Suburban Skylines

[memph]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

So most development is near transit? Same in dc, multi family is concentrated on the metro lines

In Dallas, the city of Dallas, Plano, Fort Worth, Richardson, Addison, Irving etc account for that majority of new multifamily additions. A minority are in far flung areas like Frisco and McKinney, most are close to the city or within Dallas itself . Dense nodes zones for multifamily and benefitting from short commute times, and being filled in

But still that doesn’t explain the towers vs midrise issue .

Toronto is a denser urban area, and by a not so insignificant margin too, so I think that's definitely part of it.

According to this
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publi...TX-comp-17.pdf

Multi-family housing being built in Dallas County went from 93% lowrise before 2000, to 57% lowrise in the 00s, to 24% lowrise in the 10s. Looking around the county on google maps, you do see that they're starting to run low on under-utilized land to infill on, so it's not surprising that the new developments are getting denser and denser.

According to that report, Dallas County was averaging around 11,000 multi-family permits in recent years (not including townhomes), as well as around 4,000 single family & townhome permits per year. You might think it's unfair to be comparing just Dallas County to the whole Toronto CMA, which has been average 22,000 multifamily permits and 16,000 SFH/townhouse permits per year, but not entirely. The whole Toronto urban area fits into an area that's less than Dallas County, and even if you include the other small urban areas of the Toronto CMA like Stouffville and Milton and exclude the undeveloped areas in the SE of Dallas County, you're still looking at equal sized areas.

The fact that Toronto has 2.2x the population in a same sized area means there's less undeveloped parcels to build on, and developed parcels are denser so if you're going to do demolition you need to go denser to make it worth your while. So Toronto would have to go denser even if it was building an equal amount and it's building about twice as much.

If Dallas County growing from 2 million people to 2.7 million people over the last two decades was enough to cause it to go from having 7% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise to 76% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise, imagine how that would change if Dallas County grew to have 6 million people and was building twice as much multi-family per year as it was now.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Crawford

....I seriously doubt many Canadian elementary children, especially in rural areas, take transit to school. Parents just drop off their kids on a highway, letting their first grader wait for a city bus? Even in NYC where all kids are eligible for Metrocards, the little ones are typically being walked to school. Little kids generally only ride the subway with older siblings.

...I don't think it's shocking. Vancouver has crazy high housing prices and extremely low salaries. I can't imagine average households can afford an autocentric lifestyle.

See, that thinking is all wrong. No one wants an autocentric lifestyle; they only settle for that in order to afford a house. In Vancouver, many will choose a convenient centrally-located condo with a view over a suburban house; the luxury condo market here is second in NA only to Manhattan, with works by Foster, BIG, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, etc

Vancouver has low salaries but high levels of savings (brought from elsewhere lol)... here everyone and their dog has an Audi or better, but getting downtown is easier by transit. High rates of vehicle ownership but low mileage. Autos without being autocentric.

In Toronto, yes I've seen many elementary school kids in the city around 10 years old take the bus/subway/streetcar to school unaccompanied. From their conversations, they seem smarter and more well-adjusted than the kids in the suburban areas where some of my company's work is situated.

PS: had to chuckle at the faux-heritage renders that someone posted last page to defend Dallas' honor in the multi-family mid-rise dept lol

[memph]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Good find. Jesus...they must have been laughing when they installed that stop.

And that's the edge of DART's service area. The multi-family development mhays linked across the freeway is in Frisco which doesn't have any bus service from the looks of it.

By the way, highrises aren't only being built in cities like Toronto and Vancouver that attract foreign real estate investors. They're being built in smaller cities too, like there's a big rental highrise builder that's building slab towers in a very similar way to what Toronto was doing in the 60s-70s
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.99111...7i13312!8i6656

I don't think large scale rental housing developers have much to do with Chinese investors. Anyways, we're basically talking about buying up large tracts of land in the suburb to build plain looking 10-15 storey slabs with relatively low cost parking solutions (surface, 1 storey parking decks, 1 storey underground), and quite affordable with rents of around $1.40/sf.

London also has some more expensive condos being built in the downtown, which are also about twice as tall, but it's building about two suburban rental slabs for every downtown condo tower.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by memph

And that's the edge of DART's service area. The multi-family development mhays linked across the freeway is in Frisco which doesn't have any bus service from the looks of it.

Yeah apparently Frisco has opted not to join DART and has no transit.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by dleung

See, that thinking is all wrong. No one wants an autocentric lifestyle; they only settle for that in order to afford a house.

