 2) we need more families living downtown. This project in its present form wouldn't address either one of those urgent matters. Developing a conical skyline, on the other hand, would help slowly address both - development will eventually spill out from the core and begin transforming surrounding low-rise neighbourhoods into (hopefully) successful mid-rise communities.
 
brockm said:
Oh trust me, I live in the area -- when most of the people in these existing condos catch wind of this proposal, they're going to go apeshit. Why? Because they're selfish, over-privileged, hypocrites. But they did succeed in getting the developer over at York St. to shave some floors off their proposal.
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I didn't suggest that some neighbourhood types won't be up in arms over whatever proposal finally takes shape here, nothing of the sort, in fact I fully expect they will be.
 
Peepers said:
UT making news!

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/art...r-developer-mulling-huge-project-at-one-yonge



After reading the article what bothers me are these statements:



What business does some bureaucrat at city hall have telling a developer to "hold off" on submitting development plans? Is Toronto "open for business" or not? As exciting as these plans are I am afraid that this kind of meddling by bureaucrats will wind up derailing this development.
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I love the comments to this article. One guy's complaining that One Bloor East is still an empty lot. These are surely some informed folks.
 
I wonder how chester copperpot got ahold of these images? By the sounds of the Toronto star article, Pinnacle is quite angry that these got leaked.
 
adma said:
Actually, to niggle, it *does* have a history--maybe not so much what's on ground level, as what might be uncovered underneath, old wharves, etc. (That's why city archaeological staff is a standby benefit when it comes to condo excavation, etc)
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And to further niggle - in all the historical pictures I have seen of the waterfront - more that a few - I do not recall ever seeing wharves, docks or slips in the partially built out area where the 1 Yonge Street property is now located - many pictures showing the wharf with the Harbour Commissioners' Building at the end - but they have all shown open water to the east, where the foot of Yonge Street is now located

So, other than the normal debris being tossed off of boats as they harbour, I would not expect too much to be found in the area between Queen's Quai and Lakeshore Road, east of Yonge Street.
 
AHK said:
And to further niggle - in all the historical pictures I have seen of the waterfront - more that a few - I do not recall ever seeing wharves, docks or slips in the partially built out area where the 1 Yonge Street property is now located - many pictures showing the wharf with the Harbour Commissioners' Building at the end - but they have all shown open water to the east, where the foot of Yonge Street is now located

So, other than the normal debris being tossed off of boats as they harbour, I would not expect too much to be found in the area between Queen's Quai and Lakeshore Road, east of Yonge Street.
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There is no historical building or anything south of the rail corridor since that is all land fill over an area that was part of the lake itself. That is why large ships can dock along the waterfront now.

Even the Harbour Commissioners' Building is on land fill and that is class as historical now.

It was in the late 1860's that the shore line started to move south because of the railway. Beginning in 1900's to 54, the big push took place to fill the current area in starting with the mash lands of now Portland to Humber Bay. One reason for the flood plain around the Don River now as the river ran out into the mash land then. The island was build from material from the Don.

Fort York was at the edge of the waterfront back in the 1700's and was to protect the harbour of old Toronto.

If anything historical is found, it was brought here when Toronto was expanding.
 
drum118 said:
If anything historical is found, it was brought here when Toronto was expanding.
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And there's other bits of "buried" archaeology in the overall vicity, allegedly Knapp's Roller Boat and all. Plus, of course, the notion of the fill and what presently stands atop it being validly "historical" in its own right (like Redpath, or for that matter the Terminal Warehouse)
 
RC8, I agree with you fundamentally and have argued as such on this forum. However, one thing I've changed my mind about is a direct challenge to this kind of Ken Greenberg-esque thinking. That thing is that we should blanket extend our theories about what a neighbourhood or area of the city should be to the whole. I think if we try to make all areas of the city "liveable neighbourhoods" we are commiting the same crime as the thinkers before us who demolished what came before. That is why I am against oppression of single-use and some land functiond by those who want to turn them into "liveable neighbourhoods".

It's just a thought exercise but maybe this area around 1-Yonge street should not be a liveable neighbourhood. Maybe it should be a place where there is a monoculture of activities and residence (day employment, tourists, single-professionals or corporate types who need transitory accommodations for themselves or their staff in proximity to the financial core). We are talking of course about a tiny speck of land in a vast municipal land-mass. Incongruency to our general philosophy of sustainable-mixed use neighbourhoods is not threatened on a city-wide basis by what happens on a few acres in the financial core.
 
SP!RE said:
What do you mean "it"? If you are referring to my post, I am speaking to the things that developers cannot (or do not) provide. That being a range of income levels living together, and the infrastructure (transit etc.) and above all SOCIAL facilities and services that make a good city. Massive development which creates a monoculture does not equate to a good city for people to live in, regardless of the cool factor of its skyline.

If you are waiting around and relying on developers to create a good city, it will never happen.
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What I meant is that I believe people want to live in great buildings and are, in that way, ready for "non-ordinary" architecture.
 
Posting again because I'm just making my way through the last few pages. RC8 makes some good points, ones that continue to be argued regularly by some of the more informed posters on this forum.

Speaking very generally, many UT/SSC/SSP posters (and I admittedly put myself in this category) begin as "fanboys", rah-rahing for higher and higher proposals, without understanding all of the other factors involved. This is understandable. The initial excitement of seeing a tall building proposed in your city is often the reason people go online to find out more, and indeed it has led to the growth and maturation of sites like UT. We should at least allow ourselves to be thankful that there is lots of development to be getting excited about in Toronto. Let's hope, however, that the fanboys eventually begin to think about things like context, scale, infrastructure requirements, land usage, and so on. Height is only one part of it.

I think the proliferation of massive skyscrapers in Asia and the Middle East have in some ways been detrimental to our collective understanding of smart city building in Toronto. The scenarios there have almost nothing in common with our own. In the case of the Middle East, they are building monoliths in the desert that are useless as models for what would work here. New York is a much better model, but even it has its drawbacks.

I like to see the city grow up, figuratively and literally, but I would much rather have a great city than simply a tall one -- and I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
 
And if you want to compare New York, they are upsizing the zoning in the area around grand central station (around the same distance this is from union) to up to 500m height buildings. This (IMO) a good place for this type of density.
 
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