Gripe Over Skyscrapers Highlights City’s Need To Spread Density Into The Yellow Belt

[M II A II R II K]

Townhouses remain a big missing piece in Toronto’s affordability puzzle

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real...affordability/

.....

- In most of the country, townhouses are an in-between option for home buyers: bigger than the most affordable condo apartments, but smaller and more affordable than the average detached house. When researchers talk about the Greater Toronto Area’s “missing middle,” odds are they are talking about townhouses. — The region’s sluggishness looks worse on a per-capita basis: There are 2.4 million people in Greater Vancouver and that market sold 3,086 new towns in 2017, while the GTA (with more than double the population at 6.4 million) offered up just 3,396 in the same year.

- According to a new report from Evergreen Canada, the “middle” housing option has been missing in Toronto because planning has, intentionally or not, favoured tall-building development. “From 2013 to 2017, more than 64,000 new residential units were constructed in the city of Toronto in development projects for which the tallest building was more than 12 storeys,” the report said. — Evergreen argues that because the city’s Official Plan has directed new development to areas that only account for about 25 per cent of the city’s landmass – “designated as Avenues, Centres, Employment Areas, and the Downtown and Central Waterfront”.

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[memph]

Random people commenting on twitter probably aren't going to know all the math of how per sf construction cost, height and density are connected, as well as how land values vary across the city, so their comments might be slightly misguided.

Toronto definitely could be doing more to promote density though. I think the amount of places that allow highrises is for the most part adequate, although I would still consider upzoning a few places around subway stations and GO stations (especially those with higher quality service).

I think that all of the main roads should be upzoned to allow mid-rise mixed use. That's been done on a few main roads, but there's still a lot of them like Coxwell, Bathurst, Dufferin, Vaughan, Rogers, Davenport, Ossington, Dundas E where there are large stretches that are single family.

Finally, there's the more typical single family areas that should also be upzoned to allow townhouses and 2-5 storey apartment buildings. In many of these neighbourhoods, bungalows are being replaced with 4000 sf 2 storey homes, and I'm sure it would be viable to build townhouses and small scale apartments alongside those if they were permitted.

Even in the most distant suburbs like Rexdale, Woburn or Eringate where there isn't that much teardown activity happening, I think this would work. Those neighbourhoods aren't that desirable to the downtown elite who want mansions closer to downtown, but there would still be interest from people working in the suburbs looking for affordable housing, or people willing to commute from further away to save on housing.

Of course, transit would have to be upgraded to deal with this. I think the Yonge Subway could be relieved quite a bit if rail lines were build/upgraded East of Yonge though, to divert passengers taking the bus (or Danforth line) to Yonge. Most people taking the Yonge subway aren't arriving there by foot.

[MonkeyRonin]

Good article about this topic - more informative than the one in the first post:

Toronto has lots of room to grow. It’s time to let that happen

ALEX BOZIKOVIC
ARCHITECTURE CRITIC
PUBLISHED JULY 26, 2018
UPDATED JULY 27, 2018

Toronto is running out of room to grow! The city is being swamped by new condos! The developers are taking over! These are things I hear people say about the city’s real-estate market, as housing becomes more and more expensive. Maybe you’ve heard them too.

And everything you’ve heard is wrong.

The truth is that Toronto has too little housing and too many rules about where to build it. City planning policies are cramming new residents into a few pockets while locking down much of the city from new housing – all for no particularly good reason.

...

How so? In short, there are very few places you can build an apartment building in Toronto. The city’s planning rules largely protect the existing physical form of the city, defend the “neighbourhood character” of affluent homeowners, and in most places shut the doors to new residents.

Toronto’s planning system is complicated and opaque, but its main effect is clear. In the city’s Official Plan, the document that guides growth, about 70 per cent of the city is not supposed to see significant change. This is basically what’s happening. New developments in Toronto are clustered tightly in a few places.

The single biggest problem is the “Neighbourhoods.” That term, with a capital N, covers the majority of the city. This means that whatever goes in those areas is supposed to be residential. Across most of Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough, that means at most a house with a “secondary suite.” In the older neighbourhoods of the city, the rules are only slightly looser.

...

In general, it’s easy to build a single-family home here, and very tough to build anything else. So change within the Neighbourhoods only goes one way. Evict the tenants of a triplex to turn it into a big single-family house? No problem. Replace a little suburban bungalow with a McMansion? Sure.

But replace two houses with a sixplex? Forget it.

...

This is creating two cities. Call them Condo Toronto and House Toronto. Condo Toronto exists in a few small, scattered dots across the city, and this is where growth feels like it’s out of control. King-Spadina. Yonge-Eglinton. Humber Bay Shores.

