Toronto goes to war with the province to keep housing prices high

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm always thrown for a loop when i see these "houses and towers" pics from suburban toronto.

in suburban chicago, the owners of those homes in the foreground would band together and hire every single last real estate lawyer in the state if they had to to stop what occurred in the background.

they would either succeed or at least drag the process out long enough in the courts to make it go away.

of course, 9 times out of 10 it wouldn't even be necessary, as most suburban municipalities would summarily deny anything that could even be construed as a dreaded "highrise" out of hand.

that's DOA shit in >90% of them.

Exactly. In the US, homeowners have a lot more clout, especially in local politics.

And if real estate prices are any indication, what is really in demand in Toronto are not more condo towers, it is SFHs.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm always thrown for a loop when i see these "houses and towers" pics from suburban toronto.

in suburban chicago, the owners of those homes in the foreground would band together and hire every single last real estate lawyer in the state if they had to to stop what occurred in the background.

I'm not intrinsically opposed to highrises near SFHs, but the pics posted are of Mississauga, which is arguably Toronto's ugliest, worst-planned suburb.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm always thrown for a loop when i see these "houses and towers" pics from suburban toronto.

in suburban chicago, the owners of those homes in the foreground would band together and hire every single last real estate lawyer in the state if they had to to stop what occurred in the background.

they would either succeed or at least drag the process out long enough in the courts to make it go away.

of course, 9 times out of 10 it wouldn't even be necessary, as most suburban municipalities would summarily deny anything that could even be construed as a dreaded "highrise" out of hand.

that's DOA shit in >90% of them.

The Toronto area has been building suburban high-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings next to detached houses in new subdivisions since the 60s. Literally thousands of such buildings throughout the Greater Toronto Area. I lived in such neighbourhoods all through my childhood and I have shown them in detail and revisited my childhood with my photothreads here. These photos are all neighbourhoods in a suburb trying to copy Toronto. That's why for someone from Toronto proper to try to portray the city as having anti-high-rise culture and policies is just strange to me. Even if you are from Chicago, you can just look at these photos, and you will see what Torontonians really think about high-rise living and high-rise construction.

[C.]

Originally Posted by Doady

These photos are absolutely ridiculous. Extreme densities on arterial roads surrounded by a sea of single-family homes. Toronto and the surrounding areas really needs to start exploring mid-rises in those exclusive single-family neighborhoods.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Nite

Japanese cities are still growing relatively fast especially Tokyo

Only 7 prefectures out of 47 have seen population growth in the last 10 years: 4 are in the Tokyo area, one is suburban Osaka (Shiga Prefecture, and it grew by a whopping 0.2%), one is Fukuoka (+0.6%) and the other is Okinawa. Tokyo's "relatively fast" growth is 2% over ten years.

Very few cities in Japan are growing, and those that are growing do so at the cost of other cities and prefectures. Depopulation on the Sea of Japan side of the country has lead to situations where municipalities regularly give land away for free - you just need to agree to pay the taxes.

Guys, I know free market evangelists hold Japan up as an example of what happens when you let housing get built with little regulation. But ask yourselves this, would you want to live in a housing system in which:

- Only land can appreciates in value; houses do not. "Can" being the operative word here, as normal scarcity expectations don't apply to shrinking markets. Lots of land never appreciates.

- Houses are built with a ~30 year shelf-life. Culturally, almost no one who can afford to buy a SFH finds it acceptable to buy a used one. You build a new house on purchased land. The omnipresent construction and real estate conglomerates rrrreaaaallly push this narrative. The most common OOO creative I see running in Tokyo's transit ads is for new houses and new developments on the fringes of the metro out in Chiba or Saitama prefectures.

- Consequently to the above two points, if you buy land and build a house, you won't be able to recoup the costs of the actual house. Ever. That's $200,000 bare minimum in Tokyo that you will never see again. Unless your land appreciated by more than the cost of the house. Which isn't going to happen outside of select areas in major cities, Tokyo having the most of these.

The system here works because it robs Peter to pay Paul. The Japanese countryside can only be emptied out so much before there's no longer a source for Tokyo's growth. And to be clear: this is the only source of growth Tokyo gets. We have more deaths than births in Japan, we've been well below replacement level birthrates for decades, and we will never let even medium-scale immigration happen, let alone at the volumes needed to offset our inverted demo pyramid time-bomb.

