Regional differences in urban form/typology

[Proof Sheet]

This brick colour is what I think of when I think of SW Ontario. In eastern Ontario it is quite rare

https://maps.app.goo.gl/wrzk1V7ZBxK8kcxX9

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

But just as a general impression, it feels as if inner-city areas in, say, Toronto or Halifax are largely full of old houses—to use some Halifax examples, they may be a little worse for wear, or beautifully restored, or given a stripped down modern look, but the structures are old.

The New England influence in the Maritimes is quite evident in these Halifax pics.

[urbandreamer]

Originally Posted by Proof Sheet

This brick colour is what I think of when I think of SW Ontario. In eastern Ontario it is quite rare

https://maps.app.goo.gl/wrzk1V7ZBxK8kcxX9

It's called Brampton or Brantford white brick, because the local clay had less iron deposits and thus produced a white not red color in the kiln. Love it with green trim, the grey wooden steps and porch: the only place grey is permitted in residential architecture! (By the order of good taste & economic sense. Remember, grey paint is cheap! Paupers paint.)

[Architype]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

...
But just as a general impression, it feels as if inner-city areas in, say, Toronto or Halifax are largely full of old houses—to use some Halifax examples, they may be a little worse for wear, or beautifully restored, or given a stripped down modern look, but the structures are old.

...

I lived in the green house with the red trim, in the "beautifully restored" link for a few months. It's nice to see they look so good now.

[Build.It]

Bricks are another interesting topic unto itself. In southern and SW Ontario developers almost exclusively use bricks for the exterior cladding of buildings. Somewhere around Kingston is where Istart noticing that they use bricks for the front, but for the sides and rear thry'll some sort of siding instead. In Edmonton developers almost never use brick. They'll use sidings for the e tire house, but these sidings will typically be of a higher quality than you will ever see used on Ontario homes.

I don't know much about the buildings cladding business, but there must be some economic reason for this - probably due to where the producers are located and how much freight is a factor in the transportation of their products. My assumption is that bricks are only made in Ontario, but because they're so heavy, freight quickly becomes more expensve the further out you go (flatbed trucks are a lot more expensive than regular 40ft trailers for various reasons).

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by niwell

This is a comparison I've never heard before! I wouldn't say they're exactly common in Calgary, but it still seems to have significantly more than any other Canadian city. The only part of the city that has enough to make an impression IMO are the neighbourhoods West of Sarcee but East of 69th SW - Signal Hill, Coach Hill etc. My dad/stepmom's place has one just west of the city and they had to have a significantly more reinforced ceiling joists to support the weight. They're everywhere in Joburg but houses tend to be much more low-slung - thatch roofs are very common too.

I can see the similarity between Signal Hill and Greenstone, which is one of the most "North American" feeling places in Joburg (though more like Southern California)

Signal Hill: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GYwKpJRu515PkP3K7
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zDVfdDcinexMdFJX6

Greenstone: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hp4o6fCMj4mpEq127
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TUtBVJco8HVZY4cg6

I will say that while impressive, the thunderstorms / hail storms I experienced growing up in the West of Calgary had nothing on the big summer Joburg storms. Really felt like the sky was just falling.

I grew up in Woodbine in the SW and we had to get our red tile roof redone with grey clay or slate tiles after a nasty hailstorm. They were fairly common there and in other 90’s neighbourhoods mimicking California with the pastel stucco and tile roofs.

[Build.It]

Originally Posted by niwell

My dad/stepmom's place has one just west of the city and they had to have a significantly more reinforced ceiling joists to support the weight. They're everywhere in Joburg but houses tend to be much more low-slung - thatch roofs are very common too.

That's interesting about the angles of the roofs - I never noticed it before until you mentioned.

House construction over there is quite different there though. There are no basements and the entire house's walls are made bricks and there is no insulation at all. The winters aren't cold enough to justify that extra expense, and people would rather just use space heaters in every room.

And then of course the elephant in the room is that every house in the developed areas has a wall with barbed wire around it. From a Canadian perspective it sounds so surreal, but I remember that just being completely normal.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Build.It

That's interesting about the angles of the roofs - I never noticed it before until you mentioned.

House construction over there is quite different there though. There are no basements and the entire house's walls are made bricks and there is no insulation at all. The winters aren't cold enough to justify that extra expense, and people would rather just use space heaters in every room.

And then of course the elephant in the room is that every house in the developed areas has a wall with barbed wire around it. From a Canadian perspective it sounds so surreal, but I remember that just being completely normal.

