Architecture Codex #135 Pan Am Building, NYC by Walter Gropius

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajf3nICq64o

Central Park, NYC

 https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/1r92f3b/new_york_most_iconic_city_in_the_world/

270 Park Avenue, NYC

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DTF01QizRQ

Rockefeller Center, NYC

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c19_h-H5l4k

The BRUTAL TRUTH about Living in Washington State

Washington's Dark Side Exposed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrhL0ih2XcI 

A cold, crappy dark and damp fall and winter is common. It's almost as bad as Vancouver, Canada. However, it's important to point out that Seattle and Vancouver never froze over like Minneapolis and Winnipeg, Chicago and Toronto, NYC and Montreal, Boston and Halifax. 

Hudson Yards

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq-VyakJf9c  

NYC

World’s Tallest Towers Comparison

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pmnf8npA8 

There was a time when no structure in BC was allowed to be as tall as Blackpool Tower. Then there was a time when no building in Vancouver was allowed to be as tall as the Seattle Space needle or the Calgary Tower. Even in late 2025, only one Vancouver building has been allowed to be taller than the Calgary Tower. 

Burnaby, Coquitlam and especially Surrey, don't have such imposed height restrictions as stumpy Vancouver. Thus, Burnaby, Coquitlam and Surrey will all be having taller buildings than Vancouver.  

If Montreal can ever have its equivalent of La_Defense or Canary_Wharf, then it might be able to have some tall buildings that would be impressive by Melbourne and Toronto standards. Perhaps even Chicago or NYC standards. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Defense 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf

Newly-Opened overpass at Church Avenue on the B and Q Lines in NYC

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9YON6kFIkU 

New York City's Subway Infrastructure is absolutely WILD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We8_E8uX_tU

Front Window View: NYC Subway - R32 Train from Crescent St through the Yard to 96th S

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPS8Za7CCOY

Cities, the BIG and the small of it

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/CN_Tower_1976.jpg/330px-CN_Tower_1976.jpg , https://www.britannica.com/topic/CN-Tower Standing at a height of 1,815 feet (553 meters)  

1815' divided by 581' is almost 3.13 times the height of a stump in Vancouver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbour_Centre "Skyscraperpage lists the buildings height to the roof as being only 139.6 m (458 ft). This is stated to be the height from the Hastings Street entrance while the height from the back entrance on Cordova Street is 146 m (479 ft). It also lists the buildings pinnacle height to the tip of the antenna as being 177.1 m (581 ft)." STUMP!

This Vancouver stump is only 32% of the CN Towers height. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/A_look_downtown_%28759827996%29.jpg/960px-A_look_downtown_%28759827996%29.jpg The Harbour_Centre building should have been on the scale of something like the Hopewell_Centre_(Hong_Kong). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Canadian_Place The BMO. Unlike Chicago, Toronto has no 100 story office towers.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/First_Canadian_Place_August_2017_01.jpg/500px-First_Canadian_Place_August_2017_01.jpg Its a 72 story HQ tower in Toronto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentall_Centre_(Vancouver)#Three_Bentall_Centre A 32 story BC office stump.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Bentall_3.jpg/330px-Bentall_3.jpg

Being from small Vancouver, its amazing that Canada even has one megacity. Toronto is certainly a big city on a lakeshore like Chicago is. Montreal isn't allowed to have buildings as tall as Melbourne, let alone NYC. Montreal has allowed only one office tower to be over 50 floors and a few residential towers in the 60s. 

Calgary has more 50+ story office towers than Denver and Perth. No 40 story office tower exists in BC. The office section of the Harbour_Centre doesn't even have a 30th floor and the revolving restaurant is closer to being like 35 floors up. However, with the overall building being 481 feet, it would be equivalent to 40 floors, if the windows went right up to the top. The flagpole has no windows, but the flag would be like the equivalent of being 48 floors up.

Not just Toronto & Montreal, but Edmonton and Seattle have longer underground train stations than backwards, congested Vancouver. 

The Iron+Bridge, Oak+Street+Bridge, Knight+Street+Bridge & the Arthur+Laing+Bridge should all have a bus+and+bike bridge built next to them. The extremely inadequate Lion+Bridge should have already had a bus and train tunnel close to it. 