But it’s surrounded – right next door – by House Toronto, the vast plains of low-rise where growth is nearly forbidden. House Toronto is adding very few new homes and few people. Census data tells the tale: The Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis has compiled the numbers from 2001 to 2016, and more than half the city’s census districts – 62 per cent – see a static or shrinking population.

...

Again, this is basically what policy calls for. Look at the current Official Plan, the vision document for city planning which dates to 2006. Housing – which constitutes most of the city and most new building today – is supposed to be added in a handful of “Centres,” and in mid-rise buildings along specific major roads, or “Avenues.”

These policies are producing bad results. Condo sites along the Avenues are small, expensive and complicated to develop. The public school board struggles to build new schools downtown while running half-empty ones – even closing them – in suburban areas that are emptying out.

...

An ideal solution would be modestly sized apartment buildings – up to, say, four or five storeys – everywhere. Some planners are now calling this the Missing Middle. Such buildings are relatively simple to design and build. Toronto has many examples that went up between 1900 and the 1960s.

Full article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...t-that-happen/

[Doady]

You shouldn't go too far with increasing density because you're going to stick a bunch of low income people in their communities and the whole point of suburbs is to avoid these sort of people. It would just make all the white people flee to Brampton to avoid black people and then Toronto become another Detroit. Asians and whites can integrate pretty effectively, but all other races are like oil and water with each other.

[dubu]

the whole point of suburbs is for poor people. back in the day people built houses and it was cheep, now people dont build their own house and people think suburbs are rich.

[MonkeyRonin]

Months later I just keep finding better and better graphics on this topic.


Here's the SFH-only yellow belt:




Vs. the "blue belt", which allow for more diverse housing types:




Zooming in on the central city, we can see that it's mostly blue:




However, if limited to areas that allow buildings greater than 12m (ie. 4+ storey buildings), it shrinks considerably:




To add to that, from this interactive map we can see that most of the lower-density zoned areas are actually losing units, as well as population: http://www.mapto.ca/maps/2017/4/17/i...-gta-2011-2016

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

To add to that, from this interactive map we can see that most of the lower-density zoned areas are actually losing units, as well as population: http://www.mapto.ca/maps/2017/4/17/i...-gta-2011-2016

This makes sense, though. Low density SFH areas, most of the time, will have smaller household sizes over time, and multiunit structures in areas of increasing affluence will often be converted into single-unit structures.

I don't really see the problem here, as long as there are some corridors for multifamily.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This makes sense, though. Low density SFH areas, most of the time, will have smaller household sizes over time, and multiunit structures in areas of increasing affluence will often be converted into single-unit structures.

I don't really see the problem here, as long as there are some corridors for multifamily.

Those corridors right now are just so North/South dominated because of Toronto's poor subway coverage. I think a lot of us would like to see some more blue (in the form of 4-12 story midrises) to the west on the last map. Question is can current transit handle it, because the time for a Queen Street subway line has likely long passed.

[Doady]

So the "yellow belt" of Toronto is mostly in Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough. Do people seriously believe that Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough are lacking in high-rises? Just laughable.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Doady

So the "yellow belt" of Toronto is mostly in Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough. Do people seriously believe that Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough are lacking in high-rises? Just laughable.

They're not lacking high-rises, as was the point made by no one; but they are lacking areas that can grow organically from this to, for example, this (or whatever) as demand & prices increase.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Doady

You shouldn't go too far with increasing density because you're going to stick a bunch of low income people in their communities and the whole point of suburbs is to avoid these sort of people. It would just make all the white people flee to Brampton to avoid black people and then Toronto become another Detroit. Asians and whites can integrate pretty effectively, but all other races are like oil and water with each other.

Toronto's black population is not that big, includes a significant middle class contingent, and isn't that fast growing. Asians make up the majority of the population living in low cost housing and I expect it to remain that way for the foreseeable future since that's where most of Toronto's immigrants come from. It's only a handful of housing projects that have a majority black population.

Also considering how big the yellow-belt is, allowing infill to be built throughout that region will probably just spread out the low income population even more.

Kinda funny that you think Toronto's white population will flee blacks to move to Brampton too since Brampton has a higher % of blacks than Toronto, as do Pickering and Ajax.

[softee]

Originally Posted by memph

Kinda funny that you think Toronto's white population will flee blacks to move to Brampton too since Brampton has a higher % of blacks than Toronto, as do Pickering and Ajax.

Most people would probably be surprised to know that Ajax has the highest % black population of any municipality in Canada of 5000 or more people. Ajax is 17% black (as of the 2016 census), Brampton is 14% black, Pickering is 11% black and Toronto is 9% black.