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Toronto skyline

sodapop said:
toronto skyline at night by me

awesomenightshots028.jpg
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Top Marks sodapop!!! Amazing pic..... the view is absolutely amazing, I've sat and stared at it for twenty minutes...... Man thoughts.....
First the King and Queen arteries look amazing.
The dimly lit Adelaide, looking like a Batman movie...
The darkness of Ritz and Trump making them almost unnoticed.(Esp. Ritz)
The stump of Shangri La, picturing its rise...., and wishing it were a block or two north in this shot to fill the gap after B.A.
Realizing with the completion of Trump, will make 3, 900ft+ towers on one four square block, which I am having a hard time thinking of ANYWHERE else, in the world??? Chicago's talls are quite removed from each other, there is Aon /Prudential....and several 800 foot towers,..... Hong Kongs streets are a maze not so much a grid which puts weird geography between talls, that seperates and lessens the street impact of the "gaze up". New York does not have three 900 footers this close, Shanghai will... Singapore is not this close together,,, where else,???? I guess Dubai's Disney theme Park Marina, But its a phony skyline much like Vegas, not a real, evolved street like Bay.
Last the cbd in general must be one of the densest areas anywhere, and with the current u/c towers plus the all to often forgotten L tower.... this is truly dense'city.
Wall street is very dense, but much of it is broad prewar 300 ft blocks, with tall skinny 700 - 900 ft towers, not these tall blocks like TD... just a thought, it would be interesting to see, the square footage of the cbd floor plates, but at say 500 ft in the air?? Too sort of lop off every thing above that mark, and add up the Sq. Ft, of this 500 ft street level, I'd bet theres few areas this packed in with towers. Mpls would only have 6/7 floor plates at 500 feet to add up in the cbd, and much of NY, and Chicago, at that height would be the skinny bell towers. Not sure if I'm explaining this very well.??? All from your pic Sodapop.
 
First off, nice pic by sodapop.

jetsbackincanada said:
Realizing with the completion of Trump, will make 3, 900ft+ towers on one four square block, which I am having a hard time thinking of ANYWHERE else, in the world??? Chicago's talls are quite removed from each other, there is Aon /Prudential....and several 800 foot towers,..... Hong Kongs streets are a maze not so much a grid which puts weird geography between talls, that seperates and lessens the street impact of the "gaze up". New York does not have three 900 footers this close, Shanghai will... Singapore is not this close together,,, where else,???? I guess Dubai's Disney theme Park Marina, But its a phony skyline much like Vegas, not a real, evolved street like Bay.
Last the cbd in general must be one of the densest areas anywhere, and with the current u/c towers plus the all to often forgotten L tower.... this is truly dense'city.
Wall street is very dense, but much of it is broad prewar 300 ft blocks, with tall skinny 700 - 900 ft towers, not these tall blocks like TD... just a thought, it would be interesting to see, the square footage of the cbd floor plates, but at say 500 ft in the air?? Too sort of lop off every thing above that mark, and add up the Sq. Ft, of this 500 ft street level, I'd bet theres few areas this packed in with towers. Mpls would only have 6/7 floor plates at 500 feet to add up in the cbd, and much of NY, and Chicago, at that height would be the skinny bell towers. Not sure if I'm explaining this very well.??? All from your pic Sodapop.
Click to expand...
Sure, if we arbitrarily set the cutoff at 900 ft, these three would probably be the closest to each other. But even so, if we take a look at 900-footers on maps of NYC, Chicago and Toronto at the same approximate scale:

Toronto: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=12&lat=43.6529691183&lng=-79.3904685974&height=180
Lower Manhattan: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=8&lat=40.7136305377&lng=-74.0064811707&height=93
Chicago: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=4&lat=41.8808728191&lng=-87.6296138763&height=115

we see that those other two cities also have 900-footers very close together (for NYC, once the reconstruction of WTC is complete). But then if we set the cutoff slightly lower at 800ft, we see Toronto's density beginning to trail the others:

Toronto: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=12&lat=43.6498639669&lng=-79.3812847137&height=157
Lower Manhattan: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=8&lat=40.7136305377&lng=-74.0064811707&height=81
Chicago: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=4&lat=41.8811923379&lng=-87.6252365112&height=100
HK: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=7&lat=22.2963232320&lng=114.1640853882&height=91
(note that the map for HK is not very accurate, because some of the dots actually represent multiple towers under the same name. Eg., the 4 dots on the north side of the harbour is actually a cluster of 16 towers, that alone already a denser cluster of 800-footers than anything in Toronto:
673256271_BmuAu-M.jpg
)

And if we go down to 500ft, it becomes pretty clear Toronto is nowhere as dense as these other cities:

Toronto: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=12&lat=43.6561362073&lng=-79.3804264069&height=88
Lower Manhattan: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=8&lat=40.7076449442&lng=-73.9983272552&height=45
Midtown Manhattan: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=8&lat=40.7574651052&lng=-73.9767837524&height=45
Chicago: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=4&lat=41.8898826344&lng=-87.6231765747&height=56
HK: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=7&lat=22.2876668949&lng=114.1649436951&height=51

All these don't mean TO's skyline is any less impressive or isn't already one of the world's best, but we should appreciate it for what it is and not what we think it is.
 
