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Looks pleasant enough, but not particularly distinguished. 6/10 for the nice greenery and cute neighborhood vibe in some pics.

City is quite nice and wonderful

The streets look like nice, but everything else is just OKAY. 7

It's okay. 6.5.

Love Hess Village, it makes Hamilton a unique city. I gave Hamilton 8.5 for having the tallest residential building in Canada outside of Toronto (Landmark Place) and also having loads of historical buildings.

:okay: for preserving a lot of old historical buildings but :down: for having some old abandon buildings such as Lister Block.

Please feel free to tell the truth.

Please feel free to tell the truth.

Well for one thing City Hall sucks in planning and development. Take for example McMaster University, about a week ago in the news McMaster announced their working with Burlington to build a new campus. Hamilton should have been the first to knock on McMaster shoulder and tell them to build a campus at downtown Hamilton. Burlington is highly competetive and that's why they been getting some developments lately, they offer cheap deals whereas Hamilton will give you interest free loans.

The interest free loans have been successful in the residential area (that’s what got Hamilton the Chateau Royale, Core Lofts, etc) but that's about it.

One year ago the city was being asked to sell a municipal parking lot at Main and Walnut to a developer who wanted to build a 12-storey residential commercial tower. Nothing's happened.

At the same time, the city was being asked for $5 million from the incentive program to build a residence for McMaster students on a parking lot at 80 Jackson East. Nothing there either.

So basically Hamilton misses way too many opportunities.

Though some good news is that Hamilton just created the “Downtown Hamilton Capital Corporation”. It acts partly as a bank, partly as developer. It would provide lease guarantees, as well as buy, develop and sell downtown real estate for profit. So that’s a good move because City Hall sure sucks at that.

I tried to post some pictures of the sunset that I took in Hamilton earlier this summer, but can't figure out how to do it. If anyone knows how and wants to do it, let me know, and I'll mail the pics to you.

Not bad .. so many apartment buildings in the city

7/10

I tried to post some pictures of the sunset that I took in Hamilton earlier this summer, but can't figure out how to do it. If anyone knows how and wants to do it, let me know, and I'll mail the pics to you.

I'll be glad to help you out. I sent you a Private Message with my email address. Send the pictures there and I'll post them here for you no problem.

You Have No Idea What You Are Saying

Hamilton Is Not A Nice Place At All

The Only Good Thing I Can Think About It, Would Be That Is Close To Toronto

I've Been To That Appartment Building, Not Nice At All

If You Want To See Good Apartment Buildings, Come To Miami

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1000535.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1000533.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1000532.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1000531.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1000530.jpg

My god Exciter26 these are beautiful pictures!

My god Exciter26 these are beautiful pictures![/QUOTE]


Thanks. Took them this summer off my balcony. You can see the Clock on the old Eaton Centre and the Stelco Tower in some of them.

More photos from Exciter26.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1010393.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1010394.jpg

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/Aallen396/P1010398.jpg

7/10 :)

You Have No Idea What You Are Saying

Hamilton Is Not A Nice Place At All

The Only Good Thing I Can Think About It, Would Be That Is Close To Toronto

I've Been To That Appartment Building, Not Nice At All

If You Want To See Good Apartment Buildings, Come To Miami

Your right about the first part, Hamilton is quite boring.

But about the second part, why Miami? There are millions of places where there are better apartment buildings.

Your right about the first part, Hamilton is quite boring.

But about the second part, why Miami? There are millions of places where there are better apartment buildings.

I certainly hope that you live in Hamilton. I don't think that anyone can really make a judgement on a city unless you live there. I do live in Hamilton, and I can tell you that there is plenty to do. Hess Village, Bayfront Park, Hamilton Art Gallery, Pier 4, Wild Water Works... Sure in comparison to major cities like New York, London and Paris it might seem boring, but for a city of it's size, there is plenty to do.

10.....part of my family live in this canadian city...!

