No, Manulife is fine. Actually, Toronto does concrete with more style, for what its worth. There's a lot of crap, but its not commonly office buildings. Tends to be really bad condos from years ago. I actually think modern construction in Toronto is quite nice generally speaking. There's a lot more glass and steel these days than most any city appears to be building in North America. Toronto has matured properly with the times its had highrise booms. You can tell the proper era for its proper time frame, so I can respect that.
The reason I don't like Atlanta is a holistic sense of the word. Office buildings that have poor ground level feeling, little retail. Over half of Atlanta's buildings you can't just walk into and many like SunTrust Plaza are set back from the street as if they want you to stay away. Downtown ceases to exist literally 4 blocks from Peachtree St in any direction. There are some new projects here and there to mix it up, but its still a city in a forest with tract housing and highrises scattered about with no cohesion.
People in Atlanta think they live in the greatest city on earth half the time, but so few seem to understand why they like it beyond cheap stick-home suburbia tract housing and Buckhead... As long as they have a Target and a mall with fine luxuries, and many of them have some (usually protestant evangelical) Jesus to rely on, they seem overconfident in those superficial things. To me those things aren't necessarily much to be proud of, but I disgress.
And then there is Peachtree Center. Ugh.
Ugly on top of ugly.
Bank of America is a fine example of a building that looks incomplete, yet could be beautiful. Then there is the whole fact its in an office park-like environment right next to the 14 lane freeway.
Character isn't Atlanta's strong suit, cheap labor for business and typical American materialism to buy cheap tract homes definately is. Now that the economy for the housing has collapsed its questionable to see if Atlantans can afford their faux-Neiman Marcus lifestyle on $12/hr incomes propped up by housing loans and house trading.
The reason why Atlanta has been so "successful" is that you could own a BMW on $15/hr income by simple financial trickery, and the state government supported the lifestyle, as did our entire national banking system.
Getting $150k loans for a $119k townhouse in Gwinnett County leaves for some impressive cash for not-so-high-rolling income earners. Most people in metro Atlanta make really low incomes relative to the US overall, the cheap labor and cheap costs of living coupled with extremely generous credit is what made Atlanta what it is.
There's a lot that is ugly about Atlanta, being one of the most fake cities in the world is one of them. Its going to become Detroit south by the time I'm old aged, so there's not much love for me to have about the town. When all the toothpick homes built with very bad housing standards start to crumble in 25 years, Atlanta will be in big, big trouble.
At least in Toronto the suburban townhomes and stuff being built actually isn't cheapy-cheap as it is way down in Craplanta. Then again comparing Mississauga to Kennesaw is like comparing a Punk Lesbian Hipster with God Warrior. Just totally unfair.
BTW, if you want to laugh, watch this real life freak show. Ah, southerners kill me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCh2FXzD6R4
At least only about 20 or 40% of the south (or 90% if you go to a small enough town LOL) is really like that. Still too high a percent for me to care about the character.
But maybe its unfair to Atlanta, because God Warrior came from Louisiana.
