Toronto 3C Waterfront | ?m | ?s | 3C Lakeshore | Foster + Partners

I must admit I don't understand the quotes around, and disdain for, a master plan for a derelict site. It isn't as if you're tearing down city blocks to rearrange the buildings and streets, a la Corktown becoming Regent Park. It's not even like the master plan for Regent Park II, which I support but is most definitely 'master planning' in the sense y'all seem to mean it.

In this case, there is NO, I mean ZERO, infrastructure. You need roads, sewers, electricity. Ergo, you need a frickin' master plan. I'd rather see an archictectural firm doing that planning than the city planners trying to do it while also policing the master plan for the rest of the city.
 
The concern in a master plan isn't with the infrastructure, it is having the same architect doing every development block in the neighbourhood and the end result looking bland due to the repetitiveness.
 
EnviroTO said:
The concern in a master plan isn't with the infrastructure, it is having the same architect doing every development block in the neighbourhood and the end result looking bland due to the repetitiveness.
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It also depends on the architect and the body behind that development. If you want something cheap to make a buck on, a cookie cutter is the way to go.

If you want to do something great, you need to think outside the box that will leave a mark and an example behind how things should be done right.

From my experience working on the waterfront projects, the city is the biggest issue for not getting things done right or the way they should in the first place.

There are a number of cases where Waterfront Toronto has no control over as to what is being or going to be built to the point some don’t fit in to the master plan at all. I do have issues with some of Waterfront Toronto master plan and that has to do with funding the various projects to the point of cost saving, too much is being given up or lost because of it. At the same time, more money is being invested into things that will not offer much in return or appeal to the public in the first place.

I still say buildings are too close to the waterfront edge which in turns blocks the view of the waterfront either from the Lake Shore or the Queens Quay.
 
With the central waterfront having been developed along the water I think developing along the water with a lower height and intermittent parks was the right thing to do. The new waterfront will be the boardwalk and slip bridges, and the new Don River mouth which will offer amazing views of the city.
 
My point (exaggerated for dramatic impact) is that a single vision can't design a successful and sustainable district. It just can't. It doesn't matter who or how smart or how great the source of the single vision is. Great architecture cannot make a great community. Great architecture in the form of a single building in an urban context is a wonderful thing. Great architecture in the form of a large campus built over acres of land is a nightmare.

Furthermore, All the buildings in the district will be large and managed by professional managers on behalf of collective ownership structures. How can you possibly imagine this to be a functioning community? A necessary component of a functioning community is individual ownership and control of land.

The proper way to create a city is to mater-plan the utilities and access and amenities, divide-up the land and sell it by lot. The outcome can be messy and take generations, but in the long-term it is far better. We masterplan and sell large lots to developers because it is faster, looks cleaner, and generates instant cash and gratification. But in the end the exercise is a mirage.

I would divide the lots into frontages under 100' in length, sell them, and put a moritorium on lot assembly for 25 years.
 
TrickyRicky said:
My point (exaggerated for dramatic impact) is that a single vision can't design a successful and sustainable district. It just can't. It doesn't matter who or how smart or how great the source of the single vision is. Great architecture cannot make a great community. Great architecture in the form of a single building in an urban context is a wonderful thing. Great architecture in the form of a large campus built over acres of land is a nightmare.

Furthermore, All the buildings in the district will be large and managed by professional managers on behalf of collective ownership structures. How can you possibly imagine this to be a functioning community? A necessary component of a functioning community is individual ownership and control of land.

The proper way to create a city is to mater-plan the utilities and access and amenities, divide-up the land and sell it by lot. The outcome can be messy and take generations, but in the long-term it is far better. We masterplan and sell large lots to developers because it is faster, looks cleaner, and generates instant cash and gratification. But in the end the exercise is a mirage.

I would divide the lots into frontages under 100' in length, sell them, and put a moritorium on lot assembly for 25 years.
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I agree.
 
Why not just say "I agree" without copying the entire body of the previous comment? Its obvious what you agee to.
Somewhere out there particles of coal will be burned forever to store those unneccessary bits in perpetuity.
 
buildup said:
Why not just say "I agree" without copying the entire body of the previous comment? Its obvious what you agee to.
Somewhere out there particles of coal will be burned forever to store those unneccessary bits in perpetuity.
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It's the quote Nazi
 
unimaginative2 said:
Exactly. Especially on the waterfront where supplies of land are limited and we have more than enough superblock megaprojects already.



And what is this meant to imply?
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Not to go off topic, but perhaps to help clear this question, I think what he was implying, not to take the words out of his mouth or anything, was that if one were to travel around a bit, they would see that a great many cities in the world use LRT's extremely effectively in places where heavy transit like subways are not needed. Places that are dense enough to support LRT's but would not be dense enough with ridership numbers to support a subway. Outright rejection of LRT's is poor planning and there are few places in Toronto where a subway line could actually be supported with dense enought nbhd's to travel through, ie Eglinton, sheppard, etc.. They are just not there yet.
 
buildup said:
Why not just say "I agree" without copying the entire body of the previous comment? Its obvious what you agee to.
Somewhere out there particles of coal will be burned forever to store those unneccessary bits in perpetuity.
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hmm that's true, thanks
 
Here's a look at the Home Depot site. Let's see what this thing looks like in 2018.

 
I was going by the site on Cherry Street today, and noticed that the eastern section of it from the Silos to Cherry Street is being attended to somehow. At the very least, someone's been leveling the grass and underbrush. It also looks like there's some kind of markers or fixtures at intervals on the ground, that I've never seen before. I don't know if there's been any actual physical earth moving or levelling, though the effect of seeing it cleaned up more or less gave that impression.

Sorry I didn't get more time to look, but we were zipping by quite quickly. I seem to remember the whole plot as being a lot more rocky uneven, and wild.
 
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