Earlier in the thread, there was some debate about comparing Toronto's construction rate to US communities. One of the parties, Fedplanner, having been rather vigorously assailed for a simple comparison to his own home area, withdrew graciously from the field of verbal combat. But the matter interested me for its own sake. How does Toronto actually compare to a variety of American cities with respect to pace of construction? Fortunately, the tables at
www.skyscraperpage.com allow the reader to sort by built, under construction, proposed etc., so a direct comparison is easy.
So with begin with Toronto
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=12&statusID=2 I note that is the first of two pages.
Starting close to home with our admittedly much smaller immediate neighbour, though certainly more than a town, we look at Buffalo
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=153&statusID=2 Not much of a comparison there.
Detroit is also a Great Lakes City and much nearer in size.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=471&statusID=2
Well, Detroit is notoriously depressed.
Let's try Philadelphia, a city similar in size to Toronto, and also in the Northeast.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=326&statusID=2 At least something is under construction there.
So, let's try another city of comparable size, without a long history which is claimed to be a factor, and in a relatively prosperous state. Here's Houston
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=28&statusID=2 That doesn't compare very well with Toronto either
San Francisco was mentioned in the thread
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=114&statusID=2
They do have one 50 storey tower under construction but as a whole, we still don't have anything that compares very well with Toronto.
So let's head south to the much larger city of Los Angeles
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=26&statusID=2
Four buildings, the tallest 28 storeys, in a city that size?
Here's Chicago, also a significantly larger Metropolitan area than Toronto, the birthplace of the skyscraper and with one of my favourite skylines. (Honestly, no sarcasm here. I love Chicago.)
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=4&statusID=2
That's a bit more like it: three under construction over 50 storeys but still, less than half a page total.
Let's finish with New York then. It is a far larger city, famed for its skyline, also reconstructing after the tragedy of 9/11.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=8&statusID=2
New York has some amazing supertalls under construction, notably the resurrected World Trade Center and I certainly don't want to understate the construction going on there. In fact, I envy the quality and audacity of their architecture. But even New York doesn't compare in number of projects to Toronto.
I could go on but that would be very boring indeed. I don't know how Toronto compares to some of the Asian cities, and don't intend to find out. But in the North American context, the Toronto construction boom is extremely impressive. It looks as if the Globe article was correct.
Fedplanner, I can understand you not wanting to get into prolonged debate with your assailant, but you could have pushed back pretty successfully if you wanted.
Finally, if a supertall were to go up in Toronto, something about which I have no information at all, it would not seem out of place, given the construction already taking place.