:)

Hamilton's skyline is a bit of a drag. :(
I love the city though.
7.0

I thought I add this article here since it pretty much sums up Hamilton, city of hope.
----------------------------------------------

City of hope

Despite signs of decay, Hamilton may be on the verge of a turnaround, with new jobs and cheap real estate luring more and more Torontonians to Steeltown.

By JOHN BARBER
Saturday, August 21, 2004 - Page M1

It was hard to tell what was sadder: the hulk of the once-grand Tivoli Theatre, which had just collapsed after years of decay, or the small, raggedy demonstration staged to protest against the public and private neglect that hastened its loss.

"Welcome to the Hamilton dumping ground -- the main streets!" one protester yelled as traffic sped past along James Street. Another lofted a placard that read, "Hamilton -- No Respect, No Culture, No History, No Environment."

But the cars continued to speed by during the July rush hour, while work crews methodically demolished what was left of the city's last historic theatre, once a famous emblem of a long-vanished heyday.

With entire blocks of vacant storefronts, boarded-up windows, and dollar stores, James Street in downtown Hamilton is one of the saddest public places anywhere in Ontario, sadder even than the nearby, mostly vacant shopping malls that helped to destroy it: At least they left no poignant reminders of past glory. Declining steadily for decades, Hamilton's notorious downtown is now collapsing.

Even the sooty glory of its lakeside steel mills, which once endowed Hamilton with an average income higher than any other Ontario city, seems to be fading fast.

Officially insolvent since January, Stelco is shedding jobs and cutting product lines in order to stave off bankruptcy, and the legendary Hilton Works remains the biggest drag on its bottom line. The primary metal industry in Hamilton employs fewer than 15,000 workers today, down from more than 34,000 in the late 1980s -- and of those remaining workers, according to one study, a minority are city residents.

Despite the continued success of Dofasco, the city's second-largest industrial employer and the most profitable integrated steel mill on the continent, most Hamiltonians now accept the end of steel as a given. The surprising thing about Hamilton today is how many of its citizens seem to welcome that fate.

In the midst of its duress, the city is enjoying an unlikely boomlet of civic confidence. Looking beyond steel, the new Hamilton boosters tout their hard-luck city as a charred phoenix about to assume a leading role in the high-tech megalopolis that encircles the western end of Lake Ontario.

"Hamilton's destiny is to recapture what it once had, which is to be a significant place in Canada, a historic economic driver," declared newly elected Mayor Larry Di Ianni. "And I'm convinced we'll get there."

Contrary to obvious appearances, the new boosters have a case.

After steadily losing its share of the provincial population to the booming Toronto region, Hamilton is growing again. Planners expect its half-million population to approach 600,000 by 2021 as a steady drip of new jobs compensates for the losses at the steel mills -- and as the city's attractive west-end neighbourhoods fill up with newcomers commuting to Mississauga, Brampton and Oakville. The westward drift of growth out of Toronto is an unstoppable tide, they insist; Hamilton's biggest problem will be finding enough space.

Leading the new boosters is Hamilton-born, U.S.-based high-tech entrepreneur Bob Young, who returned to his hometown this year in triumph as saviour of the near-dead Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the football club that serves as the most reliable barometer of civic spirit.

With a flashy new scoreboard and a wireless network that allows fans to surf the Internet anywhere inside Ivor Wynne Stadium -- a world first, according to Mr. Young -- the Ticats are "no longer a blue-collar football team," he said. And although they are still a losing team, the new Tiger-Cats now attract more than 25,000 fans to home games, up 10,000 from last year.

"For 20 years, people have been saying, 'Oh no, what's going to happen after the heavy industry jobs have left?' " said Mr. Young, president of Lulu.com in North Carolina, an on-line publishing service. Now they're waking up and saying, 'Hold on, all the heavy-industry jobs have already left, and we're prospering better than we ever have.' Maybe it's time to start crowing about our successes rather than worrying about our future."

As for the tattered, now-collapsing downtown, he added, low rents and high vacancies represent a golden opportunity. "The downtown's on the edge of a remarkable boom," he insisted.

