Toronto Pinnacle One Yonge | 345.5m | 105s | Pinnacle | Hariri Pontarini

I don't think you can argue that downtown neighbourhoods are not more sustainable than suburbia.

I also don't think you can argue that supertalls are any more sustainable than mid-rise development (or dense low-rise).

Having lived in a mid-rise in a city where we frequently had power and water shortages, all I can say is thank god I lived in an urban setting where I could happily live without electricity for days. On the 33rd floor where I live now the experience would be traumatic.
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
If by "fixing the mess" means tearing down what works and replacing it with something that doesn't for the sake of profit and nothing else, I'd much rather they leave well enough alone and plan elsewhere.
Click to expand...

No, I mean replacing the elements that clearly don't work with ones that do.

Maybe if a human scale had been preserved in Toronto developments we wouldn't have gone through the road-widening craze, for example. Or maybe we would have, but it would be easier to correct now because there wouldn't be thousands upon thousands of cars heading to the exact same address every morning and leaving every evening.
 
I'm missing something; did we go through a road-widening craze? Downtown anyway? Toronto has some of the narrowest arterial roads of any major city on the continent.
 
WiddleBittyKitty, that's only true If the continent you refer to consists only of Canada and the U.S.

Almost all major cities in South America and Europe have shown a lot more respect to small roads than we have here in Toronto.

Spadina used to look like this:

2011103-spadian-south-bloor-1948-s0372_ss0058_it1838.jpg


Harbord used to look like this:

2011103-harbord-widening-spadina-1944-s0372_ss0058_it1658.jpg


Jarvis used to look like this:

201156-jarvis-north-carlton-jan-1947.jpg


Spadina Rd. used to look like this:

2011103-spadina-narrow-north-bloor-s0372_ss0058_it1890.jpg


Those streets were all built and designed once upon a time when the pedestrian experience was more important than 'supeprtalllls!!11'.
 
Seems to me that you're judging the past by today's standards. Toronto was a city of tiny streets, and some of them needed widening. It's sad to see trees go, but remember that any number of side streets parallel to Spadina Road, as per one of your examples, still has all of those trees. Meanwhile Spadina needed to be widened, like the others in your pictures, as we simply needed more road space.

I thought you were referring to some more recent road widening craze I wasn't aware of. I see what you are talking about more as Toronto going through a city-building stage.

Regarding your claim of wide roads only being a Canadian or more appropriately American phenomenon in this hemisphere, I think you're mistaken. Buenos Aires, Mexico, City, Lima, etc. etc. all have their share of wide, monumental boulevards. Brasilia was built with a mania for them. There's a tendency to look at our past through rose coloured glasses and imagine that everything that has happened since has spoiled some supposed idyll while a grass-is-greener mentality perceives that everyone else has been wiser than we were. I do not buy it. I think the sweeping criticisms are easy to make, but that they rarely bear up under closer scrutiny.
 
A lot of South American (or European) cities have a few monumental roads (but usually not highways - whereas we do), but usually they respected the scale of most of their traditional roads (in the old cities, that is... places that were built from scratch post-WWII have much larger scales everywhere - it's like citing Scarborough as an example of Toronto's wide streets).

Toronto did NOT need to widen most of its roads. Planners chose to subsidise suburbia and skyscrapers and therefore decided to widen roads to ease transportation - even though the commuting patterns they anticipated never came to be. Many cities - like Santiago - opted instead for a network of small roads and mid-rise office towers.

It is very common in Santiago, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, etc. to have tiny one way streets in dense neighbourhoods.

In old Buenos Aires most streets look like this:

17815938.jpg


And super dense arterials look like this:

78213587.jpg


In Toronto and North America completely irrelevant downtown streets usually look like this:

https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=toron...0axrC51Zyk3v8PT2RgGIFw&cbp=12,353.21,,0,-4.42

Did we really need 4 lanes there? My criticism isn't just directed at the widening per se but to the way in which pedestrian spaces were made outrageously unpleasant in the end result.

The point I'm trying to make is that we have long neglected our pedestrian realm and made decisions based on emotional and subjective perceptions of 'what's best'. We unnecessarily widened streets and also unnecessarily built taller and taller towers.

It's time we step back and approve/reject proposals based on the impact that these will have on the quality of life of residents, rather than because we want to outdo Chicago or because we want to drive our cars faster through a neighbourhood. The Jarvis bike-lane fiasco, the casino proposal, etc. show that a lot of people are not ready to prioritise residents over their own interests.

I don't oppose a high-rise at 1 Yonge, but the most important thing is that it has a positive influence in revitalising what is currently a dead part of the city with lots of potential. The height and trippy designs will do very little for the area at that scale.
 
I'm already the biggest fan of human-scaled midrise developments, but once in a while I think we are entitled to go a little monumental and nuts. I'll come out and say it: places like Pudong and Dubai might be overscaled and even "crass", but they are very much part of the architectural history of the past decade and if Toronto builds one of these, it might be an interesting gift to future generations. In some cases, corporate monumentalism can even be a welcome relief from a Jane Jacobs landscape, particularly if that Jane Jacobs landscape is dense and relentless.

I am willing to cede anything south of the railtracks over to block-spanning mega-complex soopertalls. It's not like we replaced a functioning Victorian rowhouse neighbourhood down there.
 
JarvisTwins.jpg


Very cool. This was my home from 1983-86. Great building. It was relatively cheap back then as it had by that time become pretty decrepit. For many years it just sat empty and forlorn. Great view from my bedroom window onto the street, and the apartments were huge.
 
I can't believe that shot of Harbord. Now, it's so stark it's barely above looking like a grand service alley.
I wish they hadn't widened all those roads. Downtown would be much more desirable, and likely even more of an attractive destination and place to visit than it is today.
This wish is predicated on a three-fold increase in transit downtown to make up for slowed traffic. But still...
 
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We can build great cities without resorting to 'supbertallss11!1!', and Toronto has long neglected its public realm. We should be demanding that all new buildings meet the street nicely and contribute to building great neighbourhoods. Our priority should be the well-being of residents, not height.
 
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