World Cup lodging shortfall predicted in Vancouver

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/airbnb-wants-str-rules-relaxed-for-upcoming-2026-fifa-world-cup-in-vancouver-1.7649128  

The proposed 27-storey hotel tower at the edge of Stanley Park is drawing pushback from West End residents over its scale https://vancouversun.com/news/proposed-west-end-tower-that-aims-to-fill-vancouvers-hotel-shortage Parking lots and almost delapadeted buildings should be selected first. This building still seems to be in reasonable shape. 

https://www.biv.com/news/real-estate/vancouver-needs-10k-more-hotel-rooms-says-report-10508458

https://vancouversun.com/news/vancouver-major-hotel-policy-overhaul-room-shortage

https://www.destinationvancouver.com/media/media-releases/BC-hotel-association-provides-recommendations-to-spur-new-hotel-development 

Lots of people in some parts of the West_End end are still accustomed to stumpy buildings, despite the very high land costs. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Vancouver-stanley-park.jpg/960px-Vancouver-stanley-park.jpg Many other cities aren't afraid to build tall close to the water or parks.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Vancouver_west_end.jpg/960px-Vancouver_west_end.jpg People shouldn't be displace just becaus of a new development. An agreement should be reached so that they can still remain in the new structure. However, it's the height issue that usually keeps popping up. A lot of people that still remember Vancouver as a provincial backwater of a city want it to remain that way for as long as possible.

https://www.shapeyourcity.ca/2030-2038-barclay-st , https://stop2030barclay.ca 

https://henriquezpartners.com/projects/2030-barclay The height proposal is at lest a dozen floors too short, it should be about 20 stories taller.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/2030-barclay-street-vancouver-stanley-park-hotel-tower

https://storeys.com/marcon-barclay-street-vancouver-hotel The issue here is that a lot of people don't want a stump replaced with an atempt of a taller building. The people that live there should have the option to live in the new building. If the city and the developer could reach an agreement to allow the current residents to move into the lower floors of the tower. Then remain there at a reasonable rental rate for as long as they want. Then eventually after all the former residents have moved on or passed on, the lower floors could be repurposed into hotel rooms. If a developer in such a situation could agree to that, then the city should allow them to build 15-20 floors higher than 27 stories.

That gets back to the height restriction issue in Vancouver. Other cities have allowed tall buildings right up to the edge of a park. It seems that no one from Vancouver was able to ever stop Sydney. Rather, the Vancouver Mind Virus (VMV) never made it there to thwart big, bustling Sydney.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Sydney_CBD_on_a_sunny_day.jpg/960px-Sydney_CBD_on_a_sunny_day.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Global_Citizen_Festival_Central_Park_New_York_City Anything like the VMV would have thwartted NYC so badly. 

Of course it would have been great if there was future space south of the Hotel+Vancouver (with only 507 rooms) to build a 55-65 story tower. A VPL and Hotel+Vancouver tower could have been started there in the mid 1950s, but Vancouver was still too much of a provincial backwater then. The Fairmont_Royal_York is nice and wide with 1,363 rooms. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westin_St._Francis "...the St. Francis one of the largest hotels in the city, with more than 1,254 rooms and suites." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_San_Francisco_Union_Square "Renovated in 2017, it is the largest hotel on the West Coast,^[8] with 1,921 rooms."

Fortunately, Sydney, Melbourne, SF and Toronto were never under anything like a Vancouverization agenda. Somehow that backwards mentality was never adopted in most real cities.

https://bcbusiness.ca/industries/real-estate/land-values-how-the-hotel-shortage-in-vancouver-is-coinciding-with-a-boom-in-tourism The BC Mind Virus is so firmly entrenched that its still very difficult to properly upgrade things.

 https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=BC+hotel+shortage

Can $68BN Save New York’s Subway?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGy65I_9pDw 

NYC

The $7BN Skyscraper That Might Save NYC’s Skyline

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w81YsYX6I

Multnomah County, Oregon and Clark County, Washington

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multnomah_County,_Oregon While Portland is so tiny when compared to NYC, it still has the potential to become a big city like Seattle, someday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_County,_Washington Vancouver, WA is basically a suburb of Portland. However, V-WA could eventually become like a smaller version of Jersey_City,_New_Jersey. 

Its a case of a smaller river city next to a larger river city, that is part of a metropolitan area. 