It certainly didn't look that way last month to downtown businessman Chris Des Roches, who caused an uproar when he closed his popular La Costa Restaurant on King William Street, complaining that the area was so rundown and dangerous that diners were reluctant to visit. In subsequent weeks, another restaurant and two neighbouring stores closed -- all of them likely knock-on victims of Stelco's decision to vacate its landmark office tower around the same time, taking 300 workers out of the core.

"Hamilton does not seem to realize that it's down and out," downtown businessman Brian Owen complained to The Hamilton Spectator. "We have a very serious problem here, but until the politicians and city bureaucrats get to the point where they realize it and admit it, they won't really be able to deal with it."

But that's not the way they see it. Hamilton has lost jobs since the 1980s, according to economic development officer Neil Everson. But now, he said, it is back on a solid growth path. "In Hamilton today, high-tech and health care employ more than steel," he said. The city's largest employer is the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation, with 9,200 employees in three hospitals.

In the meantime, the industrial sector remains viable, with auto-parts companies having established more than one million square feet of production space in Hamilton over the past three years, according to Mr. Everson. Even such old standbys as National Steel Car Inc. announced the addition of 500 employees to its work force this summer.

"I keep saying that 20 years from now you won't recognize Hamilton, because its downtown will have revived and its economic base will be growing," said Tom McCormack, of the Centre for Spatial Economics in Milton, which prepared the city's most recent population forecast. One of the significant factors that will encourage the revival, he added, will be the inevitable decline of the historic but blighting steel industry.

But Mr. McCormack, who is moving his own home back to Oakville after an unhappy sojourn in the newly annexed, heavily taxed Hamilton suburb of Flamborough, is no Pollyanna.

So far, he said, Hamilton is growing more as a dormitory than a centre of production, and he questions how successful the city will be selling itself as a place to locate jobs. "Politically, it's a very divided community," he said, "and they don't necessarily have all the infrastructure they need to support the growth."

But there are signs. The most promising one on King Street today is the renovation and revival of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, which, like the Ticats and other local institutions, once seemed close to dead.

"I don't think a single building is going to turn downtown Hamilton around," said Hamilton-born, Toronto-based architect Bruce Kuwabara, who's turning the grim concrete ziggurat into an urbane steel-clad showpiece in Ticat colours of gold and black. "But I do think it's a catalyst. Thank goodness the art institution is still downtown."

Gallery director Louise Dompierre, formerly chief curator of the Power Plant gallery in Toronto, said Hamilton defied her expectations when she moved there. "Like everybody else, I had this image of a dirty steel town. What I found instead is a warm and welcoming community." In terms of "community feel," she added, Hamilton is the best experience of her professional career.

The historic depth and sometimes surprising strength of local institutions certainly set Hamilton apart from the typical techno-burbs spreading throughout the Golden Horseshoe. It is Ontario's oldest and densest city outside downtown Toronto, with a truly urban texture and feel -- qualities as rare in North America today as steel mills -- as well as spectacular geography and gorgeous parks. With a lively interest in the city's identity and abiding pride, Hamiltonians describe their home as a humane and thriving Brooklyn, in contrast to Toronto's frenetic Manhattan.

"It will never have the cachet of the big city," local artist Tor Lukasik-Foss said. "But it still has a specific funkiness to it. It is the opposite of suburban."

Loyalty that has endured so much civic decline "makes us neurotic and foolish at the same time," Mr. Lukasik-Foss said. "There's a kind of fool's quest of trying to redeem the place, and that somehow keeps everybody going."

Like other local loyalists, however, the artist yearns for an urban cultural transformation that "will shave off the cynical veneer once and for all." And like them, he is looking to the gentrifiers to help bring it about -- everybody from the office workers moving into a handful of downtown loft projects to the Oakville professionals filtering into the beautiful established neighbourhoods of West Hamilton.

The city has enjoyed record house sales in recent months as outsiders arrive to take advantage of the most affordable prices in the region, according to Hamilton real-estate agent Shawn Murray. At an average of $215,000, Hamilton house prices have already increased 10 per cent this year, he added, with suburban workers from elsewhere in the Golden Horseshoe dominating the market. It is not unusual for people to live in West Hamilton and work in downtown Toronto, with Go Transit providing the connection.

