Toronto 50 Bloor Street West | 230.11m | 70s | Morguard Corporation | Pellow + Associates

Surveys by Americans would never reflect the real truth regarding anything Canadian. They always try to put down Canada, to disregard and diminish any Canadian achievement.
 
Maybe this should be a new thread somewhere - mods?

When you look at the "global cities" lists that are made, Toronto is an Alpha city, ahead of San Fran, D.C., Boston, Miami, and Atlanta (all Alpha- cities), but on par with LA and Chicago.

Foreign Policy magazine puts Toronto at 12th in the world as of 2014, behind D.C., Chicago, NYC, and LA.

Richard Florida's survey of Global Economic Power has Toronto at 18th, behind D.C., Boston, Chicago, NYC, and LA.

A similar Japanese study also puts us at 18th - ahead of LA and Chicago (but this survey includes quality of life measures).

A "wealth report" that surveys High Net Worth Individuals (25M+) has Toronto at 9th, with only D.C. and NYC being ahead of us (perhaps this is why so many foreigners invest in our property - Vancouver and Montreal do well here also).

We were 12th in competitiveness as per The Economist, behind Boston, D.C., NYC, and Chicago.

Based on this, I still say we are competing against most of the cities that I mentioned - all relatively similar to Toronto in population - on a relatively equal plane, and we will have to do a lot to keep up. Something I note is that Sydney (a similar city to us in its national importance but smaller than Toronto) rates above Toronto on a number of those surveys. I believe we have to up our game on issues like infrastructure, innovation and productivity (not to mention the improvement of our cultural facilities and public realm) to truly stand out and take what I see as our proper place in the world.

Nonetheless, those interesting results speak very well for Toronto.
 
agoraflaneur said:
Maybe this should be a new thread somewhere - mods?

When you look at the "global cities" lists that are made, Toronto is an Alpha city, ahead of San Fran, D.C., Boston, Miami, and Atlanta (all Alpha- cities), but on par with LA and Chicago.

Foreign Policy magazine puts Toronto at 12th in the world as of 2014, behind D.C., Chicago, NYC, and LA.

Richard Florida's survey of Global Economic Power has Toronto at 18th, behind D.C., Boston, Chicago, NYC, and LA.

A similar Japanese study also puts us at 18th - ahead of LA and Chicago (but this survey includes quality of life measures).

A "wealth report" that surveys High Net Worth Individuals (25M+) has Toronto at 9th, with only D.C. and NYC being ahead of us (perhaps this is why so many foreigners invest in our property - Vancouver and Montreal do well here also).

We were 12th in competitiveness as per The Economist, behind Boston, D.C., NYC, and Chicago.

Based on this, I still say we are competing against most of the cities that I mentioned - all relatively similar to Toronto in population - on a relatively equal plane, and we will have to do a lot to keep up. Something I note is that Sydney (a similar city to us in its national importance but smaller than Toronto) rates above Toronto on a number of those surveys. I believe we have to up our game on issues like infrastructure, innovation and productivity (not to mention the improvement of our cultural facilities and public realm) to truly stand out and take what I see as our proper place in the world.

Nonetheless, those interesting results speak very well for Toronto.
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I don't know what the methodology is, but I'm guessing Toronto doing well in these rankings is due to the large amount of immigrants in the city as well as Canada's financial/banking system doing well & being stable. Also things like having good universities that are funded well.
 
These cities are all very similar in size.
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No...they aren't.

The actual City of Dallas is 1.2 million in an area larger than the size of City of Toronto and Mississauga combined (with 3.5 million).
These 10,000 square mile American metroplexes are not "cities". Besides, the 6 million Dallas metroplex is still bigger in size than the Golden Horseshoe, which has more than 8 million.

Please stop talking about Dallas. It has more fat Walmart shoppers than Toronto...and that's about it.
 
Good point about the actual city - no comparison there. However, 6 million (actually it is 6.8M as of 2013 http://www.ntc-dfw.org/northtexas/poplargestmetro.html) vs 8 million *is* "relatively" similar, in my subjective and humble opinion. I think we have to go significantly bigger - say to 10M - to get to a whole other level of urban agglomeration that really sets something apart. That is why I am saying that LA and NYC are on another level entirely, while the rest can be compared in *some* significant ways. What I have argued is that the US development model allows large areas to be economically, politically and culturally integrated, and therefore together important as a centre - not necessarily as a "city." If you disagree, then I would love to hear reasons why Silicon Valley or San Jose don't relate to San Fran in important and fundamental ways, for example. That is just the US. Obviously Toronto is *much* more urban and a "real city" than Dallas will ever be, and in that you are more than correct so maybe I shouldn't really be talking about it (just depends what you are analysing). Still, there is a lot of corporate activity and growth there - that is why I am talking about it, because their growth might continue longer than Toronto's (which has already started to slow in the GTHA as people chose faster growing regions of the countries to move to), and their agglomeration could catch up if we don't get the economy growing in Ontario. Unless oil prices plummet, at which point Texas might falter.

Anyway, I don't think we actually disagree.
 
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Didn't know where to post this, but given that u were discussing toronto I thought I'd post it here. Irrelevant to 50 bloor. Toronto came in 4th place after London, New York and Singapore in a list of cities of opportunities in 2014. The Study/list was done by PwC. I think that's amazing. Congratulations T..
 
What I have argued is that the US development model allows large areas to be economically, politically and culturally integrated, and therefore together important as a centre - not necessarily as a "city."
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Then let's just take this to its logical conclusion and just call the USA a city "region".

Game over.

Back to 50 Bloor and it's quest for architecture.
 
This blog post is from this april, but I haven't seen any news about the design being modified.
It looks alright. Certainly quite a presence on Bloor.
20140415-Yorkville-50Bloor-ed-1.jpg

http://www.blogto.com/city/2014/04/is_bay_bloor_in_danger_of_becoming_a_condo_jungle/
 

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Yeah, it's a presence. Sort of like a stacked dog's breakfast has presence. I think it looks like Aura - jumbled, confused... a split identity. Redesign, please!
 
Are there any real architects working in Toronto anymore? This is garbage, and in general most of our attempts to go high look laughable design-wise on a world scale. Next.
 
ponyboy said:
I think the lower half of this proposal looks interesting from the squinty-eyed-quality rendering.
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That's the only thing that differentiates itself from Aura. The bottom half of this one looks good, while the top half of Aura looks good.

Continuing the cubes all the way up could be interesting..
 
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