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

[edale]

Originally Posted by badrunner

It sort of generically resembles Mississauga (highrises next to SFHs) but in Westwood you actually do get a bit of that "missing middle" housing as a buffer: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0595.../data=!3m1!1e3

In fact there are a LOT of housing units in that area that are of the missing middle variety. You can see that neighborhood to the south densifying in real time. The towers themselves are smaller scale, built closer together, and integrated into the street grid. Westwood is not one of my favorite hoods, but still, it's worlds apart from the towers-in-a-park hot mess that is Mississauga: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5906.../data=!3m1!1e3

Oh I agree Westwood and the whole Wilshire corridor looks better and has more of a density gradient of midrise buildings than what was shown in Mississauga. I've not been there, so I can't comment on the 'on the ground feel', but based on the photos, Mississauga does look to be more 'towers in a park/mall' than Wilshire.

I was responding to this with my post, though:

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.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Doady

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.

Yeah, it's true Toronto has been building highrises for a long time. I think the NIMBYism against them does exist but it's mostly limited to the handful of the most affluent neighbourhoods.

If Greater Toronto was building as many new highrises per new resident as it was in the 1970s, it would be building around 200 highrises per year, which is more than double how many were built in 2020, albeit they would be smaller than today's new highrises.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by edale

Oh I agree Westwood and the whole Wilshire corridor looks better and has more of a density gradient of midrise buildings than what was shown in Mississauga. I've not been there, so I can't comment on the 'on the ground feel', but based on the photos, Mississauga does look to be more 'towers in a park/mall' than Wilshire.

I was responding to this with my post, though:

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.

Yeah I disagree with the bolded as well, there are a lot of places like that. It's kind of hard to avoid having SFHs in close proximity to highrises in most places. It's not always a bad thing. But there is also something unique about those extremes in Mississauga. I don't think there's anything quite like it in the US. Those pictures especially make the place look pretty bleak.

[Crawford]

Westwood is much older and more urban than Mississauga, and very much affluent favored quarter, unlike Mississauga. A better Toronto analogue would be Yonge-Lawrence.

But Westwood is kind of odd in that it's built urban, but functionally almost totally suburban. Very low transit share and almost no pedestrians on that Wilshire corridor, except at bus stops (and those aren't locals).

[memph]

Originally Posted by homebucket

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.

It's not that unusual to have demand for a large number of cars in some suburban areas due to multi-generational households and basement apartments.

That Mississauga subdivision was probably built in the 90s. Setbacks in contemporary subdivisions are more comparable to US streetcar suburbs.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5204...7i16384!8i8192
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6857...7i16384!8i8192

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

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.

Most of those SFH subdivisions in those Mississauga pictures were actually built after the first highrises though, so they wouldn't really have grounds to complain about them changing the character of the neighbourhood. I think the SFHs were generally built in the 80s-90s. The condos in those pictures were mostly built in the late 80s to present, but the oldest highrises, just a few blocks away (Hurontario/Mississauga Valley Blvd area), were built in the late 70s-early 80s.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Westwood is much older and more urban than Mississauga, and very much affluent favored quarter, unlike Mississauga. A better Toronto analogue would be Yonge-Lawrence.

But Westwood is kind of odd in that it's built urban, but functionally almost totally suburban. Very low transit share and almost no pedestrians on that Wilshire corridor, except at bus stops (and those aren't locals).

Yeah Wilshire-Yonge is the natural comparison. And Westwood is definitely an oddball. It's very single-use, basically a bedroom community/student housing. But I bet quite a few people walk to school/work there, or walk to Westwood Village for a night out.

[memph]

Originally Posted by 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.

2.2 is the average occupancy for the new housing that's being built? (because average household sizes are higher than that, although I guess a lot of the new housing is smaller than average units so that could make sense)

Anyways, I think part of the problem is that the sort of new housing that can be built is not necessarily the most affordable kind. You have highrises, which are expensive to construct per sf (especially if they're 50 storeys tall), or you have SFHs which kind of have to have large square footages to make sense. You're not going to be building 1200 sf 2-3 bedroom SFHs like Toronto was in the 1950s when land values are as high as they are. It's not really possible to build lots narrower than 20ft, especially if you need a garage, and in order to have high enough densities to recoup the high land cost, you need an FSI of 1 or close. That means a minimum of 1800-2000 sf or so for townhouses on 20ft lots, and 2500sf+ for SFHs on 30-40ft wide lots.

