Toronto Liberty Place | ?m | 32s | CanAlfa | IBI Group

Pic taken Oct 5, 2012


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Liberty Village is really cramming in those dull towers. There seems to be very little thought to best placement or developing a distinctive style/area. It's quite sad, actually. Is there any hope at all for something unique? The more of LV I see, the more hopeless I feel. I had such high expectations at first. I really believed this could be someplace special, well, until that Metro opened. It's been mostly downhill since then. Yet, I still keep hoping for a turn-around. (maybe on the west side) Silly me.
 
The towers themselves are not the problem, but rather the fact there isn't a cohesive environment linking them. The metro with its giant surface parking lot is inexcusable and should be zoned out of existence. Sidewalks are small and crammed, and public transit - which is there right on king - is very difficult to access from the buildings.

Liberty Village more than any other neighbourhood desperately needs to treat its streets like public spaces, add bike lanes, transform its surface parking lots into something that makes sense, and facilitate access to transit. It would be ridiculously easy to do all of these given the amount of development the area is seeing, too. Very frustrating.
 
The 63 Ossington bus runs every few minutes on Liberty Street, with a stop right in front of each condo. You can get off on king or go to the subway, so it's actually quite convenient. And maybe if you don't live here, the Metro looks like a bad idea, but for someone who lives here in LV, and doesn't drive, the Metro is perfect. How else are we supposed to get our shopping done? For people who live here, everything is perfect.....you can argue about architecture, and that's fine, the buildings aren't all that sexy, but for convenience the area is perfect for residents....
 
The metro with its giant surface parking lot is inexcusable and should be zoned out of existence.
Click to expand...

Lunatic fringe thought of the day....
 
I'm obviously not advocating the removal of the metro itself, but rather the giant surface parking lot. The area will probably be able to support, say, the current metro and a loblaws/sobeys further west in the future. It is vital to have grocery stores within walking distance of all development clusters.

I'm sure it would be a lot nicer to walk to your metro if instead of a parking lot there was some human-scaled stuff along the way. It's the same as the Whole Foods at Square One.

As for mobility, there should be a pedestrian tunnel connecting Douro St. with Western Battery Rd. and the street that runs North/South just East of the metro.
 
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my mistake RC8, I thought you wanted removal of the grocery store! With all the people in LV now, they need to have it there for sure....
 
Well, bridge, not tunnel as per the link above.

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It's nice to see some brick buildings going up in Liberty Village. All those glass towers should have been brick, warehouse styled condos, to create a distinctive style for the district. I wish they would keep with the red brick aesthetic, for all new buildings in LV. The all glass condos are destroying the distinctive look and feel of the area. I hope this condo has retail along the bottom.

Liberty Village could have been the perfect place to incorporate intimate, retail arcades/alleys between the buildings, like they do in Melbourne. It would have helped LV create a unique atmosphere and make it a retail/entertainment destination, instead of just another condo cluster. Toronto needs to develop districts with their own unique, distinctive characters. That would be so easy to do here, yet it doesn't seem to be happening and it's a really good opportunity that's just being thrown away. Just the smallest efforts would make a great difference. This city needs to examine how it uses space, especially the areas between buildings, those public spaces that just go to waste. The same thing applies to The Entertainment District, with all it's massive development. Nobody seems to be looking at the finer details. That's something Paris and London do so well, yet we seem to miss.
 
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