[SFBruin]

Originally Posted by C.

These photos are absolutely ridiculous. Extreme densities on arterial roads surrounded by a sea of single-family homes. Toronto and the surrounding areas really needs to start exploring mid-rises in those exclusive single-family neighborhoods.

Am I the only one who doesn't like mid-rises?

If you want to live in an apartment, there is really no downside to living in a hi-rise. If you want to live in a house, then there is no upside to living in a mid-rise. Idk, just some food for thought.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by C.

These photos are absolutely ridiculous. Extreme densities on arterial roads surrounded by a sea of single-family homes. Toronto and the surrounding areas really needs to start exploring mid-rises in those exclusive single-family neighborhoods.

This is why exclusive Single Family zoning needs to die.
Naturally you will get midrises in these neighborhoods if we let developer in.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Doady

The Toronto area has been building suburban high-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings next to detached houses in new subdivisions since the 60s. Literally thousands of such buildings throughout the Greater Toronto Area. I lived in such neighbourhoods all through my childhood and I have shown them in detail and revisited my childhood with my photothreads here. These photos are all neighbourhoods in a suburb trying to copy Toronto. That's why for someone from Toronto proper to try to portray the city as having anti-high-rise culture and policies is just strange to me. Even if you are from Chicago, you can just look at these photos, and you will see what Torontonians really think about high-rise living and high-rise construction.

The suburbs aren't trying to copy Toronto for status reasons. they are copying Toronto because that's the Law in the provinces, they have to densify and if they don't the province will make them.
as outlined in The Places to Grow Act of 2005,, Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2006 and the Greenbelt plan.

"Since the introduction of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe in 2006, the region has seen a shift to more compact development patterns, a greater variety of housing options, more mixed-use development in urban growth centres and other strategic growth areas, and greater integration of transit and land use planning."

here are the places in the greater golden horseshoe that the province has targets for the most intensive growth back in 2006 and this is pretty much how things have gone since then.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by C.

These photos are absolutely ridiculous. Extreme densities on arterial roads surrounded by a sea of single-family homes. Toronto and the surrounding areas really needs to start exploring mid-rises in those exclusive single-family neighborhoods.

Extreme densities? 20-30 storeys is extreme now?

Exclusive single-family neighbourhoods? Aside from those high-rises, which aren't single-family homes, there are also semi-detached houses in the last photo. Here's a photo of a high-rise and some townhouses (i.e. no single-family homes at all):



Semi-detached houses, townhouses, high-rise apartments (both rental and condominium):



These are from the 80s, but construction of semi-detached houses and townhouses (both freehold and condominium) started decades before that and continued unabated for decades after that. Medium and high densities have always been a normal part of new subdivisions. Bottom line is, don't let anyone convince you that zoning in anywhere in the Toronto area is "zoned exclusively for single family homes". That is just pure BS. Plenty of medium density and high density zones everywhere throughout the GTA, even in the newest and furthest subdivisions like Churchill Meadows and Cornell and Oakville Uptown Core.

Check out the photothread that Memph here did for Oakville Uptown and surrounding neighbourhoods:
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=246314

Check out Markham Centre and Cornell on Google Street View:
https://goo.gl/maps/5A6TagFnVq8yiVz97

Churchill Meadows on Google Street View:
https://goo.gl/maps/GKaPZZiDsvThHq289

It's just ridiculous that Toronto of all places gets singled out for promoting detached houses and opposing higher densities. And not just anywhere in the Toronto area, but the City of Toronto in particular? Don't listen to any of that garbage.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Nite

In 2019, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives moved to overcome this obstacle by putting out a new plan, titled “ A Place to Grow ”

A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow! Ontari-ari-ari-o!

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Nite

The suburbs aren't trying to copy Toronto for status reasons. they are copying Toronto because that's the Law in the provinces, they have to densify and if they don't the province will make them.
as outlined in The Places to Grow Act of 2005,, Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2006 and the Greenbelt plan.

"Since the introduction of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe in 2006, the region has seen a shift to more compact development patterns, a greater variety of housing options, more mixed-use development in urban growth centres and other strategic growth areas, and greater integration of transit and land use planning."

here are the places in the greater golden horseshoe that the province has targets for the most intensive growth back in 2006 and this is pretty much how things have gone since then.

