Highrise apartments in small towns and small cities, Northwest Territories and rural areas.

[nec209]

Well I never really understood Canada's fascination of highrise apartments popping up all over the place in the cities , suburbs , small cities and really small cities and towns.I also believe most of these highrise apartments where build in the 60's and 70's . But the past 8 years and very much so 5 years highrise apartments and highrise condos are making a big come back not only the cities but the suburbs !!! There are many highrise apartments and highrise condos that have been build and many being build in the suburbs like in GTA in Brampton, Vaughan and Mississauga so on .


What is really shocking I was checking out some places today and found highrise apartments way up north in Canada in the Northwest Territories !! I don't know how intense the highrise apartments up there are but even if there are only 5 or 10 in the small town that is shocking .


This in a small town out in Northwest Territories 2011 population: 19,234 has you see the highrise apartment in photo . http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ellowknife.jpg


Other one Hay River in the Northwest Territories Population 3,648 has you see highrise apartment in photo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_Riv...st_Territories



What is highrise apartments doing out in in towns and rural areas I find this really strange!!!


Many small cities in Canada have highrise apartments too.

Brantford a population of 90,192 that is a sprawl very small town has this too !!


http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Brantf...2,355,,0,-8.18



http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Brantf...42.89,,0,-1.41

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Brantf...64.81,,0,-1.27





Thunder Bay population of 122,907 out in no where no other cities or towns close by and out in no where has this


http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...152.55,,0,-4.8


http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...161.81,,0,0.85


http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...285.02,,0,-2.4


Ottawa population 883,391.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...=12,28.82,,0,0

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...=12,58.82,,0,0

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll...,61.98,,0,2.82


Yes even Hamilton population 519,949 and London population of 366,151 have many highrise apartments.


And there is many highrise apartments in Mississauga a suburb just west of Toronto population 713,443 many in Erin Mills ,by Meadowvale town center ,Port Credit and Malton .I find it really strange that small cities , suburbs and even towns have highrise apartments it looks so out of place.

I understand in US some cities do have highrise apartments/condos like Chicago , some places in New York like upper Manhattan, Portland and also Miami and Fort Lauderdale by the water but nothing on scale like Canada and for the most part US is not into highrise apartments thing.Even with highrise apartments/condos boom in Miami and Fort Lauderdale it is by the water not like you see Canada all over the place and in the suburbs and looking out of place.



I never understood why the one ,two and three story apartment in most US cities never took of here?

Note there was some similar threads on this topic that I cannot find but if I remember the reply Canada planners where being educated in the UK and looked across the Atlantic for inspiration on urban design and housing issues and took inspiration on the towers in a park concept.

What I don't understand is how a lot of cities in Canada and places in Canada have the same concept? Are there only one or two schools in Canada and so they come out doing the same thing or did the planners take this concept to goverment or is there some Canadian urban planning act. Why did done of them look at US or even in 80's and 90's for that matter? Why is one ,two and three story apartments so foreign to Canada.

Is Canada the urban/city planning schools a close system and what I mean by that there is Canadian urban planning act or code that the planners follow and they not allowed to look at the US or try out new things .

[Dan]

I might have explained this before: it's because the US and Canada went off on slightly different paths when it came to planning after WWII. The following is from my foggy memory of grad school.

American cities at the end of WWII suffered from 15+ years of deferred maintenance and housing overcrowding, Also, the population was very affluent, thanks to the rise of the middle class, unionization, and the effect of the war on Europe's industrial base. After WWII, US economic output accounted for half of the world's total. The result was the emergence of the contemporary low density American suburb; really, something that started after WWII, but fueled in later years by widespread affluence. The American Dream of a detached house with a lawn was an integral part of the culture.

In Canada, household incomes were lower than in the US, so fewer people could afford the cost of a single family house. Single family houses that were built in Canada in the decades after WWII tended to be smaller than in the US. Excluding Montreal, urban expressway systems weren't built until a decade or two after their emergence in the States, so there was less geographic mobility; it was less convenient for a Canadian to live in the suburbs than an American. Most importantly, Canadian planning was inspired not only by what was happening in American suburbs, but also what was going on in Europe, where housing that was destroyed in the war was replaced with high rises; Parisian banlieues, for one example. Remember, during the 1950s and 1960s, Anglo/Scottish Toronto wasn't the most influential city in Canada; Franco/Irish/Jewish Montreal was.

TL/DR: After WWII, American planning practice picked up where it left off. Planning in Canada still followed the American model for the most part, but with a slightly French flavor, with a bit of English Garden City in the mix.

