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Hotlanta looks very cold and dreary. Even Robarts Library looks like an architectural masterpiece in comparison. The MARTA at times can make the Sheppard line seem busy in comparison. Oh, and the MARTA trains can get chatty.

Atlanta is a Ford Nationalist's dream city.
 
junctionist said:
The only way I could see myself enjoying those streets is by driving through the downtown without any storefronts or street life to create distractions and slow down traffic--like the simplicity of driving on a freeway. But it doesn't make for an attractive downtown.
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Oh, no, I think it's absolute rubbish and wouldn't even enjoy driving it even given the ease. I just think that if you take it out of context and pretend it's out of a Sci fi story it almost becomes purposeful and beautiful in its dehumanised eeriness.
 
A lot, a very lot of skybridges between the buildings. Likely because of the summer heat, not the winter snows.
 
MTown said:
Oh, no, I think it's absolute rubbish and wouldn't even enjoy driving it even given the ease. I just think that if you take it out of context and pretend it's out of a Sci fi story it almost becomes purposeful and beautiful in its dehumanised eeriness.
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The driving, though, is not particularly easy. But some of those buildings, on the inside, are groovy John Portman fabulousness. Very Logans Run. They make you want to wear a caftan and die happily at 30.
 
Makes you truly appreciate how great our city is in comparison.

Reminds me of the quote: "The United States has only three great cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."
 
WislaHD said:
Makes you truly appreciate how great our city is in comparison.

Reminds me of the quote: "The United States has only three great cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."
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I always enjoy the feeling I get after I spend time in crappy American cities, then return home to the great city of Toronto.
 
I'd throw in Washington and (for very different reasons) LA.

Bashing US cities as a category is pointless, I think. Even third-tier ones have a lot to offer, and cultural and public realm highlights that really do stand out. Despite the Atlantas and Omahas and the deadening sprawl that surrounds every one, there is a deeply ingrained urban tradition and sense of civic pride in many, many US cities that is being comprehensively revived as more people rediscover urban cores.

It doesn't hurt that much of the country boomed at basically the best possible time for architecture and planning, which means there's exceptional building stock waiting to be rediscovered. One example is Baltimore, which despite its many troubles has some fabulously renewed and restored historic neighbourhoods that are simply spectacular.

Toronto is phenomenal, and Canada is lucky enough to have a number of wonderful cities. But that doesn't mean we don't have a lot to learn from our neighbours.
 
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Los Angeles could have been a lot like Toronto. The city was build by the streetcar and a lot of its neighbourhoods were originally streetcar suburbs, the same kinds that spawned awesome neighbourhoods that we love in Toronto. They decided to remove the streetcars and to destroy neighbourhoods with highways instead though.

If there is one city in USA that I think is going to make a marvelous comeback this century, I think it will be Philadelphia. It has good build form and excellent building stock from that era you spoke of in their urban core, but has much fewer social or economic problems than say Baltimore.
 
salsa said:
I always enjoy the feeling I get after I spend time in crappy American cities, then return home to the great city of Toronto.
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I actually kissed the ground outside at Pearson when I got back from a 3 week trip that ended in Las Vegas. What. A. Hole.
 
I'm not a U.S. basher by any means and I travel all over the major U.S. cities on business but I, too, always look forward to returning to my home and neighborhood in Toronto.

There are lots of great U.S. cities to visit but I honestly have no interest in living in any of those cities even though I could afford to do so.
 
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MTown said:
I actually kissed the ground outside at Pearson when I got back from a 3 week trip that ended in Las Vegas. What. A. Hole.
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Las Vegas literally gave me a nosebleed (thanks to the dry desert air). Oh and the unfettered sprawl over there is the ugliest shit I've ever seen. Nothing but brown concrete, parking lots and cookie-cutter houses. This city deserves to have its water supply shut off so that this unsustainable scar-upon-the-earth reverts to dust. Later when I returned to Toronto, I went for a bike ride on the Humber River right after it stopped raining. To say I was overjoyed to finally see some greenery, wetness, breathable air and nice neighbourhoods would be an understatement.
 
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salsa said:
Las Vegas literally gave me a nosebleed (thanks to the dry desert air). Oh and the unfettered sprawl over there is the ugliest shit I've ever seen. Nothing but brown concrete, parking lots and cookie-cutter houses.
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I am not as well traveled within the United States but that kind of hell-hole is what I always imagined Phoenix to be like.

I really have to question what goes through peoples mind when they decide to buy a house in Las Vegas or Phoenix. They are literally, and I mean quite literally, buying a piece of land in the fricken desert. There is no shortage of suburban sprawl in the United States and they could buy a lot of land for an equivalent price quite literally, anywhere, in the United States, yet they choose to do so in the fricken desert??
 
MTown said:
I actually kissed the ground outside at Pearson when I got back from a 3 week trip that ended in Las Vegas. What. A. Hole.
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The famous Las Vegas strip is mostly not in Las Vegas itself. It's mostly in the unincorporated town of Paradise. While "downtown" is in Las Vegas, Paradise contains most of tourist attractions in the Las Vegas area. Being "unincorporated", there are no by-laws except for the laws of the county and state.
 
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