The New_York_metropolitan_area is the most densely populated and the biggest in the US. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Geography 

The Portland_metropolitan_area could potentially become as big as the Seattle_metropolitan_area, some day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_metropolitan_area#Metropolitan_statistical_area  

Seattle is already a larger city than Boston. However, the Seattle_metropolitan_area still isn't quite as big as the Greater_Boston Area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area#Geography 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Boston#Metropolitan_Area  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England Boston

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest Seattle 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest#Population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City-Windsor_Corridor Montreal and Toronto

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary-Edmonton_Corridor No hindrence from backwards BC.

Then there is backwards Vancouver and the Lower_Mainland part of BC. Short trains and mostly narrow bridges are hindering the region, by design. The regional passenger rail and the freight rail lines all need to be properly upgraded.

Don't forget the provincial backwater that is Victoria,_British_Columbia. At least Greater_Victoria has the potential to become a major island metropolitan area, someday. There should be a 4 track passenger and freight line between Victoria and Nanaimo and even up to Comox.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953 Novel) and height limits

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 Two decades before Ray_Bradbury would start writing what would eventually lead to his F 451 novel, LA was sort of close to imposing a 451 foot height limit. However, the LA City Hall would end up being slightly taller than 451 feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall "Dedication ceremonies were held on April 26, 1928. It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high..."  

"A City Council ordinance passed in 1905 did not permit any new construction to be taller than 13 stories or 150 ft (46 m) in order to keep the city's architecture harmonious. City Hall's 454 ft (138 m) height was deemed exempt as a public building and assured that no building would surpass one third its height for over three decades until the ordinance was repealed by voter referendum in 1957." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall#History  

https://laist.com/news/entertainment/city-hall-tall 454' not 451 feet, but close nonetheless. LA didn't have to wait until 1953, because it was pondering a 450'-455 foot height restriction in the mid to late 1920s. Of course NYC and Chicago already had tall buildings in the 1920s, so perhaps LA wanted to symbolize an F-U to them by keeping buildings under 500 feet until the mid to late 1960s. 

"The writing and theme within Fahrenheit 451 was explored by Bradbury in some of his previous short stories. Between 1947 and 1948, Bradbury wrote "Bright Phoenix", a short story about a librarian who confronts a "Chief Censor", who burns books. An encounter Bradbury had in 1949 with the police inspired him to write the short story "The Pedestrian" in 1951. In "The Pedestrian", a man going for a nighttime walk in his neighborhood is harassed and detained by the police. In the society of "The Pedestrian", citizens are expected to watch television as a leisurely activity, a detail that would be included in Fahrenheit 451. Elements of both "Bright Phoenix" and "The Pedestrian" would be combined into The Fireman, a novella published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951. Bradbury was urged by Stanley Kauffmann, an editor at Ballantine Books, to make The Fireman into a full novel. Bradbury finished the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and the novel was published later that year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Writing_and_development 

F 451 was published in 1953, on 10-19.   

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13079982-fahrenheit-451 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Historical_and_biographical_context 

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/summary  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Writing_and_development  

Did Metropolis_(1927_film) help to restrict the height of tall buildings in LA for several decades? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)#Influences  

Whether the LA City Hall is 454', 453' or 452 feet, it's not exactly 451 feet, but still close enough. 

https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archives-20190403-htmlstory.html "The 32-story, 454-foot-tall Los Angeles City Hall opened with a three-day public celebration April 26-28, 1928. Construction started in 1926."

https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/city-hall/4376 138.4 m / 454 ft 

https://buildingsdb.com/CA/los-angeles/los-angeles-city-hall "The Los Angeles City Hall reaches an architectural height of 453ft (138m). It has a total of 32 floors, 28 above ground and 4 basements..."  

https://www.travelinusa.us/visit-los-angeles-city-hall "At the time of construction, a regulation was in effect in the city that prohibited buildings taller than 150 feet. Los Angeles City Hall was therefore an exception and, at an impressive 32 stories and a height of 452 feet, it remained the tallest building in Los Angeles until 1964 when Union Bank Plaza opened." 

https://waterandpower.org/Museum2/Los_Angeles_City_Hall_1928.html 

https://www.c40.org/cities/los-angeles 

By the 1970s, LA, SF, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Toronto, Montreal and Paris, all had some buildings over 600 feet or even over 200 m. 

https://www.c40.org/cities/vancouver 

Unfortunately by the 1970s, stubborn and backwards Vancouver wanted to go in the opposite direction of most cities. Thus, a kind of censoring agenda was implemented. SF and Sydney and even Seattle, proved that a scenic city by the water can have taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains than what little Vancouver would allow.

