Who is building the most in North America?

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Crawford

One thing that's odd about the GTA is that the fancy areas often have the least construction, and the less desirable areas often have the most "luxury condos". Probably trans-national differences in zoning and regulatory framework.

For example, Yonge north of the 401 is kinda dumpy. But there's an orgy of gigantic towers everywhere, topped only by downtown Toronto. And most look pretty expensive and upscale. Yonge south of the 401 is very affluent, but looks basically the same as 25 years ago, when I was visiting nearby relatives as a kid. There are numerous SFH teardowns, but the essential character is the same. North York looks like some alien spacecraft touched down.

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Others have noted the zoning permissions, which I will come back to........but the first thing is to correct the overly-broad statements about dumpiness.

Yonge St. north of the 401 was them main drag of the former municipality of North York; and before that, the village of Lansing.
The bulk of it went up post WWII; 3-5 decades after most of Lawrence Park, the residential area you noted south of 401.

There were some older heritage homes which looked quite nice, but many were demo'ed to make way for the towers you see today....

This is an example of a remnant older home from downtown North York.



Not so dumpy, LOL.

If Toronto were in the U.S., Yonge north of the 401 would still be dumpy strip malls and worn bungalows, and any construction would be concentrated to the south. Toronto's growth is much more efficient, but it's hard to understand.

When it comes to zoning, here's what you need to know, before amalgamation, North York York was led by a rather boisterous former furniture salesman as Mayor named Mel Lastman. He had dreams of North York having a downtown and skyline all its own.

The Yonge subway had extended up to this area of Yonge in the 1970s, when it was still mostly low density, mainly to provide vast parking lots at its northern terminus (Finch) which could serve the then outer burbs and ex-urbs.

Mayor Mel, however, had more grandiose thoughts, and lobbied aggressively for an an east-west subway to serve his would-be downtown.

(Line 4 / Sheppard); a truncated version of which was built.

At the time, Downtown Toronto, while healthy was actually losing some office development to the suburbs, something supported by the then Metro government and even the 'old' City of Toronto which didn't need the extra assessment dollars and didn't particularly desire to be crowded (Toronto briefly imposed an 8-storey height limit on much of the core in the 70s)

Its in that context the towers began to rise in North York, first as offices and a hotel and later a smattering of the first wave of condos.

But the density permissions that had been put in place would come in handy when the amalgamated City began its super-boom some years later.

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By contrast, there was never any desire to see skyscrapers in Lawrence Park.