And then for tear-downs of lower density bungalows, it's often not permitted to split 40-60ft lots into 2-3 narrower ones, which pushes development towards 4000 sf+ homes.

What you would ideally have to help affordability is a lot of lowrise units in the 500-1500 sf range. Right now that demand is only met through basement apartments. Those do exist in decently high numbers, but it's a kinda crappy way to address that demand (often illegal, often have poor natural light).

I think Toronto is building enough highrises and large single family homes.

What it needs to do next is

1) upzone minor arterials that are currently seeing minimal development to "avenues" style development. Only a few arterials are zoned like that atm. Streets like Pape, Cosburn, Bathurst, Christie, Rogers Rd, Ossington, Dufferin, Davenport, Coxwell, Donlands, Avenue Rd... these should all allow midrises. In addition, there should be midrise transition zones between highrise zones and lowrise zones (ex in Midtown and North York Center).

2) allow lowrise infill across most SFH zones. This includes townhouses, laneway/backyard cottages, stacked townhouses, triplexes, and even smaller 3-4 storey apartment buildings (ex 12 units on a 5000 sf lot).

If you have highrise development occurring in major growth centers, TODs and arterials, then the lowrise neighbourhoods would only need to grow by about 50% over the next 30 years to meet demand, which is actually not that much. In a neighbourhood like Downview, that would mean the typical city block with 30 homes would just have to redevelop the 4 corner lots into 5-unit apartment buildings and that's it, they've done their share.

[memph]

Originally Posted by badrunner

It sort of generically resembles Mississauga (highrises next to SFHs) but in Westwood you actually do get a bit of that "missing middle" housing as a buffer: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0595.../data=!3m1!1e3

In fact there are a LOT of housing units in that area that are of the missing middle variety. You can see that neighborhood to the south densifying in real time. The towers themselves are smaller scale, built closer together, and integrated into the street grid. Westwood is not one of my favorite hoods, but still, it's worlds apart from the towers-in-a-park hot mess that is Mississauga: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5906.../data=!3m1!1e3

The phasing of the development and public realm in Mississauga was not ideal imo, but I think it can still come together into something pretty decently in a couple decades.

I've gone on bike rides through there a few times (as well as by car and bus), and right now there's a few pockets of good public realm and place-making, but they're divided by poor public realm that causes the place to lack cohesive. This is mainly due to the Square One parking lots and mega-arterials of Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario.

Although the parking lots will take several decades to redevelop, I think you will still see a noticeable difference in the more near term future. The stuff built in the late 70s to early 00s was still pretty bad in terms of having large setbacks and no ground level retail, and those still make up much of the built form, but the last 10 years or so of development have been much better, and the next 10 years of development will be good too. I think with the completion of Parkside Village, M-City, The Exchange, Tempo and 4220 Living Arts Drive (which are 3+ highrises apiece), the areas around Kariya Dr and Confederation Parkway will reach a critical mass where they have more of a legit small modern downtown vibe.

If you think about your typical American small town, the public realm along Main Street/Town Square is nice, but then you have the city blocks on either side which are lined with parking lots and maybe even vacant lots.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.9940...7i13312!8i6656
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1104...7i16384!8i8192
That doesn't make these small towns a lost cause, as long as they have one small area that's nice, people can just stick to that one little area and appreciate it.

So if Mississauga can have one or two little sub-districts that have good public realm, that'll already be a good start, and people can ignore Square One and the blocks around Rathburn that probably won't be redeveloped for a couple more decades.

[memph]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Good luck with organic infill in that disjointed urban fabric of cul-de-sacs and pocket subdivisions. The street layout itself is intrinsically anti-urban, like something you see on the outskirts of a sunbelt metro.

It's not that disjointed. Those subdivisions are actually pretty well connected to the highrise areas and it wouldn't take much to improve that further. I think people massively underestimate how much it would take to rectify the issues with suburban street networks.

Here's a map of the area the first two pictures were taken from (they were taken from within the blue circle).


Red lines are streets, trails, and other publicly accessible pathways, both existing, and committed to as part of the Parkside Village and M City developments. Not all that disjointed imo.

[memph]

Here is the current and future pedestrian network (red) for the location of the 3rd and 4th pictures Doady posted (blue circle). The yellow line is currently only partially accessible (involves cutting across parking lots/grass) but some city documents show plans to have a connection through there.