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Great post man, appreciate the links, first off, at 900 feet, right now in manhattan the two built towers down there are the Trump building and 40 pine, tall skinny 1929 towers. not wide floorplates.
Second , on the city maps you posted, when you slide the scale too 175 meters, I challenge you to find 11 towers closer together than the CBD, you cant, that was my point....the density, that high is pretty cool, and uncommon.
Nice info man. Good work.
Last , I paint fictional skylines and it's hard to really find photos like that one to work off of. You start putting a dozen towers over 700feet within a few blocks, and you start dealing in fiction...... So that pic is amazing to me, and RBC and Ritz assert themselves nicely into the core from the west side. Adding to the density from that vantage point.:D

Los Angeles has a good vertical density,it's about all that LA has .... and Midtown might have a few areas with that kind of density?????
 
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jetsbackincanada said:
Great post man, appreciate the links, first off, at 900 feet, right now in manhattan the two built towers down there are the Trump building and 40 pine, tall skinny 1929 towers. not wide floorplates.
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Sure, but they are no skinnier than Trump. As well, the two clusters in Chicago (AT&T, Willis and 311 S Wacker; Aon and 2 Prudential) are all wide, blocky towers.

Second , on the city maps you posted, when you slide the scale too 175 meters, I challenge you to find 11 towers closer together than the CBD, you cant, that was my point....the density, that high is pretty cool, and uncommon.
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Actually, in that picture of HK that I showed you (the development is called Union Square, btw), there are ten 200m+ towers within 16 hectares, compared to the 28 hectares in Toronto's CBD bound by Richmond, Yonge, Front and York with its eleven 175m+ towers. The same 30-ha area in Central (CBD on HK Island) contains thirteen 175+ buildings; in Midtown Manhattan bound by 52nd, 6th, 44th and 8th, sixteen (plus another 20-30 towers immediately outside that square); in the part of Chicago Loop bound by Washington, Lasalle, Van Buren and the river, eleven (again with another 10-15 in the immediate vicinity); etc, you get the point.

At the end, again, I completely agree with your point about the denisty being cool and uncommon, though certainly not unique.
 
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We agree then>>> The real difference is Toronto's drop off outside the cbd. still the core is right there with the densest areas anywhere.

The Union Square area, is tall for sure,( I am familiar with most skylines), but that is not nearly as dense as a real cbd, thats a waterfront tower, on a whole layout plan, that escapes density.
I think the topography in HK, stretches the towers out along the harbor, and the uneven street grid really takes the density away , when compared to the CBD's we see in N.A.
Ive seen hundreds of pics of Hong Kong/Dubai/Shanghai...and theyre just not layed out like N.A. downtowns. The real skylines with real street to street layouts like NY and Chicago look best to me. That pic of Sodapop's looks like TO's stepping into that realm. Again we seem to agree, and I appreciate your info. Sweet work.
 
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jetsbackincanada said:
I think the topography in HK, stretches the towers out along the harbor, and the uneven street grid really takes the density away , when compared to the CBD's we see in N.A.
Ive seen hundreds of pics of Hong Kong/Dubai/Shanghai...and theyre just not layed out like N.A. downtowns. The real skylines with real street to street layouts like NY and Chicago look best to me. That pic of Sodapop's looks like TO's stepping into that realm. Again we seem to agree, and I appreciate your info. Sweet work.
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Actually that was another point that I disagreed with - to me, a non-grid street layout actually increases the apparent density of a skyline, because there isn't any angle from which all the buildings are lined up along gaping troughs formed by the streets below. I suppose that's (partially) a matter of taste, but I'm not sure anyone looking down on HK's skyline from Victoria Peak would not cry out the word "dense".
The Central CBD is also just as "deep" (inland) as TO's CBD is, so its linearity merely increases the breadth of the skyline. I am also not sure what you meant by "real" skylines, given that HK's is taller, bigger and just as old as TO's. The one "advantage" of TO's skyline, as I alluded to earlier in the 400-foot list thread, is actually the dropoff outside downtown, which highlights the cluster of skyscrapers - whereas in HK, the 250-300 m "peaks" in the skyline are surrounded by a field of 100-200 m buildings that extends as far as the eye can see (with a similar situation in Manhattan).
Anyway, let's get back to appreciating Toronto's skyline!
 
Looking straight up Yonge St. New towers that will enter into this immediate area are; Backstage, L Tower, Pier 27 and development of the parking lot behind the Star building.

bwyonge.jpg
 
A skyline is a great advertisement for a city and one cannot deny it's impact on the people who live there. However, what is more important is what's at the BOTTOM of that skyline. For me, if there is nothing to do in the downtown core — I don't care how tall the buildings are. I think it should be made law (yes, law) that a condo or office building cannot be built within the downtown core without having shops, businesses, etc at the base. If it's just a condo and I didn't live there why would I walk down that street? It would be yet another dead area in downtown Toronto (and downtown Toronto has A LOT of those).
 
DTowner said:
A skyline is a great advertisement for a city and one cannot deny it's impact on the people who live there. However, what is more important is what's at the BOTTOM of that skyline. For me, if there is nothing to do in the downtown core — I don't care how tall the buildings are. I think it should be made law (yes, law) that a condo or office building cannot be built within the downtown core without having shops, businesses, etc at the base. If it's just a condo and I didn't live there why would I walk down that street? It would be yet another dead area in downtown Toronto (and downtown Toronto has A LOT of those).
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i couldn't agree with you more, especially out in north york centre. so many 20+ floor condos that look good and contribute to the skyline from afar but when you actually go to them on the street, there's absolutely no reason to be there. further, i think podiums to condos should be banned. the tower should shoot straight up from the sidewalk, creating an awesome streetwall. and if podiums are neccessary to maintain an artistic vision of a project, the podium should be no less than 4 floors.
 
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