Not only were high-rises built in suburban Toronto before 2006, most of them were built before 2006. Even in Mississauga, most of high-rises were built before 2006. The Places to Grow act in 2006 had little to do with the 1000+ high-rises built throughout post-war suburban Toronto, including the former suburban municipalities Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough within the current City of Toronto boundaries. Mississauga City Centre, Etobicoke City Centre, North York City Centre, Scarborough City Centre existed long before 2006.

Here was suburbia in 2004, before the Places to Grow Plan:


Buildings from 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, every decade. High-rise construction in suburban Toronto happened since the very beginning and it never stopped. It has nothing to do with the Province and it's "Growth Plan". High-rise buildings and high-rise living have always been a major part of Toronto's landscape and culture, even in the suburbs. You could even see Tom Green showcase a suburban high-rise neighbourhood in Toronto back in the day too:

• Video Link

The suburban high-rise construction happening now is not a new thing, but a continuation of the suburban high-rise construction that has been happening for decades, even since Thorncliffe Park probably. To come in here and suggest that the people and municipalities here hate high-rises so much that the province had to so valiantly act like a lone wolf and step in and intervene in 2006 and forcibly kick start high-rise construction in suburban Toronto that year against every everybody's will, I am not sure you will convince many people even outside of the GTA, especially those that have seen my North American Moscow thread.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Doady

Buildings from 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, every decade. High-rise construction in suburban Toronto happened since the very beginning and it never stopped.

I clearly remember seeing high rise apartment buildings like the ones in this photo, many even taller, mostly in North York, in 1971.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

Almost every tower built in Toronto in the last 25 years was rejected by Toronto city council? You make me laugh. Was it the same with the dozens of towers built in Mississauga in the last 25 years too?

Most of Toronto is zoned for single-family homes? No shit. Isn't that the whole point of building high density? Only a moron would want any low-rise neighbourhoods to be completely demolished. That's why we promote high-rise development: because they take up less space, allowing more single family homes to be preserved, increasing the diversity of housing within the city. Building more high-rises means keeping more single-family homes. To constantly complain about a supposed lack of high rise development in Toronto but also attack the presence of single family neighbourhoods in Toronto is just stupid. Try coming up with an argument that actually makes sense for once.

I actually agree with you that SFHs and highrises don't tend to oppose one another. In fact, when most of the residential land is zoned exclusively for SFHs, it promotes highrises because that's the only way to cram enough density into the limited remaining land. And as a result, Toronto has an abundance of highrise residential buildings. I disagree that this is a good thing however, because this does NOT promote a diversity of housing and in fact discourages it. The areas zoned for detached housing are forced to remain so, and the areas that are allowed to density are compelled to have large highrises with these being increasingly the only options. Not surprisingly, we have a growing issue of a missing middle, something that the About Here channel explores in the context of Vancouver, but is also equally applicable to Toronto.

• Video Link

Many experts in the field of planning have noted that highrises are not the ideal form of residential housing. The best-selling book Happy City points to studies showing that people living in units with a stronger connection to the ground tend to be happier on average than those living in towers, with several examples including the residents of a tower and townhouse project in Yaletown. Obviously this may not apply to everyone since people are all unique individuals so we can really only discuss the issue in terms of averages. But preserving SFHs is not a sustainable goal because you either have a situation of:

A) Unlimited sprawl caused by continually adding the necessary land to accommodate enough new detached houses to keep up with demand for homes on the ground, or

B) A finite number of detached houses that become increasingly expensive and rare as a proportion without any ability to increase supply. Therefore as the city grows, an ever smaller percentage of people can live in one.

This does not allow for a diversity of housing types because as the population grows, if you want to prevent sprawl you can't grow the SFH supply along with the population so newcomers, unless they're wealthy, generally don't have a choice between a detached home or a highrise unit. That is not a diversity of options. It's just preferential treatment for those who are wealthy or lucky enough to already have a detached home.

