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It's being used more often recently, there are some examples in North York. It's advantages are more pronounced in transportation infrastructure. As for why, mostly just cost. I generally agree, wind will dominate lateral load cases, however that doesn't mean tall buildings are immune from...

Unreinforced masonry is great for avoiding corrosion. It's not great because when an earthquake happens, basically everyone dies.

It's really hard to say how long our new skyscrapers will last, as modern reinforced concrete construction techniques haven't been around long enough. 100 year old concrete buildings today were designed and constructed much differently than buildings going up today. There's a number of things...

Good, the cost of parking enforcement is absurdly high for how small the tickets are.

The stop spacing is also ridiculous, many of them are less than 200 meters apart. Stopping that many times along a route is really slow.

The fees seem high considering how much more economically productive patios are than parking. The tax on restaurant sales alone would earn the city more than parking revenue.

For everyone's reference, a concrete truck carries about 8-10 cubic meters of concrete.

There was a (very small) skating rink in front of Union last winter. I agree that not having a rink here is a miss, I wonder what the cost difference would have been.

It's very possible to build a supertall that isn't on bedrock. As an example, the Burj Khalifa is built on sand using a pile supported raft slab. The same system was used for Stantec tower in Edmonton, the tallest building in Canada outside of Toronto. Good geotechnical engineers are very smart...

I say this as someone who hates real estate agents, but I don't think it's overused. I think that we've become desensitized to it in the Toronto market, and maybe we expect luxury to be more exclusive, but relative to so many other places in/out of Canada many of the new units provide excellent...

I've driven/trained past this site a few times, and of course see the great photos posted here - but I walked by yesterday and the structure is insane. It doesn't look that special in photos unless you notice the scale. Ceiling heights are massive. The concrete work here is huge, the beams are...

Just have some vision and optimism: Pretty much, here's what I'd do: Short-Term: Close King to personal vehicles entirely. It should be only streetcars, bicycles, trees, and large sidewalks & patios. You can enforce with cameras as the ROI is amazing. Model it after Stephen Avenue in Calgary...

I don't really understood cutting across the grass honestly, I've timed it and it saves you maybe 10 seconds total, but the walk is substantially more pleasant along the generous granite pathway. Going on the pathway means you stay out of wet grass/snow, don't have to walk through frisbees or...

I really hope I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any plans to make a separated bike lane (cycle track) on Spadina any time soon. I believe this rendering just rebuilds the sidewalk to the current extents.

That's a lot of letters in a small space.

Not directed to anyone specifically, but cement is an ingredient in concrete, much like flour to bread. Concrete is poured, cement is a powder.

There's a very strong legal (and engineering) case to be made that the design requirements Apple introduced included a substantial amount of risk, resulting in the increased cost &/or schedule overruns - and that backing out of their occupancy would be skirting much of the financial burden that...

Looks to be left over from the vehicle parking, they didn't want wheel loads on the grate. But now that cars don't park there, I imagine they thought it was easier to just leave them.

Probably not. You'd certainly have to consider strengthening vertical elements when adding floors for shorter buildings, but with buildings of this height, lateral loads (i.e. wind/earthquake) will always govern. This means that vertical elements like columns, floors, and foundations will...