A comment in the ‘Hong Kong Airport’ post by Adam J:
On a recent trip to Portland I noticed the new neighbourhood around the air tram felt very Yaletown-y. Toronto has many green-glass condos. Seems like every city is in a rush to look like every other city. It’s sad.
Even truer in the 1890s:
Vancouver:
.
Portland:
.
Toronto:
.
Maybe it’s always been true.
Good point! And today, preserving those 1890s buildings is seen as vital to a city’s unique character. Maybe in a hundred years our turn-of-century glass and metal cubes will be seen as precious heritage structures too. 😉
To be fair, those photos are black and white. Does limit the comparison, though it’s certainly an interesting point.
So much outdoor advertising in those heritage streetscapes from back in the day, too…
Holy first world problem. With the mention of the “green glass condos”, it sounds just like more anti homes in tall buildings nonesence ignoring decades of building whole areas of resource wasteful single family housing.
How is it not a waste of resource to throw perfectly good homes away in the landfill too be burned? Why pretend in a city of 600,000 that we need to live in shoe boxes? Plus when the homes go, the mature gardens go too – the pants and trees removing carbon and methane and toxins from the air.
Hmm.
Monthly electricity & heating bill in single family home: $150
Monthly electricty and heating bill in condo: $25
http://www.theprovince.com/touch/news/vancouver/Will+cancellation+Immigrant+Investor+Program+spark+flight/9886021/story.html?rel=838332