Results tagged “burjdubai”

She was crowned with her towering spire on April 2, 1975, rising nearly six hundred metres above the Toronto waterfront. A year and a half later, on October 1, 1976, her doors were opened to the public for the very first time, the jewel of the skyline and a beacon to the world—and to anyone with misplaced bearings in the downtown core.

Photo by the_anim8r from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It’s finally going to happen: after years of seeing challengers boast of their aspirations only to fall short, in a matter of days or weeks, the CN Tower will be surpassed as the world’s tallest free-standing structure by the Burj Dubai, an office and condo tower in the United Arab Emirates. The 553.3-metre-tall tower has held the distinction for the last 31 years, making this the perfect opportunity for Torontoist to reflect on its history and ambiguous place in the collective imagination of the city. Will Torontonians be struck with a collective identity crisis, or will the occasion pass largely unnoticed by locals, who long ago relegated the spire to afterthought status?

In spite of legislation passed by opposition parties requiring the government to achieve Kyoto standards by 2012, the Conservative government has presented their original plan which doesn't even come close. A spokesperson said "We wanted to meet our Kyoto obligations, but it looked like it was going to be really hard." The government did say they were commited to ensuring that future generations had a climate of some kind.

Bad Buildings recently had the unusual ambivalent fortune (that is to say, neither good nor bad; we're reserving judgment lest you get the impression we're an urbanity snob—heaven forbid) of traveling north on Hurontario Street in Mississauga, past the intersection of Burnamthorpe Road. For the urbanity snobs among you, this would be Mississauga downtown—a nifty bit of urban planning that says, hey, we CAN build a "city" out of nuthin'. (Note ambivalent tone torquing only-and-ever-so-slightly)