Crazily, this render by the redoubtable steveveve doesn't even enclose the Humber Bay or Yonge/Eglinton skylines, which, if what is proposed there is built, could pass for major skylines all by themselves.

Don't worry, Steveve has got your back

Yonge-Eglinton
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...ffc703bd_k.jpg

Yonge-Eglinton, Yonge-Davisville and Yonge-St. Clair
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8049a823_k.jpg

North York City Centre
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...2ffbd767_k.jpg

Golden Mile
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...fd836a89_k.jpg

Humber Bay
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...fd9b3bc6_k.jpg

Visual history of Toronto high-rise development
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e8483560_k.jpg

And finally here is his work of Downtown Toronto after all current construction and proposals are done
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...64fe765f_k.jpg

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread....27943/page-15

Any sense of how many units are being built every year in downtown Toronto? I'd guess around 10,000?

I know that Commerce Court South proposal has an observation deck proposed (cool), but it would be really neat to have a public observatory in one of these very tall buildings going up in either College Park or Yorkville. Aside from douchey lounges in Yorkville, you can't really access views of Toronto that show the layers of the skyline as much, because the skyline is oriented along the Yonge corridor most strongly. So views from the lake, the most common angle, miss that. The CN Tower is great but misses the most iconic building in the city because you're inside of it (why Top of the Rock is better than ESB in NYC).

That's so true!

Is it possible to get these numbers for the city proper? My thinking is the MSA calculation is just capturing a lot of sprawl (Dallas, Houston). The same numbers by city population would show which cities are doing the most infill and building up.

It may be in another thread, but I remember NYC was at 30,000 and Toronto was at 22,000. That's probably numbers 1 and 2, respectively. Who would be #3?

Depends, you want the city proper numbers? In that can some cities like Houston, Austin and Calgary will still capture large swaths of the MSA.

If looking at just the urban core, I'd expect Seattle would be up there.

Those Toronto diagrams are as awesome as they are dumbfounding... it is basically set to add the equivalent of Los Angeles skyline and the Philadelphia skyline (and probably more) to it's existing skyline in the coming years. Just astounding numbers.

While it pales in comparison to the Toronto numbers, Nashville has approximately 50 towers of 300 feet or more either U/C, approved, or proposed at the moment... I imagine that has got to be up there a ways, no? And before you ask, no, most of them are not hotels.

Oh absolutely... If we were to make a list of north american metros >1M populaiton ordered by new square footage/population, Nashville would certainly be in the top 5, if not the top.

You can do it on a per capita basis.

City...Housing Starts 2020...Per 100,000 people

Jersey City...4,766...1,814.5
Toronto...22,000...750.9
Nashville...2,431...351.1
New York...30,000...340.9
Dallas...1,050...78.9

What about cities like Burnaby, Surrey, Brampton, Vaughan? Like Jersey City they get a lot of spill over construction due to being adjacent to a much bigger city.

Toronto is going the direction of a Dubai of North America, offering safe haven real estate to multinational investors, this is really nothing new.

What city is proposing the most multifamily buildings? There always seems to be an inconsistency between the numbers for say New York/ toronto/ Austin etc, and places like Dallas which never rank high on emporis lists, but nonetheless add the largest amount of large multifamily properties annually in the US.

Post the numbers then.

I went to the SSP database to look at how many 100m+ buildings were Built or Under Construction in the 2 fastest building places in Canada and the US since 2000. I used the 100m benchmark (often used globally) rather than the 150m preferred by Americans. 100m is a better benchmark imo. A 100-150m building may not be the first thing one notices in a skyline but it definitely has an impact. It roughly translates to a 32-35 floor building. I first listed by City Proper and then listed by Metropolitan Area. I think I got it roughly correct. This is what it spat out.


100m+ Buildings Built + U/C since 2000

City of New York: 350
City of Toronto: 337
City of Miami: 116
City of Vancouver: 48

Toronto CMA: 407
New York MSA: 393
Miami MSA: 162
Vancouver CMA: 124


Toronto CMA: Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham
Miami MSA: Miami, Sunny Isles, Ft. Lauderdale, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Miami Beach, Riviera Beach, Aventura, Bal Harbour, Sunrise, West Palm Beach
New York MSA: New York, Fort Lee, Guttenberg, Jersey City, New Rochelle, Newark, North Bergen, West New York, Franklin Township, White Plains
Vancouver CMA: Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam, New Westminster

If I had the data, I would. As you were posting tables based on housing starts, I was hoping you had them. Maybe someone else has them?

The data from the past decade is pretty clear that the vast majority of Toronto construction is due to real population growth. These new residential units aren't sitting empty like you're contending. They have people living in them. Most of the criticism is that the development industry isn't building enough to satisfy demand; especially affordable housing. And most of the new office developments have lead tenants. They're not being built on speculation.

Toronto builds alot because its absolute population growth is extremely high. In the year before COVID, it added more people than any other city in the western world. More than Dallas, more than Melbourne, and more than London. That's going to fuel alot of demand for housing, office, institutional, and retail. Chalking it all up to multinational investors? If that's what you want to believe that's your prerogative but it misses the mark entirely.

The big question mark is whether growth will pick up where it left off when the pandemic is fully behind us. Time will tell.

I'm not saying these units are vacant , far from it.

Let's say a typical investor (international or domestic) buys a unit in a new highrise condo in downtown Vaughn, then immediately turns around and rents it out. It seems that investors these days are even willing to accept negative rental cash flows

absent the investor demand, pushing up the $/sq foot valuation, that 40 story tower would be much harder to finance, and you might be forced to build a cheaper/smaller unit (eg woodframe or multiple smaller highrise/midrise) instead.

I count 21000 for Toronto. Anyways, 2020 housing starts and per 100,000 for major fast growing Toronto suburbs.

Oakville: 2645... 1364.6
Vaughan/Richmond Hill/King City*: 3484... 685.5
Milton+Halton Hills*: 912... 532.4
Markham: 1577... 479.4
Brampton: 2425... 408.5
Mississauga: 1777... 246.3

CMHC combines the data for these adjacent suburbs. I would say the bulk of the construction is taking place in Vaughan and Milton though, so around 900 per capita for Vaughan and 700 per capita for Milton.

For Milton, it's mostly greenfield development, and Toronto style "dense sprawl". Oakville is pretty 50/50. Close to half is apartments, and a fair bit is rowhouses. A lot of those apartments are being built on the fringe, although there are a few infill nodes too. For Vaughan, most of it is infill. For Markham, it's almost entirely infill.

Yeah, well in Chinese real estate I think rental cash flows aren't even close to positive, so I guess it makes sense that Toronto can build expensive condos with relatively low rents (compared to cost to buy). You might get $2000 in rent but $600 in condo fees leaves you with only $1400/month to pay off a $600,000 condo.

City...Housing Starts 2020...Per 100,000 people

Jersey City...4,766...1,814.5
Oakville, ON...2,645... 1,364.6
Toronto, ON...22,000...750.9
Vaughan (Richmond Hill/King City), ON...3,484... 685.5
Milton+Halton Hills, ON...912... 532.4
Markham,ON...1,577... 479.4
Brampton, ON...2,425... 408.5
Nashville...2,431...351.1
New York...30,000...340.9
Mississauga,ON...1,777...246.3
Dallas...1,050...78.9

Well this won't work... haha. It's too skewed towards smaller cities that are growing quickly. Still very impressive numbers out of the Toronto metro area.