Not quite as well connected as the previous subdivision, but there's still at least one of two connections to each Mississauga Center and adjacent neighbourhoods. I wouldn't say that there are much major barriers to accessing the surroundings, even if an extra mid-block connection here or there wouldn't hurt. But making mid-block connections isn't actually that hard, you just need to do some density bonusing if developers set aside a 8 ft strip of land for a public walkway on the edge of their property.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by memph

The phasing of the development and public realm in Mississauga was not ideal imo, but I think it can still come together into something pretty decently in a couple decades.

I agree it can only get better from here

Originally Posted by memph

It's not that disjointed. Those subdivisions are actually pretty well connected to the highrise areas and it wouldn't take much to improve that further. I think people massively underestimate how much it would take to rectify the issues with suburban street networks.

...

Red lines are streets, trails, and other publicly accessible pathways, both existing, and committed to as part of the Parkside Village and M City developments. Not all that disjointed imo.

Trails and pathways don't make for an urban street grid, and overall it's still a very suburban road network, with a lot of meandering parkways and cul-de-sacs. It kind of reminds me of an Irvine or a Summerlin, but with giant towers-in-a-park.

[Nite]

Toronto home prices hit new record in October amid scarce listings

"The number of new listings fell 13 per cent month-over-month in October. Compared to a year earlier, inventory plunged 34 per cent.
“The only sustainable way to address housing affordability in the GTA is to deal with the persistent mismatch between demand and supply. Demand isn’t going away. And that’s why all three levels of government need to focus on supply,” said TRREB President Kevin Crigger in a release.

High demand and constrained supply helped push home prices even further into record territory as the average selling price of a property ticked up to $1,155,345 in October."

on a side note if the City of Toronto allowed developer to make Toronto as dense as Paris, 13,000,000 people would be able o live in the city instead of the current 3,000,000

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Nite

on a side note if the City of Toronto allowed developer to make Toronto as dense as Paris, 13,000,000 people would be able o live in the city instead of the current 3,000,000

That is grossly misleading.

To achieve that you would have to build in the ravines, floodplains and Rouge Park.

You would ruin the best thing about Toronto (which is a hell of a lot greener than Paris)

Further, you would have to rip down 1/2 the City, tear out most of the mature trees and rebuild virtually all the infrastructure (sewers, watermains, electricity, schools, etc.) none of which is capable of supporting such a population. The expense would be utterly absurd.

****

Lets then add, Toronto is already the 2nd densest City in North America (over comparable land area); and denser than Berlin, or Rome, or Melbourne Australia. The idea that if Toronto doesn't compare to Tokyo or Paris its doing something wrong, is wrong.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Nite

on a side note if the City of Toronto allowed developer to make Toronto as dense as Paris, 13,000,000 people would be able o live in the city instead of the current 3,000,000

Ooooh! I would just LOOOOOVE to live in a single room apartment during an entire Toronto winter!

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

That is grossly misleading.

To achieve that you would have to build in the ravines, floodplains and Rouge Park.

You would ruin the best thing about Toronto (which is a hell of a lot greener than Paris)

Further, you would have to rip down 1/2 the City, tear out most of the mature trees and rebuild virtually all the infrastructure (sewers, watermains, electricity, schools, etc.) none of which is capable of supporting such a population. The expense would be utterly absurd.

****

Lets then add, Toronto is already the 2nd densest City in North America (over comparable land area); and denser than Berlin, or Rome, or Melbourne Australia. The idea that if Toronto doesn't compare to Tokyo or Paris its doing something wrong, is wrong.

Ok, if we built to half the density of Paris that still means the City of Toronto can hold 6.5 million, or double its current population.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

Ooooh! I would just LOOOOOVE to live in a single room apartment during an entire Toronto winter!

back in my bachelor days, i lived through several entire chicago winters in my 500 SF studio condo on the 33rd floor of Marina City.

i've certainly lived in worse accommodations at other points in my life.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

back in my bachelor days, i lived through several entire chicago winters in my 500 SF studio condo on the 33rd floor of Marina City.

i've certainly lived in worse accommodations at other points in my life.

A *large* studio apartment in Paris is about 375 SF.

[davee930]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

Ooooh! I would just LOOOOOVE to live in a single room apartment during an entire Toronto winter!

Canada really got the shit end of the stick in terms of climate.

Count yourself lucky to have any climate in the world to chose from.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by davee930

Canada really got the shit end of the stick in terms of climate.

Count yourself lucky to have any climate in the world to chose from.

Spend a summer in Houston and then get back to me.