Anyone else go? I was there for a couple hours and here are my observations:
- Very well attended this year
- Some very elaborate "kiosks"
- The quality of proposals has gone up exponentially in the last couple of years
- The various developers' areas of focus and approaches to development are becoming more apparent and more obviously different from one another in many cases. Most of them are going in a direction that I like personally, though not all.
- There is a lot more collaboration between different architecture/planning/development/engineering/real estate firms than I realized. Then there seem to be a few that are more or less completely integrated. In some cases even the integrated ones collaborate, although sometimes they do not.
- There seems to be a much better understanding of "urban theory" within the general public than there was a few years ago
- The two speeches I saw (Frank Palermo and Jacob Ritchie) were excellent - Palermo very passionately asserted that we should be investing in light rail now rather than later and a lot of people cheered. Ritchie's was a more pragmatic discussion of the Centre Plan, and in many ways a direct follow-up to many of Palermo's critiques of/questions about the Centre Plan only a few minutes earlier.
- There were a lot of renderings that had not been released yet and they all looked great
- St. Joseph's Square has a new design that many of you will probably prefer
- The mood was uncharacteristically optimistic for this kind of thing
I am kicking myself for not going this year by your report - this is the first year I haven't gone as I was underwhelmed the last few years. I have been looking to see if there were photos of projects, but couldn't find any.
I was there and took in both of those speakers presentations.. ( i was the guy who asked the transit question at the end of jacob's presentation) Great event, great turnout, and some really great proposals.. All in all if half of what was shown there gets built we will be doing very well.
I was there and took in both of those speakers presentations.. ( i was the guy who asked the transit question at the end of jacob's presentation) Great event, great turnout, and some really great proposals.. All in all if half of what was shown there gets built we will be doing very well.
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