Mississauga: Central Erin Mills
 

All photos taken on October 21, 2021.

Any interior photos of that glass dome thing? Toronto's suburbs will never not be strange looking to me. There seems to be a vaguely eastern bloc character about the GTA...

All of Ontario, not just the GTA, go to Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Kitchener, Guelph, St. Catherine's, etc... they all have the same built environment and are all building a ton of new highrises.

gulliver's baseball on the mall.

That glass dome/globe thing used to be a clock tower but it was recently replaced. I vaguely remember the old Meadowvale Town Centre nearby had a clock tower too before the mall died and got converted into a power centre.

Erin Mills Town Centre not doing so great either, as you can probably see from all the empty space surrounding it. Parking demand not so high. Hopefully with the new condos popping up, more residents within walking distance will help. Maybe all those greenfields can be used for high-rise condos/office/retail developments instead of parking lots.

I visit the mall sometimes to shop for CDs at Sunrise Records, maybe the last record store in Mississauga. It would be interesting to photograph the interiors of one the last surviving malls in Mississauga, including that globe/dome thing, especially to test out my new ultra-wide lens, Olympus 8-25mm F4, but it is private property, and their website does say they do not allow photography, so too bad.

My in-laws live not too far from this mall. I remember the clocktower, and the reno. It is a distant second-place indoor mall to Square One. I still prefer indoor malls over what has come since (big box barf powercentres of irredeemably ugliness).

are they going to redevelop the mall?

I visited Mississauga 15 years ago and remember thinking that it looked weird, like I was in East Berlin before the wall came down, lol

I can see that it still looks weird, but I'm not hating it, it's like a much better version of commieblock satellite cities in eastern Europe

I made a "commie-block" or "eastern" themed thread about Mississauga a couple of years with my The North American Moscow thread a couple of years back. You guys sound like might be interested in seeing that.

The mall is not super busy but it is still doing okay. Plus there is still a lot of undeveloped land around it as you can see. Maybe 8 or 9 more condo or office towers can still be built on those greenfields. So no reason to redevelop the mall. The mall itself one of the main attractions for such high-density development to begin with, and new developments can only help the mall get busier.

This node and the rest of the Eglinton Avenue corridor in Mississauga was originally much more ambitious in terms of density, and Eglinton was even designated a major transit corridor alongside Hurontario Street and Dundas Street, but ultimately the City of Mississauga did not fulfill those ambitions. Not enough demand for high-density living in this area at the time. You can see towers still under construction even now, and of course the land that still remains undeveloped. Maybe not enough investment in transit at the time to justify higher densities and small homes, and maybe you can see the result of the lack of transit priority in these photos.

The glass orb would be perfect to repurpose as a giant version of those daredevil motorcycle domes we used to witness at traveling circuses.

The fat birds (or ducks) are a bit weird in such a place, but overall, it's not bad

My Cousin Karen lives there. The sameness of the Housing and neighborhood's is slightly disconcerting. I got lost every time I rode my bike to Fresh foods. Then I discovered Britannia Bakery. I felt comfortable riding my Bike there. Even in the dead of winter the municipality does a great job keeping the sidewalks and trails clear. The Riverwood trails are fun to explore.

^ Churchill Meadows neighbourhood is next to Central Erin Mills, and it is kinda interesting due to the New Urbanist features. Not nearly as ambitious as what's going on in Markham and Oakville, but maybe it is still worth a photothread one day.

It's great to hear feedback about riding a bike here from someone from the US. Doctor doesn't want me to ride bike anymore because of seizures, but I am still excited about the improvements to the cycling infrastructure happening all over the city in recent years.

I haven't spent much time photographing the urban environment since COVID, so I spend more time in places like Riverwood as well. Of course, I won't post photos of those kind of places on SSP, but I do post them to Flickr, so if you interested you can see my Riverwood Trails photos from last summer and fall: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dreams...77720296108158

sort of reminds me of potomac yards in arlington, beige stucco big box stuck amongst what is now a condo neighborhood with office (more urban than this one so even more disconcerting)

Maybe you can answer a question for me. Do those fallen trees stitch themselves together in the gulleys and ravines? I have never seen that anywhere else. The other thing I have noticed is that the downfalls don't seem to fall windward like everywhere else in Ontario when viewed from above. I find the lack of trail nazis refreshing also. I am constantly being yelled at when I ride in the Don Valley and Waterdown trails. Dog Walkers mostly.

People yelling at you for riding a bike? Really? Maybe trails in Mississauga less crowded, not as much as culture of active transportation compared to Toronto and Hamilton. Maybe more space to build trails, more of them, and wider too, so hopefully they will be able to prevent conflict, because what you describe should not be happening. I just get out the cyclist's way and they get out of my way, if there are any problems, more attention is needed to fix them. Dog walkers who don't clean up after their dogs are the ones I have a problem with.

Are you referring to fallen trees neatly stacked on top of each other like this:
https://davidngo.zenfolio.com/img/s/...37861052-4.jpg

If so, then sorry I don't know much about that, or about the "downfalls" you refer to. I did not spend a lot of time in these parks until recently either.

I did talk to a lady a few months ago who regularly walks along the trail near my house and cuts the vines in the park to prevent them from killing the trees. So there are local residents volunteering to maintain these parks and trails, and maybe that is not true in every park in every city.

Yes. How does that happen? Downfalls are trees that fall during a wind storm. They fall east to west most everywhere.

I went to a park near my house earlier today and noticed many trees nearly fallen west to east in a small space, but wind was also blowing in the same direction, so it's not always blowing from the east. One tree falling might also cause another then another and a whole cascade, so they might fall together. I also noticed many trees fallen east to west.

I think the Riverwood photos also show them fallen in all directions, but I am not sure. As I said these places kinda new to me, so I will have to pay more attention in the future. I have recently been wondering why the trees even fall so much, I was thinking that it might yet another disturbance caused by people visiting these parks and trails. It is good that it is just a natural phenomenon.

St. Catharines ;)