legalizeit

Here's a thumbnail of the trail map. Click on it to be linked to the full glory.

Some village shots as requested: night falls and the après après is in full swing with people staggering between the youth hostel and the lodge bar. Many of the tourists from overseas stay in the mid-range Hotel Korvu, a modern building conveniently located near the Ruby base and, most importantly, two hot tubs. Meanwhile, the locals' preferred watering hole is Galileo's, a pub which first opened when the ski area was just a booth and a T-bar.

Oh thanks, erm, yup, it's "medical"... Most of our power in Vancouver comes from hydro dams in the interior and the north. We're talking out in the Rockies, a good 8 hour drive away sort of thing. But within the metro area there is a big natural gas facility in Belcarra, which is on the Burrard Inlet north of Port Moody. This might be a realistic place to put a bunch of power plants. Iona is actually a sewage treatment plant. There are also some Vancouver BATs you might want to look into. I've definitely seen the Bentall Centre and the RBC building on the STEX. A whole bunch of glass-wall high density condos along your "False Creek" would also go some way in getting the look, but I don't know what's out there on that score.

As someone who lives in Vancouver I find this fascinating and I'm looking forward to seeing your solution for the West Broadway transit gong show Also it's a good thing this isn't a re-creation, I imagine some of my fellow Vancouverites having brain aneurysms at the idea of a nuclear power plant island in the harbour!

Winter's on the way and I'm already getting pretty stoked for ski season. In that spirit I ended up playing around with the PEG Ski Resort Kit and some chairlift/gondola sets I found on a French website, and the result is a ski town of about 2000 folks and a sprawling system of lifts. One of the on-mountain huts at the top of the Kirri Gondola. The skicross course and one of the gladed runs, known as the Hitchhiker Glades because the highway is at the bottom and in the early days before the chairlift was put in skiers would hitchhike back to the lodge. Here's a mosaic showing most of the Kadendell Gondola, which is the main way to get from the base onto the mountain, and the Bird's Eye chair, which accesses the bowls and the out of bounds backcountry. This map below gives a bigger view of the overall ski area. I'll be making a bigger and more detailed trail map soon.

business friendly environmentquote> Not always a good thing! Too often it's an euphemism for letting them run amok and giving tax breaks, all of which comes at a cost to the average city-dweller. I'd much rather my city spend money improving parks and city services than give some multinational a tax break to move in - and the very fact they're enticed by that means they'll just as easily up and leave if another city gives them a better deal. We'd get too far off-topic if we went into the reasons why, but there's a reason tightly regulated economies like the Scandinavian countries have better quality of life than free-market corporatocratic ones like the United States. It's also quite silly to just compare subway statistics. What about the streetcars? Shouldn't we include buses as well? "[city] vs. [city]" can mean so many things and there isn't really any objective way to say one is better than the other. New York obviously has a great deal more cultural and economic significance, but that doesn't necessarily make it a better place to live than in the shadow of what was for 30 years the world's tallest tower. Neither is big-city life for everyone, I'm sure some look at "New York or Toronto?" and answer "Thunder Bay" or "Providence".

Originally posted by: hawkpride147 3. I still would have to contend that by having the UN and embassies, and such, ny is the most. culturally diverse city...you can walk down one block in ny and hear 15 different languages...and that's in the areas where tourists won't dare go. quote> Toronto is, generally speaking, more diverse than New York. Almost half the population of Toronto were born outside Canada. In addition, because Canada's philosophy is multiculturalism (as vs. American assimilation), that bit of hyperbole just might literally be true in Toronto. Toronto has more serious businesses to attend to rather than watching a game of baseball or whatever.quote> That's because their sports teams have such an amazing spirit of loserness watching them is torture *AHEM* Leafs suck *COUGH*

The full glory of this map simply won't fit the 800x600 image restriction, so I'll send to you this link... and tease you with this:

Originally posted by: hawkpride147 another point in this discussion...how many songs are there about NY vs how many about toronto? same thing with movies...quote> Actually, Toronto probably is in more movies than New York - except that TO almost never plays itself. Your dark epiphanies, your true lines and smoke Your glistening rails and streetcars all aglow. "Always the wind and the persistent snow Gets into your eyes and your mouth and every fold of your coat" Everybody hates you but they don't know what I know It's Christmastime, Christmastime in Toronto...

The Tokyo Tower perhaps? Part of the purpose in building it was to create such a landmark. But such icons are overrated in my view. When I visited as a tourist last year it was the life of the city itself that made for a great time. If you're asking "why doesn't Tokyo have iconic tall buildings", I'd ask, "why should it need them?"

Originally posted by: toxicpiano I don't quite understand the comparison in the OP...quote> I think he's trying to say, how is it that one of the world's most important and famous cities doesn't have a building taller than a city most people wouldn't be able to place on a map? He probably finds this strange. But I echo the point others have made - since when are cities judged by the height of their tallest building?

Originally posted by: shpangler Toronto, although it may be Canada's largest city, is just another mass produced North American city with really not much uniqueness to it.....quote> You have got to be kidding. Few cities have the same kind of vibrant multicultural flavour Toronto has, and it most definitely has a strong character all its own. If you honestly think Toronto is "just another city" you need to learn more about it.

Well, Tokyo is an earthquake-prone city and probably has building regulations because of that, so that may account for the seeming blandness of the skyline. All the same, I think people really focus too much on skylines; cities are much more than just that. There's lots of great architecture, old and new, that isn't 300m tall.

Just because people are always comparing to something doesn't mean it must be the best. It could also be negative, in the "well, at least we aren't New York" sense as well as "we're just as good as New York". And of course, inevitably that kind of statement will invite a flood of people touting the merits of London, Tokyo and Paris which are generally considered the other "premier league" cities.