Joburg winters are colddddd inside! No insulation - when it’s 6 degrees outside it’s no more than 13 inside. And yeah the space heaters. My pals there didn’t understand how we withstood Canadian winters and I had to explain insulation and central heating!

Razor wire is mostly in lower-middle class areas. Most of north Joburg has electric fences that automatically trip the alarm when touched. Are you from SA? I just lived there for a bit. Amazing place but there’s a lot of stuff we would find shocking here. Our backyard cottage in a house had a 10 ft wall with an electric fence and cctv (it didn’t work, just a deterrent). Some of my friends places have pretty high tech security - others have none and have had no issues as they go with the “don’t make a target” approach. All our windows had burglar bars and the main sliding door had a slam gate we made sure was closed at night.

Speaking of urban typography I made sure to stay in places that were walkable and did most of my errands on foot. Have some friends in the CBD who have never owned a car too.

[urbandreamer]

Is Johannesburg affordable for a month vacation? My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all lived there off and on between 1902 and 1962.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Winnipeg and Edmonton are very similar: long main streets with failing small businesses, empty storefronts surrounded by neat rows of tree-lined woodframed semis and further out, small 1920s-50s bungalows. Many parking lots downtown, a distinct government area, shiny ambitious but rather pathetic attempts at urban infill/renewal and really the main growth being cheap ugly suburban sprawl. Separate university campuses with decent prewar built form across the river.

Brandon, Lethbridge, Regina, Moose Jaw are very similar to smaller Ontario cities like Windsor, Sarnia, Orillia, Lindsay, Peterborough, Stratford. Moose Jaw could be Woodstock or Chatham.

Most of Canada's cities were laid out by railroad executives between the 1860s & 1890s so of course they'll be similar, built by Scottish/Scots-Irish Masons with English catalog architecture, mostly reflecting smaller cities and towns across England, Scotland and Ireland.

Today I was exploring Fairbanks/Earlscourt/Oakwood areas of Toronto: again aside from the brick cladding, the built form with a mix of tiny bungalows, detached and semis with quite a number of apartment buildings is seen anywhere from Edmonton to South of Broadway Vancouver to Regina etc.

Canada: mostly built by the Scots and designed by the English. More Ulsterman in Ontario/West vs Glaswegians in Montreal and Empire Loyalists/English Yankees in Sherbrooke/Eastern Townships and Upper Class English/French in Quebec City.

Not to nitpick, but Windsor is a mid sized Ontario city, and has a Metro population At least 4 times these other cities you list it with, plus I don’t see any similarities at all with those western Canada cities you compared it to.

[urbandreamer]

True, Windsor is more like Lachine or Jean Talon, not surprising since the French planned the city. Maybe Thunder Bay is a bit like Windsor: two separate downtown areas strung together by a grid of SFH and rundown main streets. I really like Windsor but I'd rather live in Detroit, or rather, Ann Arbor. Aside from Calgarians, Windsorites are refreshingly outgoing and friendly.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Northern Ontario's frontier look

That's a kind assessment.

I would call it a 'company town' look.

[Build.It]

Originally Posted by niwell

Are you from SA? I just lived there for a bit. Amazing place but there’s a lot of stuff we would find shocking here.

Yeah. Our family moved here when I was a kid though and I haven't been back since I was 10 in the 90s, but I still remember quite a bit, and obviously hear a lot from relatives. I would like to visit again as an adult, but have been putting it off for 10 years now.

It's interesting to hear how the country has changed. Car guards weren't very common when we lived there for example. Nor were electric fences. Crime was very high back then as well, but back then people had more basic security systems, and just risked it a bit more when they went out.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Bricks are another interesting topic unto itself. In southern and SW Ontario developers almost exclusively use bricks for the exterior cladding of buildings. Somewhere around Kingston is where Istart noticing that they use bricks for the front, but for the sides and rear thry'll some sort of siding instead. In Edmonton developers almost never use brick. They'll use sidings for the e tire house, but these sidings will typically be of a higher quality than you will ever see used on Ontario homes.

I don't know much about the buildings cladding business, but there must be some economic reason for this - probably due to where the producers are located and how much freight is a factor in the transportation of their products. My assumption is that bricks are only made in Ontario, but because they're so heavy, freight quickly becomes more expensve the further out you go (flatbed trucks are a lot more expensive than regular 40ft trailers for various reasons).

