Toronto resident captures building construction in time-lapse

Canada may be going through some tough economic times, but if you live in the city of Toronto almost everywhere you look you will see new construction.

There is so much the National Post referred to it in a headline as the "city of mass construction."

But rarely do people get to view it in fast forward. When one photographer started to see a building going up, the camera started rolling.

"I thought I'd try to document it as best I could," said the filmmaker, who goes by the handle FMR, on vimeo. "My second attempt at a 'time-lapse' and 'tilt-shift' piece."

The video doesn't show the entire construction, but it does show an army of employees scurrying around the site working on different tasks. The reason it may look like a miniature scene is because of a something called tilt-shift photography.

Sights like this are quite familiar to residents of Toronto as there is almost more highrise construction in this city than all of the U.S. combined. This is according to statistics presented by the city's Economic Development Committee in an October presentation.

There are 132 buildings under construction in Toronto, followed by 88 in Mexico City and 86 in New York City. In all of the U.S., there are only 139 highrises being built. And Toronto isn't the only Canadian city with a boom. Calgary, Vancouver and Mississauga are building eight, seven and six highrises respectively.

Emporis, the German research company that compiled the data, considers a high-rise to be any building between 12 and 40 floors. Anything taller is considered a skyscraper.
These new highrises will soon accompany the already 1,875 highrises and skyscrapers which mark the city's skyline.

Riz Dhanji, vice-president at Canderel Stoneridge, told the National Post, "The next few years are going to be great on the skyline of Toronto, once all of these projects are completed."