Écran géant centre-ville (2007)

[Habsfan]

cet article est assez vieux, j'espere que ce monsieur Poulin n'occupe plus ce poste ... voyons donc calisse, proteger les gens contre l'envahissement commercial en pleine artere commerciale en plein centre-ville ... j'hallucine des bulles completement ... j'suis franchement bouche-bee ..

 

I agree with you. I have given up with these morons. Pollution visuelle en plein milieu du C-V. Give me a break!

Modifié 17 janvier 2011 par Habsfan

[Cyrus]

cet article est assez vieux, j'espere que ce monsieur Poulin n'occupe plus ce poste ... voyons donc calisse, proteger les gens contre l'envahissement commercial en pleine artere commerciale en plein centre-ville ... j'hallucine des bulles completement ... j'suis franchement bouche-bee ..

...

 

idem ......

[mtlrdp]

If they want to talk about visual pollution how about all the ugly graffiti on St-Catherine street? that street has become a disgrace and an embarrassment, next time anyone is downtown check out the top of the old Palace theatre, then go west and look at the incredible mess on top of the buildings between Peel and Stanley(south side). Does anyone working for the city not see this? especially our visually and intellectually challenged mayor

[MTLskyline]

If they want to talk about visual pollution how about all the ugly graffiti on St-Catherine street? that street has become a disgrace and an embarrassment, next time anyone is downtown check out the top of the old Palace theatre, then go west and look at the incredible mess on top of the buildings between Peel and Stanley(south side). Does anyone working for the city not see this? especially our visually and intellectually challenged mayor

 

I agree with you 200%. The graffiti is the problem. Sometimes I wish a paddywagon drove around and picked up all these delinquent types and released them somewhere north of Mont Laurier.

 

IMO, McGill College is too classy a street to have a lot of neon though. I think the Quartier des Spectacles should have all the fancy neon (and St. Catherine Street between St. Laurent and McGill College in particular). At the moment, the Quartier is much too plain (and out in the open) for my taste. I don't actually like what they did with the area that much. Instead of wasting a lot on a pointless project like the Maison de Developpement Durable, they should have built something flashy - maybe on a new 10-15 storey building or something.

Modifié 11 janvier 2011 par MTLskyline

[pedepy]

mtlskyline: lights and commercial advertising aren't always the same thing. if you look at times square, it's got restrictions in place that force building onwers to display illuminated advertisements - simple lighting doesn't do it. qds may be a good place for lights but not commercial advertisement; i think those would be appropriate on ste-catherine street. i dunno that i agree with you on how classy mcgill college is, but i do see what you mean. i don't think, however, that bright lights in the distance would have negative effect on the upper portion of mcgill college. quite the opposite, in fact.

 

i think qds is still being developed, wait another year or so before judging it. club soda just installed a brand new display. i have a video of it i'll post it later. i think it's what you expect for the qds - and i think more should be on the way.

[Cyrus]

mtlskyline: lights and commercial advertising aren't always the same thing. if you look at times square, it's got restrictions in place that force building onwers to display illuminated advertisements - simple lighting doesn't do it. qds may be a good place for lights but not commercial advertisement; i think those would be appropriate on ste-catherine street. i dunno that i agree with you on how classy mcgill college is, but i do see what you mean. i don't think, however, that bright lights in the distance would have negative effect on the upper portion of mcgill college. quite the opposite, in fact.

 

i think qds is still being developed, wait another year or so before judging it. club soda just installed a brand new display. i have a video of it i'll post it later. i think it's what you expect for the qds - and i think more should be on the way.

 

They actually require the buildings on Times Square to display ads? LOL!

[pedepy]

yep.. i thought i had posted an article about it some time ago.. basically, as office towers started to overtake midtown west the city got afraid that the new occupants of the square, perhaps considered too conservative for the area would take down existing billboards and replace them with more business friendly - yet more sober - displays. so they enacted laws requiering all buildings to display advertisement at a certain height from the ground. some tried to circumvent it by merely using decorative lights but the rule was clear: it as to be publicity. soon after the place got crowded with ads, each now bigger and brighter in trying to catch the attention of bypassers at street level..

 

ill try to find that article when i get home from

work later tonight!..

[pedepy]

edit: here's another article that basically says the same thing:

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/08/12/tasteful-in-times-square-theres-a-law-against-that/

 

 

Times Square officially entered the Pop-Tarts World era this week, as the breakfast pastry theme store debuted under the sort of towering, garish billboard that has long been an area staple. But it made us wonder: Let’s say you wanted to truly stand out in the colorful corporate orgy of Times Square. Could you choose an understated, unadorned façade?

 

The answer is no. The city, it turns out, has a law against tasteful restraint in Times Square.

 

The area is part of the “Special Midtown District” that has its own distinct zoning code. Part of the mission of these regulations is to preserve and protect the “unique combination of building scale, large illuminated signs and entertainment and entertainment-related uses” that are central to Times Square’s history. The idea was to ensure that Times Square never became another drab steel canyon of conservative office towers.

 

“This was a result of a preservationist instinct to not have this area turn into another 6th Avenue,” says Ellen Goldstein, vice president of policy and design for the Times Square Alliance. “Even when Times Square was at its most degraded — you know, when there were porn theaters and grindhouses — it was always defined by lights. If you preserve the advertising, you preserve the character of the neighborhood.”

 

In a way, the zoning code governing the signs is wonderfully ironic. The bright lights of Times Square, one of the most visible and iconic testaments to the city’s hyper-capitalist verve, are maintained not by Adam Smith’s invisible hand but by little-known government regulations. For those with the stomach to navigate the bureaucratic language, the zoning regulations make for interesting reading. What appears totally haphazard to the untrained tourist’s eye is actually planned down to the last square foot, with copious rules about how much of any surface must be covered in signage.

 

Own a building on Broadway but detest the flashing lights? Too bad. As the code states:

 

There shall be a minimum of one illuminated sign with a surface area of not less than 1,000 square feet for each 50 linear feet, or part thereof, of street frontage.

 

There are instructions for precisely which direction Times Square’s signage must face and extraordinarily detailed diagrams for how the brightness of mandatory illuminated displays shall be measured. Does your building feature a blinking sign? The rules require that the unlit phase not exceed three seconds. When can the bright lights be switched off? No earlier than 1:00 a.m.

 

According to Goldstein, Times Square’s survival as an outlandish area has at times been in jeopardy. “For example, when the Morgan Stanley building came in, they didn’t want to have any signs and lights over them,” she says. “There was concern that when those kinds of buildings went up, they weren’t going to want to have signs.”

 

It’s unclear how the city enforces these rules. Officials at the city’s Department of City Planning didn’t know of any examples in which building owners have been penalized for non-compliance with the special zoning rules. Not that anyone with a profit motive would want to forgo the glitzy advertising. “We know some of those signs go for upwards of $1 million a year,” Goldstein said.

Modifié 15 janvier 2011 par pedepy