I know this is an urbanist website, but I find this comment especially hilarious. "No one" wants an autocentric lifestyle yet even in the most auto-hostile places like NYC and Paris and Tokyo, tons of people have cars. New parking spaces have essentially been banned from Manhattan for 45 years, luxury buildings with parking are rare, costs outrageous, congestion absurd, yet still plenty of drivers.

The fact is that most households want vehicles. Certainly in the U.S. and Canada, the vast majority of households want vehicles, and if they lack vehicles it isn't by choice.

[Tuckerman]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I know this is an urbanist website, but I find this comment especially hilarious. "No one" wants an autocentric lifestyle yet even in the most auto-hostile places like NYC and Paris and Tokyo, tons of people have cars. New parking spaces have essentially been banned from Manhattan for 45 years, luxury buildings with parking are rare, costs outrageous, congestion absurd, yet still plenty of drivers.

The fact is that most households want vehicles. Certainly in the U.S. and Canada, the vast majority of households want vehicles, and if they lack vehicles it isn't by choice.

Agreed. I have close friends and relatives that live in central Paris and Berlin, both cities with excellent public transit. They all own cars. Some, the Berliners do not commute to work by car; the Parisians all drive to work, sometimes in heavy congestion. One friend, a woman executive, has no desire to be squished and prodded on the METRO. Myself, I have lived for 10 years in a Eurpean city with good transit and did not own a car, but we rented one almost every weekend to explore the city and country. IMO it is also a matter of economics and personal wishes.. Owning a car in a congested city is expensive and if you do the math it is almost always cheaper to use public transit and taxicabs. That economic argument is superseded by the freedom of your own transportation readily at hand. Basically, if you are middle class in our Western culture, you will want to own a car and it will be seen as normal behavior.

[dleung]

^^Read what I said again.. City people want the freedom of having a car, but they don't aspire to be stuck behind a wheel 2 hours a day. Because I live downtown I only use my Range Rover for trips to Home Depot or out of town. That's not autocentric. Conversely I know people barely getting by but have to buy a crap car to get to their suburban job since they can't afford not to take that job. They can't afford not to be autocentric. Vancouver is one of those places where everyone is rich and own cars but aren't forced to use them all the time.

[Tuckerman]

Originally Posted by dleung

^^Read what I said again.. City people want the freedom of having a car, but they don't aspire to be stuck behind a wheel 2 hours a day. Because I live downtown I only use my Range Rover for trips to Home Depot or out of town. That's not autocentric. Conversely I know people barely getting by but have to buy a crap car to get to their suburban job since they can't afford not to take that job. They can't afford not to be autocentric. Vancouver is one of those places where everyone is rich and own cars but aren't forced to use them all the time.

I don't think many people aspire to be stuck in traffic in their cars or stuck on public transportation. Given a middle class lifestyle, urban dwellers that shop at Home Depot or Costco presume the necessity of a car. It is difficult to manage 40 rolls of Brawny towels or 2 bags of potting soil on MARTA.

[Steely Dan]

back when i was a bachelor and only had myself to be concerned about as far as transportation, owning a car just didn't make economic sense compared against biking, walking, transit, car-sharing, ride-sharing, cabs, and rental cars. i could have afforded my own car, but for A single person in a city like chicago, it would have been a stupid waste of money.

now that i'm a family man and have other people's transportation needs to accommodate, the convenience of owning a car now offsets the major expense of doing so. but we just have the one car for those times when it comes in handy; owning two cars for our family in a neighborhood like lincoln square would be a stupid waste of money.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by memph

Toronto is a denser urban area, and by a not so insignificant margin too, so I think that's definitely part of it.

According to this
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publi...TX-comp-17.pdf

Multi-family housing being built in Dallas County went from 93% lowrise before 2000, to 57% lowrise in the 00s, to 24% lowrise in the 10s. Looking around the county on google maps, you do see that they're starting to run low on under-utilized land to infill on, so it's not surprising that the new developments are getting denser and denser.

According to that report, Dallas County was averaging around 11,000 multi-family permits in recent years (not including townhomes), as well as around 4,000 single family & townhome permits per year. You might think it's unfair to be comparing just Dallas County to the whole Toronto CMA, which has been average 22,000 multifamily permits and 16,000 SFH/townhouse permits per year, but not entirely. The whole Toronto urban area fits into an area that's less than Dallas County, and even if you include the other small urban areas of the Toronto CMA like Stouffville and Milton and exclude the undeveloped areas in the SE of Dallas County, you're still looking at equal sized areas.

The fact that Toronto has 2.2x the population in a same sized area means there's less undeveloped parcels to build on, and developed parcels are denser so if you're going to do demolition you need to go denser to make it worth your while. So Toronto would have to go denser even if it was building an equal amount and it's building about twice as much.

