taal said:
+1

That was a ridiculous comments ... I'd say the downtown of every medium to large American city (no matter how terrible of a financial / social hole they are in) have much better public realms then Toronto !
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Yepp, but Detroit is a favorite whipping boy and that won't change any time soon. I just assume those people have never actually been to the city. Of course you can find plenty of terrible pictures of Detroit but that is not how the core of the city is overall. There are also terrible pictures of Toronto, the one above being Exhibit A. And that is suppose to be our most sought after, high-end neighbourhood no less.
 
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Walked by today. Gorgeous attention to detail and spiffy street level appearance. I could see some thinking the tower is too gloomy, but its a nice break from the precast and light blue/green glass so evident in the neighbourhood. Makes nearby Lotus look like a pile of puke.
 
I'm not sure why people want road work done *before* heavy construction in the area is complete?
 
Logic eludes those who just sit around moaning about everything? That said our public realm is quite shabby in most areas...
 
Xray_Crystal_Junkie said:
Detroit's public realm is nicer than that (downtown anyways).
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I had to comment on this and Taal's post. Although i agree Toronto has a terrible public realm. There are 2 major US cities that have a much worse public realm, Detroit and Philly. And yes, i have been several times to both cities for business and baseball games.

And damn this building is gorgeous.
 
Perhaps because they are similar sized cities fairly close to each other. Detroit is showing signs of life from what I hear, more people are moving into the core with some reno's downtown. It has some excellent historic architecture come to think of it, and their sports teams are definitely more succesful than Toronto's :) The urban streetscape in the TO's downtown is one thing that has bothered me since moving here, it's definitely improving but their are still too many major streets that look neglected. It took them forever to do something to that weedy traffic island at Front and University- an obvious place for something really nice I've always thought. This building looks great btw.. I forgot all about it.
 
Thanos said:
I had to comment on this and Taal's post. Although i agree Toronto has a terrible public realm. There are 2 major US cities that have a much worse public realm, Detroit and Philly. And yes, i have been several times to both cities for business and baseball games.

And damn this building is gorgeous.
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Overall Detroit's is worse, but in the central core I find it better than Toronto. It has in part been helped by a steady migration of office from the outer-suburbs to the core (eg. Compuware, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Quicken Loans, etc.). Ford Field and Comerica Park obviously also helped. For all their troubles (bull-dozing whole blocks, turning off street lights) they keep the portions where people actually work/visit pretty decent.

Of course the inner-burbs of Detroit are horrendous but I don't even stop for stop signs there, let alone critiquing the public realm.
 
Thanos said:
I had to comment on this and Taal's post. Although i agree Toronto has a terrible public realm. There are 2 major US cities that have a much worse public realm, Detroit and Philly. And yes, i have been several times to both cities for business and baseball games.

And damn this building is gorgeous.
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I'll stick to the comment I made earlier ... Detroits public realm is definitely nicer, along with just about every other medium / large US city. Yes I'm referring to the core only, and btw for many of these US cities the core doesn't even take up much space, at least the "nice" part I'm referring too.

Simply put Toronto doesn't really have any sections that fully satisfies me from a public realm point of view ... even Bloor street today ... as the light standards and other infrastructure (i.e. newspaper boxes / garbage bins / ...)
 
I am referring to the core. I never talk about the outer or inner burbs when comparing cities, and I can safely say that Detroit and Philly's public realm is worse then Toronto's in every aspect. It's a shame what has happened in Detroit because they have beautiful architecture. Detroit is improving but even compared to Toronto it still has a long way to go. But you can't blame them, their tax base is quite poor.
 
Thanos said:
I am referring to the core. I never talk about the outer or inner burbs when comparing cities, and I can safely say that Detroit and Philly's public realm is worse then Toronto's in every aspect. It's a shame what has happened in Detroit because they have beautiful architecture. Detroit is improving but even compared to Toronto it still has a long way to go. But you can't blame them, their tax base is quite poor.
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Detroit is one thing but Philly really ? They have some really nice public realm elements in their core. I don't see how you can say Toronto is better.

You have to be really careful when making these comparisons .. I'm not talking about vibrancy / livability / excitement ... here's how I make these comparisons, imagine a given in section without any people / then take away every store ... now you can make comparisons.
 
^Yeah, agreed, taal.

Toronto is - without exception - the city with the ugliest public realm in North America for its size, importance, wealth and vibrancy. There are parts of almost every city in North America that look as bad, or worse than, Toronto, but almost no downtown lets its public realm degrade to the state that Toronto does. I mean, we are talking about Yorkville here. This area has a combination of wealth, density, vibrancy and centrality that is probably only paralleled by two other places in North America: Chicago's near north side and the rich neighbourhoods (UES, UWS, SoHo, Tribeca, etc.) of Manhattan.
 
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