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Some child inside of me wants to rename this place as the Hyatt Nubs, Hyatt Wartie or the Hyatt Cactus... <3
 
^^ Toronto certainly doesn't do itself any favours when it builds its public realm. One can't do anything about overcast skies but grey drab winters make design choices doubly more important. Instead of paying extra attention to this we use the greyest, crudest sidewalk material possible: concrete. Then we miss the opportunity to mitigate the grey with our street lamp choices. More concrete and grey metal? We add grey metal bike stands while not bothering to bury the electrical is the final nail in the coffin.

We could build 1000s of beautiful buildings acrossToronto but we won't end up with a beautiful city if we keep leaving these decisions to Public Works. They're hopeless at design yet we leave these decisions to people whose focus is utilitarian. This needs to stop. Grey winters don't mean our city streets are doomed to be grey and depressing 4+ months/year.
 
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isaidso said:
One can't do anything about overcast skies but grey drab winters make design choices doubly more important. Instead of paying extra attention to this we use the greyest, crudest sidewalk material possible: concrete. Then we miss the opportunity to mitigate the grey with our street lamp choices. More concrete and grey metal? We add grey metal bike stands while not bothering to bury the electrical is the final nail in the coffin.
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This is indeed my extended family’s perception on visiting Toronto. It’s an “ugly city”, and on probing, it’s down to the extensive use of concrete and lack of street trees. The wide roads, concrete sidewalks, grey street furniture - it all leads to a very monochromatic palette downtown. Obviously if you’ve a ton of street life and storefront retail (like NYC) you’re distracted, but that’s not the case in Toronto.
 
One of my least favourite ways to critique Toronto's aesthetics is to say, "My out-of-towner friend/relative thinks Toronto is ugly." As Torontonians, we spend too much time weighing and considering the opinions of out-of-towners, and often scourging ourselves with their opinions. It always feels very parochial to me - the need to gain the favourable opinion of outsiders by dumping on our city: "Oh, I know it's terrible, too."

I have my own problems with specific parts of Toronto's urban realm and architecture, but I think the general unwillingness to view Toronto as beautiful IS the reason we don't have a higher standard for our public realm and architecture. Why put lipstick on a pig?
 
I can get over Toronto's unwillingness to improve its battered streets and the way new construction projects barely improve the sidewalk aesthetics.

But it's gotta figure out what to do with those ugly power lines.
Vancouver projects, especially those downtown have started burying the power lines in the vicinity,
or at least organizing them by removing unnecessary lines, untangling and streamlining the lines, and installing newly painted poles that go with the streetscape theme.
Toronto projects on the other hand, often just rewire the damn power lines to run across the street and don't give a damn about rusty or rotting poles.
Toronto just feels depressing. Building shiny 40+ storey condos all over the downtown eastside has certainly not made this feeling go away, so I bet it has to do with this city's poor streetscape.

Vancouver's urban architecture is no better than Toronto's, but just walk through Yaletown and compare its streetscape with any Toronto neighborhood with a lot of new condos...
Even Metrotown and Brentwood are looking better than most of Toronto now.
 
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