Toronto Union Park | 303.33m | 71s | Oxford Properties | Hariri Pontarini

Red October said:
I haven't been quite as ingrained in the development industry here as I had been in TO, and the scale of development is way way smaller, especially now because NZ is in yet another bad recession manufactured by its own sh*tty conservative government.

We've definitely had our own share of problems. Most of the developers are Chinese, and often we'll have developers/construction companies starting work and then "going under", just to be replaced by another in a weird shell game. Our current future-tallest building topped out in 2024 but has just been sitting in limbo unfinished for 2 years while they try and find a company who can actually last to the end. We also have a couple insanely valuable surface parking lots in the CBD, one of which is planned to be a Ritz Carlton and maybe the new tallest in Auckland/NZ once they're done slap fighting with the neighbouring Sky Tower.

From my understanding Wellington (aside from having no money from all the government layoffs), is more concerned with making sure the existing buildings don't get flattened by earthquakes, and demolishing a lot of ones that have been found to be structurally unsound, something Christchurch unfortunately learned the hard way. Probably should have thought of that before building a city directly on a major fault line.
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...yikes! Was hoping for greener grass here. But thanks for sharing that though. /bows
 
ProjectEnd said:
A Civic and a Bentley are both cars. What's the point of this comparison?
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I looked it up and you are absolutely correct yet again.

They are both cars.
 
ProjectEnd said:
Toronto can and has done buildings of New York quality (and better) as well!
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I'm the first to defend Toronto architecture, most of which I find not worthy of all the condemnation it evokes (Toronto is all about utilitarian, not fancy), but there's nothing in Toronto nearly as nice as, say, 40 Wall St. or 70 Pine St., or Woolworth or GE, or ESB and Chrysler. And, personal taste, but I like most of NY's new skyscrapers as well, though I am undecided on the billionaire smokestacks, and dislike 1WTC, Hudson Yards, and a few others. That Torch thing looks preposterous.
 
Strange Advance said:
I'm the first to defend Toronto architecture, most of which I find not worthy of all the condemnation it evokes (Toronto is all about utilitarian, not fancy), but there's nothing in Toronto nearly as nice as, say, 40 Wall St. or 70 Pine St., or Woolworth or GE, or ESB and Chrysler. And, personal taste, but I like most of NY's new skyscrapers as well, though I am undecided on the billionaire smokestacks, and dislike 1WTC, Hudson Yards, and a few others. That Torch thing looks preposterous.
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I agree with you that NYC as a whole is on another level, but most of that quality comes from 1. Larger share of AAA office towers and 2. the fact that NYC started booming as early as the 1880s and therefore has a richer profile of historical buildings mixed in with the new. Toronto only surpassed Montreal in the 1960s-70s as Canada' #1 metropolis, so it's not a fair comparison to begin with. But if you compare our top list of buildings built after 2000 and theirs, we can certainly see Toronto has closed the gap.

My concern with Toronto is that we're always comparing ourselves to NYC, and in the process, basically copied their public realm (which is just soulless grey concrete sidewalks with no trees), and we think it's okay. It's not. What makes it worse is that our main roads are often narrower and we've done a poor job making the sidewalks more walkable.
 
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