adma
Superstar
My Spanish visitors have enjoyed their time here, but cannot comprehend why every building in the city looks like a shoe-box.
I remember Madrid being similarly chock-a-block with shoeboxes. Not that that's bad or anything...
My Spanish visitors have enjoyed their time here, but cannot comprehend why every building in the city looks like a shoe-box.
Toronto isn't boring. This is the city where you can see an ornate Victorian beside a sleek high-rise with a lot more variety along a streetscape. The T-D Centre is one of the finest skyscraper complexes in the world. Even the "big name" European cities have streets lined with mostly mundane buildings, such as Paris.
^I would argue that since the Scots/Irish/British stopped building the city, it became uglier! Look at photos from 100 years ago--the city was beautiful, with attractive church spires everywhere, grand public buildings, red brick masonry everywhere!
Toronto isn't boring. This is the city where you can see an ornate Victorian beside a sleek high-rise with a lot more variety along a streetscape. The T-D Centre is one of the finest skyscraper complexes in the world. Even the "big name" European cities have streets lined with mostly mundane buildings, such as Paris.
Again, I understand the historical justifications, but they were wondering why prominent, NEW developments continue to be boxes (now they are glass).
Does the mainstream concious of the average Canadian attribute less importance to good/interesting architecture? Why can our developers get away with being cheap?
I don't think that Toronto is 'boring' but I do feel that it lacks where aesthetics are concerned. This is changing more and more but still seems to be so ingrained in us, culturally speaking. In broad strokes it's that Torontonians just feel that sensible shoes are perfectly fine, essentially, and that an investment in anything else is a splurge that would be 'morally' bettter spent on some social program. Maybe it's the Scottish/British/Protestant ancestry or a strong socialist bent or that whole 'Peace, Order and Good Government' thing that informs this. Whatever. I very hardly hear a typical Torontonian - of the street, so to speak - wax nostalgic about the city and its beauty the way I hear it done elsewhere. It's like these things just don't register or just aren't valued. Fortunately this is indeed changing though as we start to value the urban realm and understand its possibilities...
So maybe the response to your Spanish friends is to show them how this *is* changing and how the enormous unrealized potential of Toronto is what makes it a far more exciting place to be now than any museum-piece city in Spain might be.