(12-03-2020, 05:53 PM)dtkvictim Wrote: High density is achievable without highrises, as most of Europe shows, and people here continually praise European cities for their successful planning and design. I fear the lack of high-density midrise neighbourhoods will push people who reject highrise living away to suburbia (this is how I feel, personally). Of course there are cities in the world where the only choice is up, like Tokyo (which is also a city of extremely high quality), but KW could densify insane amounts within our footprint without a single highrise (which isn't to say we shouldn't have any for those who want them).
I completely agree with you. As much as I love tall buildings, they are ultimately not something most people want to live in and have a lot of negative aspects. The architectural theorist Christopher Alexander has a chapter on this in his incredible book titled A Pattern Language (this is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in how we can use design patterns to build everything from homes, neighbourhoods to entire cities and regions - interestingly his architecture theory has long been adopted in software and product design fields). In one section, he cites some studies that have demonstrated that in most cases, people who live in tall buildings have negative impacts on everything from mental health, sunlight to how well children grow up. Section 21 "Four-story Limit" explores this and I'll quote some specific lines:
Quote:High buildings have no genuine advantages, except in speculative gains for banks and land owners. They are not cheaper, they do not help create open space, they destroy the townscape, they destroy social life, they promote crime, they make life difficult for children, they are expensive to maintain, they wreck the open spaces near them, and they damage light and air and view. But quite apart from all of this, which shows that they aren't very sensible, empirical evidence shows that they can actually damage people's minds and feelings.
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A simple mechanism may explain this: high-rise living takes people away from the ground, and away from the casual, everyday society that occurs on the sidewalks and streets and on the gardens and porches. It leaves them alone in their apartments. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which brings people out in the world, the tendency is to stay home, alone. The forced isolation then causes individual breakdowns. Fanning's findings are reinforced by Dr. D. Cappon's clinical experiences reported in "Mental Health and the High Rise," Canadian Public Health Association, April 1971:
There is every reason to believe that high-rise apartment dwelling has adverse effects on mental and social health. And there is sufficient clinical, anecdotal and intuitive observations to back this up.
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At what height do the effects described by Fanning, Cappon, Morville, and Newman begin to take hold? It is our experience that in both housing and office buildings, the problems begin when buildings are more than four stories high.
At three or four stories, one can still walk comfortably down to the street, and from a window you can still feel part of the street scene: you can see details in the street - the people, their faces, foliage, shops. From three stories you can yell out, and catch the attention of someone below. Above four stories these connections break down. The visual detail is lost; people speak of the scene below as if it were a game, from which they are completely detached. The connection to the ground and to the fabric of the town becomes tenuous; the building becomes a world of its own: with its own elevators and cafeterias.
Section 96 expands on this point and suggests ways to determine a humane (my word) way to limit the heights of buildings when possible: http://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl096.htm
Of course, I think we can go slightly above 4 stories. 6-7 is quite common to see throughout Europe, whether they are residential or office buildings. Nonetheless, it would be nice to see more mid-rise developments being constructed of this size here. Both high rise and mid rise have their merits, but mid-rise buildings - generally speaking - provide a better day to day "experience" to those who live in and around them all day as opposed to spending your days existing within an urban realm that is primarily made up of of 40+ floor monoliths, as one would experience in downtown Toronto, Manhattan. Mid-rise buildings provide high density but not so high that those living there become alienated from the world around them as one would feel living trying to raise a family on the 48th floor of a little condo.
For anyone who wants to check out A Pattern Language, you can find it on this website (albeit the layout is quite bad). The preceding book called The Timeless Way of Building is also a fascinating exploration on architecture and planning in a way that attempts to truly benefits human beings. (I don't wish to derail this thread, but nonetheless wanted to share these points as the subject was brought up).