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Upper Village (LEED Silver, Markham Rd n of 16th, Greenpark, 2x 23s, Kirkor)

If you look at innsertnamehere's photo, I think one of the challenges is designing a tower than won't clash with the dense suburban townhomes behind it and the semis and singles further back. The townhomes and houses could be better designed as well, but that could only really happen in a completely new development and frankly most suburban home buyers aren't looking for cutting edge architecture.
 
You would think that Markham, a town that fixed up so much about suburban planning with its Cornell new urbanism community (not perfect mind you), wouldn't be making mistakes like allowing a parking moat around condos in other parts of town…

but you would be wrong.

42
 
Even though Markham is the epicentre of "new urbanism", I can't think of a single neighbourhood that is walkable. It's a farce. A big, expensive, low quality farce.
 
This area is actually surprisingly walkable in the sense of available amenities nearby. You have transit, Grocery stores, shopping, etc all within a couple hundred meters of these condos. Its just all fronted with parking.

Cornell is a bit of a failure when it comes to retail due to its retail streets being far too wide with crappy retail spaces. The ROW of the retail street is 30 meters, compared to the standard 20 in Toronto. even cutting it to 25 meters would have been a great improvement. Cornell exceeds at allowing for walkable trips for "local" needs such as schools, parks, convenience stores, daycare, community centres, etc, but the still too low densities of the neighbourhoods don't allow for things such as grocery stores, and residents are still forced to drive to the closest desert of big box parking lots (errr, I mean stores). Its a great improvement over a standard suburb where you drive for absolutely everything, but it has a while to go still.


Downtown Markham will be the first truly "walkable area" in Markham, but it is still a whiles off from resembling anything significant. Come back in 5-10 years to see how it has fared.
 
Rome wasn't built in a day. Not that Markham will ever become even a sliver of Rome, but building neighbourhoods takes time. I see the bones of a proper, walkable city emerging but it'll take some time.

This newly found "urbanism" is a learning experience for a city of 300,000+ people that was until just recently, still incorporated as the Town of Markham. They'll make mistakes (like this), and still build garbage like that Upper Unionville crap near 16th/Kennedy, but I think given time, Markham has potential.
 
Markham has ambition. They had Arthur Erickson design their city hall. Cornell was one of the only good examples of New Urbanism in Canada for some time--even if some design issues limited its mixed-use potential. Their downtown may become the most unique suburban city centre for its mix of scales--it's more than just a cluster of high-rise buildings surrounded by detached houses. Unfortunately, though, they also have large swaths of car-dependent sprawl.
 
It's odd that when Markham is the home of New Urbanism Cornell, that it allows parking-lot-fronted towers in other parts of town. It's all about freedom of choice I suppose, as opposed to recognizing one the value of one planning choice over the other.

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This is literally right beside Cornell BTW. Cornell starts behind the strip plazas on the other side of the street, and the houses are clearly visible from the Mount Joy GO platform.

In general I find Cornell to be a giant farce. Its just a higher density than normal car oriented suburb, at least so far.
 
innsertnamehere said:
This is literally right beside Cornell BTW. Cornell starts behind the strip plazas on the other side of the street, and the houses are clearly visible from the Mount Joy GO platform.

In general I find Cornell to be a giant farce. Its just a higher density than normal car oriented suburb, at least so far.
Click to expand...

That's Greensborough, not Cornell. It's kind of a cross between Cornell and more traditional sub-divisions as some homes have front-facing double-car garages instead of the new urbanist laneway garages. In general, it's a lot less dense than Cornell, which begins east of 9th Line.
 
For those that are not familiar with the blocks in Markham ... lands west of Highway 48 in this area is known as Wismer, lands east of Highway 48 is known as Greensborough ... Cornell is in fact in the block 2km east of this in the area east of 9th line, extending from Highway 407 north to Donald Cousens Parkway

With regards to the mega-setback between Upper Village and Highway 48, one should be aware that this segment of the road continues to be called Highway 48 and continues to be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) which has minimum setback requirements of 14 metres from the property line, until this segment of the road to transferred to the City of Markham there is nothing that can be (nor will be) done to reduce the building setback requirements to create that truly "urban" environment
 
its still provincially owned? hmm, I didn't know that. I presumed ever since they widened it last year that it had been transferred. Usually that sort of work appears on MTOs expansion projects list and the widening never did. (For example highway 62 in Belleville is being widened through a more urban stretch which is still provincially owned and it is listed on their expansion projects)
 
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