General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[ijmorlan]

Yeah, educational campuses are generally flat and sprawling to handle the foot traffic. Towers are thus not ideal.

They don’t need to be either. In particular, the spaces between the buildings are in no way needed in order to accommodate foot traffic; indeed, the spaces between the buildings make the walking routes longer. If the buildings are right next to each other, then it becomes easier to provide links between the buildings on multiple levels, which can spread out the traffic between floors and avoid congestion at ground level.

Having everything in one building actually makes a lot of sense for minimizing distances. The only issue I see with a tower is vertical circulation. Depending on how many floors are involved, this could be fixed with stairs and/or escalators.

Returning back to the specific 22 Frederick idea, I suspect vertical circulation would be the problem with that idea. But a single low-rise building (maybe the full-block podium under a taller tower) could work.