Comment 40257

By K (anonymous) | Posted April 28, 2010 at 22:33:52

Hello all...
Just happened upon this website recently, and fell in love. Suddenly there are other people matching my weekly rants as I drive through town! I've lived in Burlington since before I was born until a month ago. I'm part of an architectural office in lower Hamilton and now I'm a brand-new Hamiltonian.

I've read numerous articles/blogs on RTH over the last week, and gotta say, there's one recurring thought I see missing. Everyone keeps talking about how you must build up to the sidewalk... I accept that point with a couple of conditions:

- First, not always! If we have nothing but street walls there is no greenspace and no mental break. Even in the heart of a downtown, have a streetwall for a couple blocks, and then set them back (e.g., the City Hall/Cdn Football HoF/Library stretch on Main).

- Second, we must remember SCALE! Hamilton has tons of buildings at the sidewalk, and some of them are scaled so large you miss them entirely. I drove through Hamilton every few days for a couple of years and never noticed some of the landmark buildings (e.g., Civic bldg/various churches). When you build big buildings, you tend to (logically) scale up the details. Well, if you build to the sidewalk, there's no way to see any of it unless you walk around looking up at the sky. What's the point of building to an architectural style if all you see walking around is the foundation wall?

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