A mixture of housing that includes townhouses, lowrise apartment, midrise apartment, and highrises apartment is far more diverse than a binary of just SFHs and highrise. Yet trying to preserve the maximum number of SFHs means you don't have the room for any of those medium-density options. I would love to see a good number of SFH areas replaced with medium density because honestly, SFH areas just house too few people relative to the amount of land they occupy to be beneficial to a growing and expensive city. Unless they're historic or otherwise notable, detached houses don't help anyone other than the increasingly small proportion of people who can afford them. They just make a city less vibrant, less interesting, and less efficient. And if there's limits on sprawl, also less affordable.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by Doady

Not really digging this streetscape. The houses are set way too far back from the street. Looks like you could fit 6 cars in each driveway? And the towers in the back also give off a very sterile, dystopian vibe. The transition from sprawl to dense is way too abrupt.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Doady

Here is an example of high-rise development in a Toronto suburb since the 90s. If anyone ever tries to convince you that the central City of Toronto is dominated by an anti-high-rise culture, that an anti-high-rise attitude permeates the city and its residents and politicians, that people of Toronto cannot accept high-rise living and construction, that high-rises and single-family homes cannot coexist in Toronto, just remember these photos of Toronto's outer suburbs:

I have only seen these scenes in barrier islands in South Florida. Very weird to see these types of developments anywhere else, not even in New York.

And what I mean is that single family homes coexisting that closely with high rises in a place that’s not even the city center.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I have only seen these scenes in barrier islands in South Florida. Very weird to see these types of developments anywhere else, not even in New York.

There are tons of highrises and midrises going up all over the NYC region, but they're in older, usually more transit-oriented suburbs, NOT the leafy sprawl areas. Places with city centers, sidewalks, and some vague urban form.

Sprawly postwar suburbs in the NY tri-state would NEVER consider giant highrises in SFH neighborhoods. It would be so outlandish as to be laughable. The neighbors would go batshit crazy and lawyer up if you even proposed something as modest as duplex townhouses. They file endless lawsuits when someone cuts a tree or removes a rock.

Real world examples - I have a friend in a wealthy Connecticut suburb where the municipal library underwent a very modest expansion, which involved a few trees being removed. The project was delayed for nearly a decade, bc the wealthy neighbors could not bear the thought of a small, contextual one-floor expansion.

But at the same time, older suburbs tend to be rather pro-development these days, which is why you see the midrise apartment complexes going up everywhere, as well as highrises in some of the truly urban suburbs. And some of the sprawl suburbs now have high density transit oriented neighborhoods, but NOT in the existing SFH areas.

[iheartthed]

Not quite as dramatic as the suburban Toronto examples, but you have stuff like this in a few suburbs around Metro Detroit: https://goo.gl/maps/YEtHhzi8d2XmXw1YA

[Innsertnamehere]

Toronto seems like it's constructing a lot by US standards, but Toronto is also adding more people to it's population than any other metro area in the US or Canada in sheer numbers every year. Plus, Toronto builds a lot less low density housing stock than any US city proportionately. Which means most new growth comes from apartment construction.

What this means is that even with what seems like huge amounts of apartment construction, it can still fall short of population growth.

Toronto is growing by about 110,000 people a year right now, or about 300 people a day. Every day. all. year. long.

That's like needing a 30 storey apartment building being completed every other day.

So yea, Toronto is building a ton of housing. But it's still not enough, especially with the anti-sprawl policies in place which force most growth to go into intensification.

If the goals of limiting urban area expansion are held, that means you need random suburban highrises. You need things like the article in the OP discusses about forcing mandatory density around transit.

Toronto had 38,587 housing starts in 2020. At an average occupancy of 2.2 people a unit, that's enough housing for about 85,000 people. Toronto's averaged a growth of about 107,000 people a year for the last 4 years, which means it's a shortfall of about 10,000 units annually to meet population growth, yet alone provide supply for the backlog of demand.

So yea, Toronto seems to be building a lot of housing, but it's actually falling short by about 25% of actual demand right now.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Not quite as dramatic as the suburban Toronto examples, but you have stuff like this in a few suburbs around Metro Detroit: https://goo.gl/maps/YEtHhzi8d2XmXw1YA

Southfield is a weird suburb, especially now that it's older and somewhat less desirable.

I wonder if people in the 1980's really thought that Southfield would replace downtown Detroit as the region's core.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

...Toronto is also adding more people to it's population than any other metro area in the US or Canada in sheer numbers every year.

Toronto is growing by about 110,000 people a year right now, or about 300 people a day. Every day. all. year. long.

Toronto's averaged a growth of about 107,000 people a year for the last 4 years,

The numbers must all be pretty close in North America because Houston ranked #3 in raw population growth among US metro areas last year at 91,000.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...on-growth.html