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Finalist for a 2017 Hamilton Literary Award, the Kerry Schooley Award Unbuilt Hamilton presents the Ambitious City at its most ambitious, exploring the origins and fates of unrealized building, planning, and transportation proposals from the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. Marvel at the sweeping vista down Hamilton’s own version of the Champs-Élysées as you enjoy a concert in the escarpment amphitheatre. Drive up the Gage Avenue tunnel, or ride down the Ottawa Street incline railway. Take in the sites at the King’s Forest Zoo, see the stars in the planetarium, or catch a game at Commonwealth Stadium before returning to your island home in Bay Shore Village. Featuring more than 150 illustrations, plans, and photographs, Unbuilt Hamilton gives life to the Hamilton that might have been.

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Unbuilt Victoria celebrates the city that is, and laments the city that could have been. For most people, resident and visitor alike, Victoria, British Columbia, is a time capsule of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. From a modest fur-trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company it grew to be the province’s major trading centre. Then the selection of Vancouver as the terminus of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s, followed by a smallpox epidemic that closed the port in the 1890s, resulted in decline. Victoria succeeded in reinventing itself as a tourist destination, based on the concept of nostalgia for all things English, stunning scenery, and investment opportunities. In the modernizing boom after the Second World War attempts were made to move the city’s built environment into the mainstream, but the prospect of Victoria’s becoming like any other North American city did not win public approval. Unbuilt Victoria examines some of the architectural plans that were proposed but rejected. That some of them were ever dreamed of will probably amaze, that others never made it might well be a matter of regret.

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Unbuilt Toronto explores never-realized building projects in and around Toronto, from the city’s founding to the twenty-first century. Delving into unfulfilled and largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, highways, subways, and arts and recreation venues, it outlines such ambitious schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the Queen subway line and early city plans that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake. Readers may lament the loss of some projects (such as the Eaton’s College Street tower), be thankful for the disappearance of others (a highway through the Annex), and marvel at the downtown that could have been (with underground roads and walkways in the sky). Featuring 147 photographs and illustrations, many never before published, Unbuilt Toronto casts a different light on a city you thought you knew.

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Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era «CN Tower» that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. Winner of the 2012 Heritage Toronto Award of Merit Quill & Quire cited Unbuilt Toronto as a book filled with «well-researched, often gripping tales of grand plans,» while Canadian Architect said that it is «an impressively researched exploration of never-realized architectural and master-planning projects intended for the city.» Now Unbuilt Toronto 2 provides an all-new, fascinating return to the «Toronto that might have been.» Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era «CN Tower» that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. What would Toronto look like today if it had hosted the Olympics in 1996 or 1976? And what was the downtown expressway that Frederick Gardiner really wanted? With over 150 photographs, maps, and illustrations, Unbuilt Toronto 2 tracks the origins and fates of some of the city’s most interesting planning, transit, and architectural «what-ifs.»

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The essence of a vibrant, growing, and changing Calgary is captured over the life of its development. Calgary is a typical boom-and-bust town that was first based on ranching and farming, then oil and gas, and now energy. And energy is what its citizens have, whether for skiing, work, or construction. It is a city that leaps ahead eagerly to new futures and rarely looks back., but Calgary can also be an unsentimental city, discarding its ideas, plans, and buildings with ease. Unbuilt Calgary is a survey of 30 projects that were proposed but not realized, schemes that were situated at critical times in Calgary’s development, and proposals that indicated the city’s ambitions through its first 100 years. Unbuilt Calgary looks back to ideas and notions that might have been, and building endeavours that would have changed the shape of the city for better or worse. The 30 critical projects are accompanied by drawings and models to illustrate something of Calgary’s irrepressible exuberance.

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