Funny enough, my first 2 houses we built in London in 1996 and 2002 had brick front and vinyl siding on the sides and rear. It was a very expensive upgrade to brick the entire house. This was one of those streets, now a student neighbourhood.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.01777...8192?entry=ttu

[ssiguy]

Windsor's road layout in very interesting and probably the only one like in English Canada. This is due to Windsor being originally a French settlement and long thin roads from a river is typical of French Canada. This was to allow as many houses as possible to have access to a river exactly the same as you see on the St/Lawrence in Quebec.

London is renowned for it's yellow brick houses and has more than any other place in the country. Speaking of brick, it is one of the first things I noticed when coming to Vancouver..........there are basically no brick homes at all which is a shame because they tend to age much better than wood or especially the horrible vinyl siding. Traditional rowhomes are essentially non-existent anywhere in BC which is a shame as they wouldn't have been as easy to tear down like all the SFHs have been.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by jonny24

Permitting difference? Maybe it's easier to get approval for a new build, vs if it's a pain in the ass you just renovate?

I think the bigger difference is that housing in inner cities in the east tends to be attached & lots are smaller, making it harder to redevelop. That, and the existing stock of housing is generally comprised of larger, well-built brick & masonry structures as opposed to first wave of modest wood-framed homes in the Prairies.

Many of the nice old heritage homes you see in places like Toronto or Montreal were themselves replacements of hastily-built Georgian (or earlier Victorian)-era housing.

Originally Posted by niwell

Yes! I've posted this before but a lot of Timmins neighbourhoods remind me of the York "unplanned suburbs" era of Toronto where people just built houses on platted land. The Earlscourt area urbandreamer referenced above. It's not as tightly packed but kind of a similar vibe.

Sudbury has vestiges of urban Southern Ontario amongst more modern stuff. It looks like it was meant to be a big city in certain areas. Dryden reminds me of larger cities in Alberta in form. TBay is a bit of it's own thing.

I've explored Timmins a bit on streetview, and yeah, the inner residential neighbourhoods like they could be straight out of the York/Eglinton West/Keele/Dufferin area. It's of a similar vintage & scale - just less brick. Also has a very Southern European population - which doesn't really impact the architecture, but it lends some similarities to some of the landscaping & decoration you see:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fYxpW9aa7cMu9Pyd7

Sault Ste. Marie has some interesting, narrow residential streets, though the built density is still much "airier" than Timmins:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zQVE5ktzFGqt2Dws7

Thunder Bay reminds me a bit of an American Rustbelt town - there are some surprisingly grand old structures (including a couple pre-war high rises), but there's otherwise a lot of abandonment and visible decay. It's a city that feels like it was meant for a much bigger population:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/oJcmLk3FXqNttpLn9
https://maps.app.goo.gl/PG5ucBUUmWpjKuP39

[Docere]

Neither Toronto or Ottawa don't really have a rich side of town and a working class side of town in the way you do in Montreal, Vancouver or Winnipeg - i.e. draw down a certain street or river and all the richest areas lie on one side of it.

(Many other cities seem to follow the working class east/more affluent west pattern: Hamilton, London, Kingston).

[Djeffery]

I think maybe in Toronto's case, it was a matter of the city spreading out so much and absorbing surrounding communities. Those surrounding communities may have started their own east/west thing but when the entire area fills up, your west end now becomes part of the next city's east end. Hamilton doesn't really have a choice, the lake kind of dictates which way they grow.

London isn't hemmed in by anything other than lines on a map, which have changed over the decades. So the higher end housing keeps spreading upwind to the west and north, and the somewhat more affordable housing finds its way among the industrial east side of town. You can still see smaller examples of the historical communities that originally merged to make London and how they had their east/west working class/business class divides.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

It's called Brampton or Brantford white brick, because the local clay had less iron deposits and thus produced a white not red color in the kiln. Love it with green trim, the grey wooden steps and porch: the only place grey is permitted in residential architecture! (By the order of good taste & economic sense. Remember, grey paint is cheap! Paupers paint.)

I've never heard those names before. Growing up in Kitchener, we always referred to it as "buff brick".

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

I think maybe in Toronto's case, it was a matter of the city spreading out so much and absorbing surrounding communities. Those surrounding communities may have started their own east/west thing but when the entire area fills up, your west end now becomes part of the next city's east end.

Not sure about that. In the expansion of the city up until WWI, annexation occurred before the population growth.

There is however a westward bias to growth in Toronto. The inner city west end has about twice the population as the east end. And the east tended to develop a bit later:

https://southofbloorstreet.blogspot....than-west.html

West end was mostly built up by 1914, the east end continued to grow during the interwar period. Also the old borough of York is a bit older than equidistant East York.