"Really what it boils down to is that you can afford to live properly here," said Karen Mills, a leading Canadian public-art consultant and resident in Hamilton's elegant yet affordable Aberdeen neighbourhood. "You can have a very rich and fulfilling life in Hamilton -- in between racing back and forth to Toronto to make a living."

Citing the tremendous recent growth of downtown Toronto as an example, Mr. McCormack, the economist, argues that suburban development will be the saviour of downtown Hamilton. "Hamilton is still struggling to attract people to live downtown," he said, "and I think it's going to always struggle until there's an economic base around it that supports the revival."

He talked about walking across a lonely elevated walkway recently into the top floor of the Jackson Square shopping mall, only to find it completely empty. "And this place has been there for how long -- 15 to 20 years? It's just another example of how difficult it is to make downtown Hamilton work."

But the wave is coming, he insisted. Where others see decay and uncertainty, it is opportunity that transfixes the new Hamiltonians.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040821/HAMILTON21/TPNational/Canada

I've been in Toronto and I remember Hamilton, just don't where it was or it is that place on the river half way to Niagra Falls from Toronto with the steel/metal factories???

That place was odd even by just passing nearby.

I've been in Toronto and I remember Hamilton, just don't where it was or it is that place on the river half way to Niagra Falls from Toronto with the steel/metal factories???

That place was odd even by just passing nearby.

Odd? In what way?

the skyline is not very appealing, but the city is nice
6/10

Boring buildings and average skyline. 5,5/10

Nice, but looks too industrial. I give it a 6.5/10.

It's my city!!! 10/10 :banana: :banana2: :banana:

the skylines ok but the pollution sux 6.5/10

8.

http://www.urbancanada.com/hillis/photos/hamilton_skyline.jpg
http://www.urbancanada.com/hillis/photos/hamilton_skyline2.jpg

7/10

Skyline's not bad! Haven't been there too much (only 4 times in my life), but if there is any city in the Golden Horseshoe I would respect or like, most definitely it is this one, Hamilton! :)

Need supertall building 7/10

7/10 :)

6/10

People forgot to show a picture of the permanent mushroom cloud

6.5/10

lol, this is the second hamilton topic (or the first)

http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=184998

still the same rating 4.5/10 ;)

The city needs tall buildings 6/10

small..

6/10

6.5/10

7/10

6/10

6/10

7/10

8/10

Hamilton, Ontario



http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj261/nandes_2008/Hamiltonskyline2006.jpg

9/10

Fabulous setting and a great inventory of quality old building stock, but the skyline needs some work. 6.5/10

8/10

Not bad, but needs some more modern looking buildings
6.5/10

5/10

As the city in the middle of the horseshoe, Hamilton needs to stand out a little more.

9/10

8/10

7/10

:redx:

6/10 a bit dull looking

6/10

I can't see Hamilton languishing for too much longer. It's proximity to Toronto and geographic position at the centre of the golden horseshoe should result in an inevitable rise back to prominence.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Hamilton pass Ottawa as Ontario's #2 city within my life time.

Not bad... I agree The Hammer needs a more modern look. 7/10

^^ Agreed. The city has a great location geographically and a few modern high rises would make a large impact. Hamilton's setting is similar to Montreal, in a way (mountain with the city at the bottom and on the edge of water).

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3510/3274678090_e9146c958e_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olanowak/3274678090/sizes/l/

8/10

Not bad, but nothing spectacular. I think it'll grow quite well in the coming years, though.

Nice setting and nice buildings 7/10

Hamilton's setting is similar to Montreal, in a way (mountain with the city at the bottom and on the edge of water).


Never thought about the similarity to Montreal, but you're right. The Niagara Escarpment is a great topographical feature. Perhaps, Hamilton will one day get a landmark a top Hamilton Mountain like Montreal does with that crucifix atop Mont Royal.

7/10

8/10, but it'd be nice to see come modern developments being done though.

7/10

8. Good. Regards.

very nice 8/10

8/10 very good

7.5/10

7/10

8/10