To the supporters: So a total of 433 stories spread over six buildings is okay? But how would you feel about an alternative scenario of twenty 20-storey buildings? All built at the same time, all by the same designers. Doesn't sound so great, does it? Just picturing that can remind people of Soviet microdistricts (blocks), the failures of mid-20C urban renewal efforts, the ghettos they created, the poor integration with the city, and the demolition of these slums across the US, Great Britain, and even in places like Regent Park.
What would be wrong with 20x20storey buildings? If they literally spammed the same block twenty times over then maybe, but that's a straw man argument (how are 20 uninspired clones of eachother comparable to 6 unique and, so far, high quality towers?). An area of 20 highrise buildings of consistent quality and design is not something i stay awake worrying about.
It's a really stupid argument. I could just as well argue that 90 midrise buildings built by the same developer at the same time would look like Regent Park's low rises section, which it wouldn't. They could just as easily look like Paris. You're substituting an argument against density with an argument against bad design, and nobody here is in favor of bad design.
It does seem like a slippery slope argument to say these will end up as slums. But the reality is that even in their "prime" location the buildings are poorly integrated, are next to a crumbling elevated highway, and more than likely will be designed to exclude families. It's a ghetto in the making.
It's more like a waterslide...
To pick one flaw, families aren't being 'excluded' from these buildings. Developers don't have some kind of vendetta against family housing. The issue is any new constructions project in the area will have costs >700$/sf. Very few families (not none, but very few) can afford that. Large units (3bdr, which are still way smaller than 'average' Canadian dwelling sizes) are way harder to sell or rent than 1 & 2brd units. In my building (right north of 1-7 Yonge, on the Esplanade) 3bdr units usually don't even go to 'families' at all but rather roomates or simply really rich people.
You can talk all you want about "quaint European midrise cities" but no European city of Toronto's size has families living 200ft from its CBD. No Berliners move their families right next to Friedrich-strasse. They move a bit further out and take the S-bahn like normal folk. Now, no European ('cept London) builds super tall residential buildings downtown anyways, but the same dynamics are at play. The CBD's land prices are always higher then peripheral areas, which invetiably pushes larger family units away from the CBD. I'd challenge either you or RC8 to find a single >1m pop European city which has significant concentrations of family housing in its CBD.
The real issue for families is that non-condo residential space downtown hasn't kept up with demand for decades. A small, termite ridden shack in Parkdale will be over .5m now. Many families are priced out of all of the downtown shoulder areas which could be attractive for urban families. There's hardly any new construction so prices just keep going up.
...and it's bound to fail.
Then why hasn't the waterfront area failed already? We've been building highrises there for decades. The earlier developments were actually pretty bad in a number of respects (crappy relationship to streets, not much retail). But it's hardly a failure. Statement's like 'bound to fail' are just ridiculous.
(although wouldn't make sense)
