Vaughan Expo City: Expo 1,2, & Nord | ?m | 38s | Cortel Group | AJT Architects

Chuck said:
Technically speaking there is no Vaughan - no historic village exists with that name. I do believe however that there has always been a Vaughan Township.
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No, technically speaking there's only the City of Vaughan -- Woodbridge, Kleinburg, Concord, Thornhill-Vaughan, and, I guess, Langstaff are "communities" and postal designations, but have no official status. It's all Vaughan. I believe this all took place around 1970: York County became York Region, its townships were converted to towns, and the municipal entities within the townships were eliminated.

If you wanted to define the actual Vaughan neighbourhood, I would say that it's essentially the wasteland/landfill/rail yard that exists west of Thornhill, south of Maple, north of North York, and east of Woodbridge. It could loosely be defined by the box created by Dufferin, Highway 400, Steeles, and Rutherford Road.
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That's Concord with a bit of Maple.

The half of Thornhill controlled by Vaughan is actually quite urban by 905 standards. Ironically, the highest density of highrises that can be found anywhere north of Steeles is located in Vaughan's half of Thornhill.
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A big chunk of that land is still waiting for the TTC to figure out where it's headed. The car dealership quadrant with Royfoss and the rest of them was, I believe, to become the Yonge line subway terminus at one point. That was before they were going to push on through to 7. I think things are kind of stagnating until something goes forward or not, one way or the other.
 
CSW2424 said:
^^ I thought all it needed was the banal slogan "The City Above Toronto... the City of Vaughan." And if that didn't work, the backup plan was for a landmark UFO-inspired megaplex at the interchange of two 8-line highways.

Who knew that both stabs at greatness would fail. Next up, identical point towers. Will history repeat itself yet again? My crystal ball says yes.
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The "Megamall" didn't work either. Neither did the sign in Wonderland proclaiming itself to be "proud to be a part of the City of Vaughan". It must be the media cult of personality around the mayor - as Vaughan's mayors have a history of screwing up.

See, MCC isn't the only place where threads turn into suburb-bashing.
 
marcus_a_j said:
There are also two 16 storey condos at Jane/Rutherford (my vote for the most ugliest, hideous, grotesque buildings built in the GTA over the last 5 years).
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Ah so that's what I saw when on Behemoth the other day!
That and a bazillion houses and power centres for as far as I could see.
 
Except that VCC is boxed in by an extra highway, is surrounded by heavy industry and a rail yard rather than residential neighbourhoods, and is situated along a trucking route.
 
Because you're comparing an old city with a planned development with these perceived undesireables already in the proposed core.
 
marcus_a_j said:
7citycentre.jpg
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This proposal certainly looks like a further dumbed down version of NY Towers, although some people hated that design, I think NY Towers at lesat looked a lot better than the current 7 City Centre proposal ....

Even if Kirkor kept the same building design across all the towers, AT LEAST give it some variation with different building heights ... it doesn't cost the developer more to design that! NY Towers did exactly that ... keep the same design, but shortened the two north towers
 
suburban downtown's make no sense/look alike condo's don't create downtowns

I'm of the opinion that when you get a developer throwing up seven of the exact same Condo, you get a boring high rise community.

That is what Mississauga did with all of their condo's/downtown. Each building is part of a pair or trio with one or two exceptions. And it looks mass produced, cheap and cut from the same cloth as the building across the street.

To ensure originality, have competitions and limit the developer to one building when creating a downtown.

Better yet, allow a downtown to develop at it's own pace.

I don't get the logic of saying "OK, we need a downtown Vaughan. Let's build a couple condo's here in the field we just bought, extend the subway line, and that will be our new wonderful downtown." It's about as dumb as saying "OK, Hwy. 10 and Burhamthrope. A farm land - you've got Cooksville and Port Credit farther south, but no. Let's just put a downtown as far away from the waterfront as possible and in the middle of a field. Better yet, lets make the centre of our downtown be the countries biggest mall, that is in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that's what we should do."

I just don't get it.
 
Plans for Vaughan's "Downtown" - officially known as Vaughan Corporate Centre - have been around for a long time. This site is basically on the fringe of VCC, and do not constitute Vaughan's idea of "our new wonderful downtown". The City doesn't even own the land, it's owned privately, which means the owners can apply to the City to amend all the policies/regulations to do what they think will give them the biggest bang for their buck. It's up to the City (or OMB) to approve the applications or not.
 
Suburban downtowns built on former farmland are seen by suburban planning departments as blank slates where they can create the gleaming city of everyone's childhood dreams.

In regards to 7 towers exactly the same, well, developers often proposed multi-component complexes where each building mirrors the others, but the time it takes to build out these plans tends to change them. Monarch's plan for the Waterview complex down on Etobicoke's waterfront was proposed as a mirror image on either side of a central boulevard, but that plan has since morphed and the latest phases now reflect a more current 'Vegas' approach to condo architecture. I'd wager that VCC does not end up with septuplets, but ends up with something that looks more like a family reunion.

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