[PennPlanner]

The strongest influences on Canadian planning came from the US and the UK. Postwar British new town planning had a significant impact on the Canadian planning authorities, so one can probably say Canadian planning is a blend of the US and UK styles. In British postwar planning it's not unusual to find high rises plonked down in the middle of low rise residential areas or smaller towns. High rises were seen as a useful means of housing large quantities of people during an age of crippling housing shortages. Of course British postwar planning was influenced by some of the theories and practices on the Continent.

The direct linkage between French influence and Canada is pretty minimal, even today. Quebec may have been a French-speaking province but it was largely a backwater, poor place with the exception of Montreal, and Montreal itself was thoroughly dominated by its Anglo-Scottish-Irish elite, who naturally would have turned to Britain for ideas and cultural resources. Pre-war Canadians generally looked down on the French-speaking minority and it's interesting to note that the decline of Montreal vis a vis Toronto began in the late 1960s, which coincided with the rise of Bloc Quebecois movement. The longer the Bloc-Q were established in power, more and more businesses moved from Montreal to Toronto.

I might have explained this before: it's because the US and Canada went off on slightly different paths when it came to planning after WWII. The following is from my foggy memory of grad school.

American cities at the end of WWII suffered from 15+ years of deferred maintenance and housing overcrowding, Also, the population was very affluent, thanks to the rise of the middle class, unionization, and the effect of the war on Europe's industrial base. After WWII, US economic output accounted for half of the world's total. The result was the emergence of the contemporary low density American suburb; really, something that started after WWII, but fueled in later years by widespread affluence. The American Dream of a detached house with a lawn was an integral part of the culture.

In Canada, household incomes were lower than in the US, so fewer people could afford the cost of a single family house. Single family houses that were built in Canada in the decades after WWII tended to be smaller than in the US. Excluding Montreal, urban expressway systems weren't built until a decade or two after their emergence in the States, so there was less geographic mobility; it was less convenient for a Canadian to live in the suburbs than an American. Most importantly, Canadian planning was inspired not only by what was happening in American suburbs, but also what was going on in Europe, where housing that was destroyed in the war was replaced with high rises; Parisian banlieues, for one example. Remember, during the 1950s and 1960s, Anglo/Scottish Toronto wasn't the most influential city in Canada; Franco/Irish/Jewish Montreal was.

TL/DR: After WWII, American planning practice picked up where it left off. Planning in Canada still followed the American model for the most part, but with a slightly French flavor, with a bit of English Garden City in the mix.

[Dan]

The strongest influences on Canadian planning came from the US and the UK. Postwar British new town planning had a significant impact on the Canadian planning authorities, so one can probably say Canadian planning is a blend of the US and UK styles. In British postwar planning it's not unusual to find high rises plonked down in the middle of low rise residential areas or smaller towns. High rises were seen as a useful means of housing large quantities of people during an age of crippling housing shortages. Of course British postwar planning was influenced by some of the theories and practices on the Continent.

A classic example is Don Mills. I took a tour of Don Mills given by Macklin Hancock, and he described the influence from both the British new town/garden city movement, and the US from Levittown and the Depression-era Greenbelt towns.

Where Canadian cities come to reflect the European influence is in the nature of the high rises, IMHO. In the UK, in the post-WWII era high rise apartments were built mainly as council housing. As in the US, in the UK single family and duplex (semi-attached) housing was the preferred form of housing among the middle class. In Canada, on the other hand, tower blocks were developed as market rate housing.

I wonder if zoning might also be a factor, and the height restrictions that were prevalent in American suburbs weren't as prevalent in the codes of Canadian suburbs. Perhaps immigration was a factor, too; immigration boomed in Canada after WWII, while in the US it was more restricted. The "American dream" of moving to the suburbs and owning a single family home may not have been a priority for a larger part of Canada's growing population.

[nec209]

What I would really like to know why the 1 to 4 story apartments never took of in Canada like the US.

Well the high rise apartments and high rise condos that seems to be mind sent in the city planners in Canada that is really different in US. I also wonder if city planners have any say at all and most is federal standard.Also in the US there may be hundreds of city planning schools where in Canada may be only 2 or 3 ( may be easy to get everyone thinking the same with only 2 or 3 schools.

The city planners may want to build some 1 to 4 story apartments in som areas but not allowed to by federal standards.

Is hard to understand how all these citites and towns thinking the same not taking different paths unless there is only 2 or 3 schools or federal standard.