Richmond Hill High Tech Transit Oriented Community | ?m | 80s | Metrus | BDP Quadrangle

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Frontop is Quadrangle's go-to for renderings, and of course does it in the typical chinese style. Which is why you get oddities like HSR trains running on subway tracks and terrible representations of surrounding buildings.

If you look closely at most BDPQ renderings you'll notice Frontop's visualization style.

Also looks like they forgot to take the Frontop watermark off before publishing them for some reason..

And also, that rendering goes further east, showing more buildings, than the other renderings. Must be an earlier version or a broader concept rendering, or something? Still, I see people commenting on the design or the urban realm or whatever and I think most of us know it but, like, this is a glorified massing model, not an architectural submission.

 

[innsertnamehere]

That's exactly right, the architectural set makes it pretty clear this is just a "test fit" to get rough GFA numbers and unit count yields, not actual architectural design.

 

[cd concept]

This development's name in Richmond Hill should be called RICH MAN'S HILL Lol ! From the way the buildings are stacked in height. It looks like a mountain of condo buildings in the previous page !

 

[Undead]

Frontop is Quadrangle's go-to for renderings, and of course does it in the typical chinese style. Which is why you get oddities like HSR trains running on subway tracks and terrible representations of surrounding buildings.

Yeah, I imagine SFHs would be an oddity to them, or at least an unimaginable luxury in a major city. Always interesting seeing the contrasts.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Yeah, I imagine SFHs would be an oddity to them, or at least an unimaginable luxury in a major city. Always interesting seeing the contrasts.

Not an oddity, but definitely a luxury. The thing is SFH isn't even rare or super expensive in places like Tokyo - but their execution is hugely different from what we have here (almost no lawn/open space, very short driveway, narrow roadways/laneways, etc).

AoD

 

[Northern Light]

Not an oddity, but definitely a luxury. The thing is SFH isn't even rare or super expensive in places like Tokyo - but their execution is hugely different from what we have here (almost no lawn/open space, very short driveway, narrow roadways/laneways, etc).

AoD

Of course, that tends to have adverse environmental impacts, including much higher sewer runoff, greater amounts of untreated sewage being dumped, greater risk of flooding, reduced air quality, and impacts to biodiversity, amongst other things.

I note that because I think it's always important, whatever one's take on any issue to remember that there are always trade-offs.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Of course, that tends to have adverse environmental impacts, including much higher sewer runoff, greater amounts of untreated sewage being dumped, greater risk of flooding, reduced air quality, and impacts to biodiversity, amongst other things.

I note that because I think it's always important, whatever one's take on any issue to remember that there are always trade-offs.

Building SFHs the way we are doing it is just as, if not worse - larger housing footprint/resident; larger impermeable surfaces footprint/resident; capital and operational inefficiency in transportation; unfavourable modal split, larger GHG emissions, etc, etc. That's on top of the social issue of reducing the amount of SFH (nevermind housing in general) available in any given land area.

AoD

 

[ProjectEnd]

Building SFHs the way we are doing it is just as, if not worse - larger housing footprint/resident; larger impermeable surfaces footprint/resident; capital and operational inefficiency in transportation; unfavourable modal split, larger GHG emissions, etc, etc. That's on top of the social issue of reducing the amount of SFH (nevermind housing in general) available in any given land area.

AoD

Yep, it's absolutely, incalculably worse.

 

[Towered]

These pockets of hyper density surrounded by yellowbelt are like the modern equivalent of the walled cities of medieval Europe.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

These pockets of hyper density surrounded by yellowbelt are like the modern equivalent of the walled cities of medieval Europe.

The opposite of it perhaps.

AoD

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

The thing with the yellowbelt is that we built it over multiple generations. Now we "know better," which is great. But even with the kind of progressive zoning we seem to maybe be moving towards, it'll take a long time to punch holes in it and really change it.

If you want to be pragmatic, I don't see anything wrong the hyperdensity thing. Looking at North York Centre (since it's the most mature local example), there's criticism out there, I know, that the density goes a block deep and then it's all houses. OK, but what was there before? One and two-storey plazas. Now there are towers and mixed use developments and some office towers and a North York subway station. If you go there at night, it has a real street life and feels much more like Yonge-Eg than, say, Bayview and Finch.

It was created by policy changes and it seems to me, that's an obvious improvement (and especially when compared to something like Scarborough Centre, which has some density but no urbanity).

You can argue that even better would be if they'd gone all the way and bulldozed everything from Bayview to Bathurst and Finch to Sheppard and replaced it all with 5-storey Parisian buildings and Greenwich Village-style walkups but that's pure fantasy. We're starting where we're starting, with a built form that (especially as you move north of the 401) is basically entirely post-WWII. So the question isn't' what an ideal city is, it's how we can fix the one we have now. This is how it starts, not how it ends.

Again, this form/policy - major density at transit stations etc. - has been on the books for 15 years. Weird to re-litigate it because of pictures that came out last week.

EDIT - just to add some context. We're not talking about redoing all of Richmond Hill from scratch and overnight. We're talking about replacing this, which is already like a walled-off city from the neighbourhood, and with some of the most dispiriting, inhospitable urban form imaginable. Just, perspective about what's going on here, folks.

 

[The Preservationist]

Was getting 'mega-development in Chinese city you've never heard of' vibes with these renderings, realizing afterward they were in fact done by a rendering firm based in China :

Here's an expanded view taken from the architectural plans:

View attachment 369272

Going from suburban to urban sprawl...

 

[FormerTorontonianBackInTO]

This is certainly something.

View attachment 369164

Are they going to be moving some of those massive power lines? I believe that these may be utility right of ways, ingrained in provincial documents, but looking at Google Maps it looks like they shave off over half of the southern side of the prospective development lands here...if there was ever an excuse to invest in moving or burying such lines (at least for a partial stretch) this would be it....is it possible/economical/feasible to move such lines (build new lines adjacent to them, above or below ground, and eventually transfer the capacity)?

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Are they going to be moving some of those massive power lines?

Short answer is no. Everyone wants them gone but it's too expensive and no one has put forward a practical way to do it. In theory it can be done in later phase, maybe, but for now it's a frustrating, permanent barrier.

 

[cd concept]

Short answer is no. Everyone wants them gone but it's too expensive and no one has put forward a practical way to do it. In theory it can be done in later phase, maybe, but for now it's a frustrating, permanent barrier.

Can they bury it Underground just in the area where the new downtown core is going to be. Or relocate the whole electrical grid just north on the moraine lands which can't be touched . Freeing up these parcels of lands for development in Durham,York and Peel Regions.