Toronto Humbertown Redevelopment | ?m | 21s | First Capital | Kirkor Architects

cogito ergo said:
yap!
its unimaginable that somebody might actually think that way!?
must be a troll!
LOL
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You've spoken of "My own education with 2 degrees in the field, my experience shall be put to sleep, means exactly nothing!"

And with the powers of articulation demonstrated in that above post, you've just demonstrated why it "means absolutely nothing".
 
dear jje!
It is your post that is so "trollish" unfortunately, plus it is exposing complete lack of reading with understanding. Impositions, deductions and assumptions nowhere to be found in my post.
Forgive me, but further exchange seems simply futile.
Good night.
:))
 
adma said:
You've spoken of "My own education with 2 degrees in the field, my experience shall be put to sleep, means exactly nothing!"

And with the powers of articulation demonstrated in that above post, you've just demonstrated why it "means absolutely nothing".
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Dear Adma!
I have noticed a bit of personal vendetta or a grudge on your part against me.
Please relax a bit. It is an urban exchange forum after all.
I don't have to agree with you to prove my education.
I am not questioning yours, do I?
As mentioned before, if you have such hard time accepting someone who admittedly is still learning english, all I can say is ..
I don't really care what are your petpeeves.
Everybody here is voicing personal opinions. There are no rights or wrongs..
PS
My badly "articulated" post was in response to early version by jje.. as quoted in mine.
In anyway, I think I have excused myself enough.
Good night.
 
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Please try to keep the discussion to the issues. Insults are not helpful.

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adma said:
And all of that save Wards 25 and 26 voted for Miller in 2006. Okay?

Look: the trouble with your argument is that you're fighting so-called isolationism with a different form of isolationism, i.e. by cretinizing and inherently Godwinning "car-dependent suburbia". The whole deamalgamationist's spin of "let Etobicoke keep Rob Ford"--whereas, I'd rather see it this way: even Etobicoke doesn't deserve Rob Ford. However, you also can't just fix Etobicoke's so-called "Ford problem" by taking an arbitrary, heavy-handedly scoldy Kunstleresque approach to the existing car-dependent environment. That way, you're going to drive the suburban locals even *further* into Ford's arms.

And while all this bickering takes place, a genius-loci void re the Humbertown redevelopment scheme will *never* be filled...
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And I repeat:

"The fact is that it's a well studied fact worldwide that higher population densities strongly correlate with more progressive voting patterns and secularism. This can be observed anywhere from Ontario to Alberta to Florida to Chile to China to Pakistan."

People voted for Miller and I fully expect them to vote left again in the future; it doesn't mean it'll be the result of an educated decision, or that we should be relying on the willingness of a large sector of the population to emotionally lean one way or another.

You see, these Humbertown people aren't even right wing or anything, they are just thick and reactionary - like Ford. True conservatives wouldn't come crying to the government to prevent private developers from building something where they want to build it, would they?

It's not a right wing vs left wing thing. Don't forget suburban expansion was originally championed by the left and governments were heavily involved (and still are).

I believe in de-amalgamation and smaller city boundaries because it's a way of internalising the social, financial, and environmental impacts of suburbia. It would effectively end the suburbs isolation from reality by forcing them to deal with the constraints of the real world. Right now we have a thoroughly dysfunctional model that's preventing our urban areas from providing its residents with bike lanes and pedestrian spaces, while scaring the hell out of heavily subsidised suburbanites who fear their lifestyle is in danger.

By making Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough more independent from the former city, they would quickly learn through their own experiences that reducing car-dependency is fiscally responsible as well as socially and environmentally desirable. If, hypothetically, they never ever learn this, they can happily keep their suburbs while downtowners happily rip the benefits of their own independence.
 
cogito ergo said:
dear jje!
It is your post that is so "trollish" unfortunately, plus it is exposing complete lack of reading with understanding. Impositions, deductions and assumptions nowhere to be found in my post.
Forgive me, but further exchange seems simply futile.
Good night.
:))
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Nay I must say!

Your post on the previous page paints with a brush a mile wide and a picometer deep. You provide no sources, simply hyperbole and self-assured opinion!
 