If Dallas County growing from 2 million people to 2.7 million people over the last two decades was enough to cause it to go from having 7% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise to 76% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise, imagine how that would change if Dallas County grew to have 6 million people and was building twice as much multi-family per year as it was now.

Melbourne Australia has 310 cranes building I don’t know how many high rises.

Meanwhile density in the Melbourne urban area is 4000 per square mile, nearly half of that of Toronto

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Melbourne Australia has 310 cranes building I don’t know how many high rises.

Meanwhile density in the Melbourne urban area is 4000 per square mile, nearly half of that of Toronto

Melbourne's first round of post-war expansion was more low-rise than Toronto's. I'm no expert on the city but they don't seem to build suburban high-rises in any large quantity. There's no equivalent to a Downtown Mississauga, North York, Scarborough Centre, etc. which helps explains the current density differential.

It's a highly desirable city with high immigration numbers today though. Most of those cranes are likely located in the core where sprawly suburbs bringing down the average urban area density don't really matter. You also need a crane whether it's 10 stories or 80. Melbourne could be undergoing a first round of intensification at lower heights than some of the ridiculous projects in the aforementioned GTA suburbs.

[memph]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Melbourne Australia has 310 cranes building I don’t know how many high rises.

Meanwhile density in the Melbourne urban area is 4000 per square mile, nearly half of that of Toronto

I've been to Melbourne a couple years ago. It does have 50 storey high end condos getting built in its CBD similar to the ones in Toronto, but not really any outside the CBD and still a lot less overall than Toronto. It did have a ton of midrises under construction though and a lot of those are built using cranes. I'd say the vast majority of those 310 cranes are being used for buildings that are 5-15 storeys tall.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by memph

Toronto is a denser urban area, and by a not so insignificant margin too, so I think that's definitely part of it.

According to this
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publi...TX-comp-17.pdf

Multi-family housing being built in Dallas County went from 93% lowrise before 2000, to 57% lowrise in the 00s, to 24% lowrise in the 10s. Looking around the county on google maps, you do see that they're starting to run low on under-utilized land to infill on, so it's not surprising that the new developments are getting denser and denser.

According to that report, Dallas County was averaging around 11,000 multi-family permits in recent years (not including townhomes), as well as around 4,000 single family & townhome permits per year. You might think it's unfair to be comparing just Dallas County to the whole Toronto CMA, which has been average 22,000 multifamily permits and 16,000 SFH/townhouse permits per year, but not entirely. The whole Toronto urban area fits into an area that's less than Dallas County, and even if you include the other small urban areas of the Toronto CMA like Stouffville and Milton and exclude the undeveloped areas in the SE of Dallas County, you're still looking at equal sized areas.

The fact that Toronto has 2.2x the population in a same sized area means there's less undeveloped parcels to build on, and developed parcels are denser so if you're going to do demolition you need to go denser to make it worth your while. So Toronto would have to go denser even if it was building an equal amount and it's building about twice as much.

If Dallas County growing from 2 million people to 2.7 million people over the last two decades was enough to cause it to go from having 7% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise to 76% of its multi-family permits being midrise/highrise, imagine how that would change if Dallas County grew to have 6 million people and was building twice as much multi-family per year as it was now.

Informative post, thanks!

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Tuckerman

I don't think many people aspire to be stuck in traffic in their cars or stuck on public transportation. Given a middle class lifestyle, urban dwellers that shop at Home Depot or Costco presume the necessity of a car. It is difficult to manage 40 rolls of Brawny towels or 2 bags of potting soil on MARTA.

I was responding to the suggestion that transit use in Vancouver is high only because people can't afford cars. Hello, it's the luxury car capital of the world... incomes have nothing to do with net worth here, hence higher rates of car ownership than more autocentric cities. Owning a car doesn't mean living an autocentric lifestyle. It's such a sad suggestion that people aspire to live an autocentric lifestyle. That for rural people or urban poor.

Like I said, it's an American paradigm that public transit has to be unpleasant. Living in Toronto and Vancouver, if the trip time is the same (often the case in the inner city), people will choose transit every time, unless for transporting groceries. Heck I rarely even take transit, I just walk everywhere. For most places, by the time I find parking, I could've have walked there already.

[jtown,man]

If you could afford a car but still live in a transit-rich area, why not have one? I know the word "afford" means different things to different people, but you get my point.

You could use the transit to just get to work and back. You could never use the transit, but enjoy the density around the stations to enjoy most of your life car-free(minus commuting to work). I did this for two years. I spent 35 minutes commuting each way by car to work and walked/biked/transit the other 90% of the time.

