416InTrouble said:
Love the nod to Best Buy in this design. Also love the 3 trees that replace the thousands upon thousands that were cut down to build this heaping pile of junk. Gotta love Doug Fords Ontario and utter hatred for any wards that don’t vote Conservative. The garbage that’s being built all along riverside and Leslieville is their way of not taking care of our NDP / Liberal community while spending billions to bury the crosstown line in barren Etobicoke
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I think it has less to do how the constituents voted and more to do with that the parties involved are just cheapening out for the sake of "efficiency" (there's that DOGE word again)...

...that said, I suspect if the Tories cut themselves a Therme like deal with private interests could spruce up the design here significantly. However, as the shenanigans of Ontario Place have demonstrated, be careful what you wish for. /sigh
 
and the construction of the North/West end of the Eastern bridge begins.

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Opinion | There were once ambitious plans for this major new Toronto transit hub. How did it go from grand to bland?​

www.thestar.com

Shawn Micallef: There were once ambitious plans for this major new Toronto transit hub. How did it go from grand to bland?

The province has released illustrations of the East Harbour Transit Hub a huge project near the Don River and Lake Shore Boulevard that’s expected to serve up to 100,000 people a day.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

Consider, too the amount of effort that went into preparing this site, with the tear down of the massive Unilever factory that was, for a very long time, a landmark near the bottom of the Don River and DVP. It was a great shame that some of the industrial structures couldn’t be incorporated into the new developments, but it was cleared to a clean slate. The only thing that replaces the sense of place heritage buildings can provide is great, new architecture, not buildings that have the ambiance of aircraft hangers.
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Probably bean counters without vision and a soul have taken over the driver's seat, to put it mildly... /sigh
 
Willybru21 said:
Oh come on that’s awful and would’ve looked terrible against the skyline. Would’ve preferred a pyramid instead of that:
View attachment 636169
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What was their problem in the 60s? Why did every urban planner's vision involving demolishing vast swaths of cities to erect some impersonal monolithic structure totally devoid of human scale or the pedestrian realm? I'm blaming Le Courbousier.
 
ProjectEnd said:
I'm kidding. Toronto doesn't have it in its soul to do "audacious bold visioning" - it goes against the City's core programming. We feed on the "squared off and uninspiring cheapened drivel they're planning to stick on us."
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I feel like this has only become true in the last 20 years. Look at projects like Old City Hall, the R.C. Harris plant, new City Hall, Ontario Place, the Royal York, and the CN Tower.

We've had an appetite for bold construction in this city in the past we just need to wet it again.
 
ComptoirGeneral said:
I feel like this has only become true in the last 20 years. Look at projects like Old City Hall, the R.C. Harris plant, new City Hall, Ontario Place, the Royal York, and the CN Tower.

We've had an appetite for bold construction in this city in the past we just need to wet it again.
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Yes, we did build great things in the past, when our nation was young(er) and the broader Western world was not yet in decadent cultural/moral decline.

Somewhere along the way, the Canadian cultural character lost its propensity to dare and dream big once our establishment was handed over from generations formed in the hard crucible of late-19th century geopolitical fragility, Depression, and/or the World Wars to generations that had known nothing but postwar-boomer comfort and contentment for their whole lives.

Somewhere along the way, we Torontonians/Canadians decided that the labour and toil of building up our city and nation was "done", and we could sit back, stop aspiring to "more" or "greater", and let things deteriorate.

The classic adage of "good times creating weak men creating hard times..."

I'm not saying that we won't ever be capable of great things again, but one must realize the cyclical nature of societal advancement and regression. Building a truly magnificent structure at East Harbour (or condos not laced with spandrel, or streets that aren't overloaded with frontier-town wooden poles, dangling wires, and cracked asphalt, etc. etc.) isn't simply a matter of "if only we tried harder", "if only we'd gone through a proper design and procurement process". No, the problem is far more upstream than that. We need to become a society and culture that once again has the gumption and courage to think bold, dare, advance, and transcend. That spirit belongs to China and parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East nowadays. It is decidedly broken in Toronto, Canada as a whole, and a good chunk of the broader West.

I'm not the least bit surprised that East Harbour isn't turning out like the "Union Station of our present age", or something of the calibre of the Harris Water Treatment Plant or both our old and new City Halls. Because the present age is a diminished age here in Canada in which we've lost something so emblematic of the earlier stages in our nation-building journey: ambition.
 
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telefann said:
Yes, we did build great things in the past, when our nation was young(er) and the broader Western world was not yet in decadent cultural/moral decline.

Somewhere along the way, the Canadian cultural character lost its propensity to dare and dream big once our establishment was handed over from generations formed in the hard crucible of late-19th century geopolitical fragility, Depression, and/or the World Wars to generations that had known nothing but postwar-boomer comfort and contentment for their whole lives.

