Development in Toronto Part IV – Heightening
Urban Designers have been waiting for it for ages – and it’s finally here. Heightening. The continuing strength of Toronto’s main streets fuelled by a slowly crawling gentrification has led owners in some districts to realise the potential of their buildings themselves instead of selling out and moving on. The consequence is less main street blockbusting with 10 and 20 story condo monsters with underground parking and more renovations of main street buildings – part of which is heightening, adding a floor or two to your existing building.
Now if only the same attitude would become more pervasive amongst the reams of single family homes that make up the majority of Toronto’s neighbourhoods. Perhaps then we would see more liveable and comfortable apartment units instead of the endless stream of awkwardly renovated houses uncomfortably filling the gap between high rise condo and unattainable single family house.
The current heightening hotspot is College Street west of Ossington, which I believe is a largely Portuguese community but is definitely an emerging hotspot of activity, though less centred around the arts as Queen West West.
4 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Your photo of the Shaw St. heightening doesn’t do it justice. It’s a great looking project. I bike past it daily, and think it’s commendable how the builders have made it interesting to watch progress throughout. A highlight was Halloween, when the as-yet unwalled (wide open) upper floors were filled with many large colourful rice paper lanterns. It just glowed.
By Anonymous on 03.13.06 3:46 pm
That’s true – it’s not a good picture – I was waiting for the right moment, and gave up! I saw it at Halloween – that was awesome – and I wish I had managed to get a photo of it then. That was one of those very special urban moments that make the city seem like a magical place. I’ll never forget that. If anyone has a picture of it in that state that would be awesome.
By rc on 03.14.06 9:40 am
Great info on urban space in Toronto. Say, do you have an rss feed? My browser says you have one but I get a page not found. I’d like to add it to the website: http://cyclingcog.net. Thanks.
Herb.
By Anonymous on 03.17.06 2:18 am
hey Herb,
the site feed should be working now – I’d forgotten to include the path in the settings. it’s Atom (xml) though, not RSS – should still be compatible with whatever system you use.
-rc
By rc on 03.18.06 12:16 am
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>