While there isn't any direct correlation with the F 451 story and Vancouver, BC imposing a height limit, there is something peculiar. Some people might consider that if a building is around 500 feet in height, or at least 150 m, that's in the category of starting to be a tall building. 

Well, Vancouver, always looking for ways to symbolically project a watered down or scaled back city, height restrictions were at the top of the list. 

Somewhere in-between the 1950s & 60s, Vancouver started to refine its height restriction mandate. Thus, as several cities in the 1970s started to allow for taller buildings, Vancouver has never allowed any office tower to have 40 floors. Perhaps an imposed 451 foot height limit would have been too obvious, so Vancouver generally had an imposed height restriction of 450 feet, with some occasional variations. 

Right through the 1960s only one building in Vancouver, or anywhere in BC had a 30th floor.

The first residential building to have at least 40 floors. https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=921 1973 https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=3 

The first residential building to have more than 45 floors. https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=3 2001 https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=6

It wouldn't be until the early 21st century before Vancouver would permit 2 buildings to rise above 600 feet. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=8 , https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=9 

https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?countryID=1 Vancouver has no building that makes it onto the first page. Burnaby just barely makes it. 

https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=10 However, Vancouver has another chance to actually have some taller buildings. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?countryID=1&status=15 Over the decades, various plans have been stopped, due to all the red tape B$ and extreme restrictions. 

Vancouver has had quite a history of limiting, restricting, thwarting & censoring proper big city stuff. 

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=LA+City+Hall

Tall and Wide Buildings

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1nufoeh/the_1960s_and_the_1930s

While they would be giants by little Vancouver standards, they are just average when compared to the modern big stuff around the world. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1nu1cm5/pan_am_and_the_metlife/

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ntxg5r/new_jp_morgan_building/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1nrubi8/new_york/

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1nuivgm/chicago_skyline_in_the_1950s Now stumps in Chicago, but they would still be tall towers in stumpy Vancouver. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1ntv4x8/chicago There are plenty of Vancouver size stumps in Chicago, NYC, Toronto & Melbourne... 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1noqvfa/choose

Burnaby

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnaby

Unlike Brooklyn merging into NYC, Burnaby has remained independent of strict Vancouver.

Brooklyn, NY

 https://www.reddit.com/r/skyscrapers/comments/1nsyaux/brooklyn/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Brooklyn#Tallest_buildings

While stubborn Vancouver only allows 2 buildings to be taller than the tallest in Bellevue,_Washington and nothing to rival the tallest in Vaughan, Ontario, Burnaby will. 

Unlike Vancouver, Burnaby wants to even rival the tallest in Brooklyn. 

Brooklyn used to be an independent city, but it eventually became part of NYC.

The Staten Island Railway in New York City

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFuSP7okBUI 

A ride down the entire length of the Staten Island Railway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZZV_rSocck

NYC

The $1.3 BILLION Struggle To Build Houston’s Giant New Bridge

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3sbe2QRUM 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston_Ship_Channel_Bridge Its as if somehow a backwater BC bridge got built in Texas. While a bridge with only 2 lanes each way & no emergency lanes seems to fit with the small-scale Vancouver mentality, such a narrow bridge in Houston was almost inadequate right from the start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston_Ship_Channel_Bridge#Future While it doesn't seem to have a provision for rail, it's still on a grand scale like the Samuel-De_Champlain_Bridge in Montreal. Especially like the new Tappan_Zee_Bridge near NYC. 

Several cities around the world are able to build nice wide bridges, because they aren't hindered by anything like the Vancouver Mind Virus (VMV), or the Backwards BC Mentality (BBCM). 

https://www.traveltexas.com/articles/post/everything-is-bigger-in-texas Being from the BC part of Canada, its difficult to grasp that BIG Texas has more people than Australia, yet still has mostly wide open spaces. The THINK BIG mentality in Texas is the total opposite to the BBCM. 

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/03/11/nyc-big-apple When you live in Vancouver for several decades, its amazing to see what several other cities can do, simply because they aren't hindered by the VMV.