Somewhere along the way, we Torontonians/Canadians decided that the labour and toil of building up our city and nation was "done", and we could sit back, stop aspiring to "more" or "greater", and let things deteriorate.

The classic adage of "good times creating weak men creating hard times..."

I'm not saying that we won't ever be capable of great things again, but one must realize the cyclical nature of societal advancement and regression. Building a truly magnificent structure at East Harbour (or condos not laced with spandrel, or streets that aren't overloaded with frontier-town wooden poles, dangling wires, and cracked asphalt, etc. etc.) isn't simply a matter of "if only we tried harder", "if only we'd gone through a proper design and procurement process". No, the problem is far more upstream than that. We need to become a society and culture that once again has the gumption and courage to think bold, dare, advance, and transcend. That spirit belongs to China and parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East nowadays. It is decidedly broken in Toronto, Canada as a whole, and a good chunk of the broader West.

I'm not the least surprised that East Harbour isn't turning out the least bit like the "Union Station of our present age", or something of the calibre of the Harris Water Treatment Plant or both our old and new City Halls. Because the present age is a diminished age here in Canada in which we've lost something so emblematic of the earlier stages in our nation-building journey: ambition.
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Well said. Hopefully the upcoming tough times allow us to reinvigorate that spirit.
 
The Middle East and China beyond mega scale and height leave a lot to be desired compared to Europe or like South America for innovated designs and planning. In the case of Europe, private developers are at the whim of government while many UTers have stated over the years about too much red tape in the city already.

As for this, there's a huge expectation for transit capital projects to financially prove themselves in the media and, if they can't, then heads roll. We shouldn't be surprised by bare bones finishes and designs.
 
CanadianNational said:
'Yes, we did build great things in the past, when our nation was young(er) and the broader Western world was not yet in decadent cultural/moral decline.'

This is a remarkably blinkered statement, and frankly, it smacks of 'Retvurn' hard-right nonsense.
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Yes, it does have a tinge of that. Using Union Station as an example - does "greatness" meant building something like the old headhouse? Or does "greatness" meant a structure that is efficient, visually attractive, etc? The former belongs to a certain reactionary traditionalist movement that seems to have been adopted by the modern far right. The latter doesn't really stand that well as an argument - especially in Europe. Also if there is a sapping of energy here, it dates to the rise of Neoliberalism in the 70s/80s (you can argue that the 60s is one of the most energetic period in Canada).

As to the Middle East - be careful what you wish for - it also gets you silliness like NEOM and towering skyscrapers built with combustible cladding.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Yes, it does have a tinge of that. Using Union Station as an example - does "greatness" meant building something like the old headhouse? Or does "greatness" meant a structure that is efficient, visually attractive, etc? The former belongs to a certain reactionary traditionalist movement that seems to have been adopted by the modern far right. The latter doesn't really stand that well as an argument - especially in Europe. Also if there is a sapping of energy here, it dates to the rise of Neoliberalism in the 70s/80s (you can argue that the 60s is one of the most energetic period in Canada).

As to the Middle East - be careful what you wish for - it also gets you silliness like NEOM and towering skyscrapers built with combustible cladding.

AoD
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I get what this user means in the sense of Canadians being in much more of a "nation building" mindset in decades prior. But I think that was the result of post WWII optimism for the future and a widespread building boom seen all over North America.

I think generally there used to be a larger sense of civic pride and higher standards when it came to larger developments simply because they were so few and far between. They also had the benefit of starting from relatively little, so major projects stood out a lot more and there was a greater imperative to make them beautiful. The colonial mindset of building grand structures to signal power was a lot more pronounced back then too.

Conversely, it's hard to argue that Canada isn't in a Nation Building mindset at the moment considering how much cities from Vancouver to Toronto have developed over the last 25 years.

I think our issue is that we've settled into an era of function and utility over aesthetic form. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on who you ask, but at least our city hasn't stagnated and crumbled like so many other North American cities.
 
ComptoirGeneral said:
I get what this user means in the sense of Canadians being in much more of a "nation building" mindset in decades prior. But I think that was the result of post WWII optimism for the future and a widespread building boom seen all over North America.

I think generally there used to be a larger sense of civic pride and higher standards when it came to larger developments simply because they were so few and far between. They also had the benefit of starting from relatively little, so major projects stood out a lot more and there was a greater imperative to make them beautiful. The colonial mindset of building grand structures to signal power was a lot more pronounced back then too.

Conversely, it's hard to argue that Canada isn't in a Nation Building mindset at the moment considering how much cities from Vancouver to Toronto have developed over the last 25 years.

I think our issue is that we've settled into an era of function and utility over aesthetic form. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on who you ask, but at least our city hasn't stagnated and crumbled like so many other North American cities.
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I mean the original Bloor-Danforth stations and Yonge subways aren't really marvels of architecture or grand in any way. Especially the Bloor-Danforth stations, they are very simple and utilitarian.

How far back in time do we go to see grand transit infrastructure being built?
 
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