Y'know, I think a good way how to blunt the whole urban/suburban divide in this discussion is to regard the Humbertown circumstance as its neighbourhood's version of Gehry/Mirvish, complete w/the understandable shellshock over what's being lost/threatened, or (if you will) the holier-than-thou hubris of those doing the threatening, etc...
 
I wasn't at the meeting last night (public meetings don't really interest me) but the tweets re: the meeting did get me thinking about my NimbyTect solution. I'm attempting to simplify it and here I've started by placing it in google earth:

Edit: Updated plan.
nimbytect19oct2012humbl.png


Average height = 6-8s. Tallest building to be 10s. Total building count: 6. (Building height shown not to scale although building foot print/style is pretty close to finalized. Colour not exactly as illustrated--although colour is fun, eh?! :))

Re: P/E post below. The concept is for Humbertown to be modeled after a village, not a downtown. Think downtown Stratford or Forest Hill Village, not MCC meets Downtown Markham. Density does not equal height. That is dated thinking.

In a previous post I outlined how FG would make money. Concrete parking & ground floor CRU with either wood frame or steel frame construction above, excluding two larger NW structures which would be traditional concrete/rebar.

Second floor retail rarely works, esp in a relatively isolated (from subway lines) and lower density neighbourhoods. Nimbies are right about that. Now perhaps second floor office use (dentists, doctor's office etc) makes sense.

My proposal realigns Lambeth Rd and puts a hilly landscaped park between it and the SFH to the south. A sort of sound barrier/parkette.

How would I know the community is "bitterly against" a proposal? Well duh 10 years of reading UT would have me aware of these issues.
 
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So what are we looking at here? How does the 'NimbyTect solution' present a buildable option for First Capital or solve any of the problems forseen by the HVVRA? It's nice that 'public meetings don't really interest [you]' but how then would you learn that the community is bitterly against everything you've proposed?
 
Humber Village, not Humber City that is what we're looking at. 21s is not a landmark if it's an ugly eyesore. 21s does not belong in the area. When I think "village" I think

nimbytect20oct12humbled.png


Simple, timeless architecture that recalls the best in Ontario small town architecture yet with a bold modern edge.

A central square that (gasp) includes car parking. Ever been to Galt, downtown Stratford or even Bolton? Right, some surface parking can work (along with integrated underground parking for residents.)
 
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/leave-us-alone-humbertown-residents-say/article4625682/

Interesting how a UTer (identified as such) is quoted here--and interesting how it highlights the myopic pettiness of the residents, "get a job" and all. (And if everyone's so hot and bothered by the so-called threats to a single-family suburban lifestyle, then what about the multiple housing north of Humbertown? Which was planned as an integral element in Humber Valley Village from the start? Despite what Councillor Luby says, "lesser means" is and always has been part of the neighbourhood demo.)

All in all, this has less in common with save-our-built-environment preservation than with save-our-restrictive-covenants preservation--in which light: once again, the absence of any broad-reaching historical grasp of Humbertown and Humber Valley Village--that is, as a valid artifact of 50s suburban planning culture, something which could inform the present plans much as the "historicity" of Don Mills informed the rebuild of Don Mills Centre--is galling. All they want to save is an ill-defined, formless "the way it's always [supposedly] been". A very selfish and vacuous form of "suburbanism".

And no: despite what some here would claim, I wouldn't attribute it to suburbanism in and of itself--more to what it's curdled into over, say, the past quarter century or so. IOW the SUV/McMansion era--it's really the Johnny-come-latelies, plus a few easily-frightened remaining oldsters, fueling this furor. (Whereas the actual gentility and decorum that characterized what I recall/suspect of Humber Valley Village in the 50s/60s/70s** has more in common with, well, High Park and Roncy and all of that. So, what we're witnessing now isn't consistent with how it always was, but a crass travesty of what once was.)

**And it's worth noting that what I recall/suspect of the kids growing up there at the time: that they, indeed, *are* more often than not the sorts presently colonizing the Roncys and Leslievilles out there--that is, quite contrary to the entropic Ford Nation stereotype. Even if certain unspoken covenants existed, suburbanism *was* different, once upon a time.
 
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The HVVRA has posted the revised First Capital proposal to their website. Some interesting changes - primarily the flattening of the 21s tower into a 12s slab. There are also a few renders in the 'Planning Rationale' document.
 
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