Point? People are complicated and all need/want different things however in the end if you can truly afford a car, why not have one?

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by dleung

I was responding to the suggestion that transit use in Vancouver is high only because people can't afford cars. Hello, it's the luxury car capital of the world... incomes have nothing to do with net worth here, hence higher rates of car ownership than more autocentric cities. Owning a car doesn't mean living an autocentric lifestyle. It's such a sad suggestion that people aspire to live an autocentric lifestyle. That for rural people or urban poor.

Like I said, it's an American paradigm that public transit has to be unpleasant. Living in Toronto and Vancouver, if the trip time is the same (often the case in the inner city), people will choose transit every time, unless for transporting groceries. Heck I rarely even take transit, I just walk everywhere. For most places, by the time I find parking, I could've have walked there already.

Yeah, it’s odd how many one here, Americans it seems especially, see it as binary situation. Either you have a car and drive everywhere, or you are poor and must take transit...

Growing up in Vancouver and now living in Japan it is much more dynamic than that.

In Vancouver nearly all my friends have cars, and yet nearly all of them also regularly take transit (and walk, and bike).

There is a strong desire in most to live near a transit station (not just for the transit access but also all the amenities within walking distance that often accompany such stations) Seeing how only so much space is available around transit stations this leads to higher densities and towers. Most people who live in towers near train stations in Metro Vancouver can afford single detached houses in the far flung suburbs (Maple Ridge, Langley, Abbotsford and the Valley) but they choose the condo because it better fits their preferred urban lifestyle.

Yes, not every station has high density around it even in Vancouver (that is largely due to the city dragging its heels with zoning in some neighborhoods) and yes not every tower is located near a train station, but using such outliers to prove your counter point is an obvious straw man argument.

My current life in Japan I have a car, a bike, and a train pass.

Going somewhere near my neighborhood that only requires a small basket (haircut, quick 1 or 2 bag shop, seeing a friend for coffee, etc...) I ride my bike.

Going somewhere to pick up something heavy / that is far away and not near a train station. I take my car.

Going somewhere for white collar style work that is within a 20 minute walk of a train station / going out to party with friends (especially if drinking). I take the train.

I would hate to live somewhere that required me to drive for every outing and small errand. Hence I would always choose a condo near a train station over a detached house in the far flung burbs if given only those two choices.

Also, yes, as an elementary child many of us walked, took transit and rode bikes to school. Especially after 10 years of age. Sucks that you guys didn’t have the same experience.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

If you could afford a car but still live in a transit-rich area, why not have one? I know the word "afford" means different things to different people, but you get my point.

You could use the transit to just get to work and back. You could never use the transit, but enjoy the density around the stations to enjoy most of your life car-free(minus commuting to work). I did this for two years. I spent 35 minutes commuting each way by car to work and walked/biked/transit the other 90% of the time.

Point? People are complicated and all need/want different things however in the end if you can truly afford a car, why not have one?

Putting that $10,000 a year toward retirement or something else (or whatever figure AAA uses now), avoiding environmental problems...

Hell, I even make money off not having one, by renting out my parking space.

[mhays]

In the urban US cities (and tweeners like Seattle), people who live and/or work in the core often use transit. Far more downtown office workers use transit and drive.

[Tuckerman]

Yes. Every city and individual case is different. Often it is a case of convenience. Here in ATL if I am going downtown I take the subway MARTA from a station not too far from where we live; but I drive to the station and park there because the bus would require a walk a wait and would be in slow traffic getting to the station. If I am going to be in traffic, I might as well be in my own car listening to the radio. To the airport, I always take the subway - very convenient and direct. So it is a mixture of convenience and easy access to transit.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Nite

If all Chinese immigration and investment were short off tomorrow. Toronto and Vancouver would still be buildings suburban skyline at the same rate they are currently simply because highrises are the only type of affordable housing in both cities and highrises and midrises are pretty much the only type of housing built in both metros.

If you disagree with me, where else would Toronto and Vancouver house both their growing populations? sprawl is simply not an option anymore for either city

Real estate is one of the largest employers in either city. That's a load that development wouldn't be greatly affected if the bubble were to burst one day to the next. The scale and scope of development would be significantly smaller and shorter once the dust has settled and the economy started recovering.

It's not needed to build 40 plus storeys with 400 plus units at the densities in suburban Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, Toronto. It's entirely a product of exorbitant values after 20 years of real estate speculation and institutional investors that finance billion dollar projects and also buy up huge blocks of suites/ buildings in no time. Few are going to invest years into selling and financing one tower when the only market are end users. They are going to break it up into smaller, more manageable phases.