Angry neighbours block housing that Canada's cities badly need

[Minato Ku]

Originally Posted by Nite

In the Toronto context, the suburbs are just as expensive since Toronto has a greenbelt and can't sprawl anymore. and pretty much all new housing including in the suburbs is now multi-unit housing

this is how suburban areas in Toronto are transforming

Markham along Highway 7 - from rural to highly urban:

2009:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8578...7i13312!8i6656

2021:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8578...7i16384!8i8192

Why have they widened the road ?

They should not just built denser, they should also improve the urban environment and the walkability.
Here it's very difficult to cross the road. The road is too wide and there are almost 500m (~500 yards) between two crosswalks here.
It's not made for walking. So people will still use their cars even for the basic trip to the closest grocery store.

You get most of the disadvantages of the surburban and urban environments without the advantages.

[C.]

• Video Link

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

Why have they widened the road ?

They should not just built denser, they should also improve the urban environment and the walkability.
Here it's very difficult to cross the road. The road is too wide and there are almost 500m (~500 yards) between two crosswalks here.
It's not made for walking. So people will still use their cars even for the basic trip to the closest grocery store.

You get most of the disadvantages of the surburban and urban environments without the advantages.

Yeah, at the very least that sometimes carpool lane should be a dedicated bus lane.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Nite

In the Toronto context, the suburbs are just as expensive since Toronto has a greenbelt and can't sprawl anymore. and pretty much all new housing including in the suburbs is now multi-unit housing

this is how suburban areas in Toronto are transforming

Markham along Highway 7 - from rural to highly urban:

2009:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8578...7i13312!8i6656

2021:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8578...7i16384!8i8192

Interesting. So I'm guessing people could potentially be priced out of Toronto and all it's suburbs within the Greenbelt.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by C.

• Video Link

Ah, the stroad. The worse type of development that is all too prevalent in America. It's crappy for both pedestrians and drivers.

[C.]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Interesting. So I'm guessing people could potentially be priced out of Toronto and all it's suburbs within the Greenbelt.

Yes.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Interesting. So I'm guessing people could potentially be priced out of Toronto and all it's suburbs within the Greenbelt.

If we built enough supply, no one would be priced out. the problem with the GTHA currently is that the cities and towns have not been building enough housing, so their is incredible housing shortages.
The article illustrates the problem when you try to built just 1 more housing, how much push back their is in most neighborhoods

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

In the past 10 years, some cities have begun to really raise their profile, though. Halifax has always been more important and urban than its size suggested - kind of like the Canadian New Orleans - but, like New Orleans, it was also seen as being kind of historic and slow-growing. In recent years, though, its population and urban developments have really picked up and it is actually turning into something kind of big city-ish.

It's not as well-known in Canada and the causes were different but economically the course followed by the Maritimes was somewhat similar to the southeast US. There were older cities similar to New Orleans or Charleston that were economically vibrant until the second half of the 1800's and now the region is rebounding partly due to being a lower cost place to live. Newfoundland was different, without much of a Victorian era manufacturing base. I'd argue that Halifax and Charlottetown are the only 2 towns that have done reliably well for 200+ years, while Saint John and Sydney declined and Moncton and Fredericton have a history of development more similar to a place like London ON.

One aspect of Halifax seeming more big city than it is on paper is that it's a different style of metro area than most of Canada. Arguably kind of like the US metros but it also has a lot of apartments which is different. It has a developed freeway system (before that, passenger rail) with lots of outlying small towns and exurbs. I guess Toronto or Montreal are like this too, with relatively less exurban development, but not many Canadian cities of 300,000-500,000. A lot of NS, now probably almost 2/3, is a quasi-metro area that can easily get to the same airport or hospitals, shop at IKEA, or whatever.

Here in BC it's much more challenging to build highways and the road network is worse so there's no equivalent of Halifax-style metro. You can't travel 100 km away from Victoria in 3 directions in an hour.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's not as well-known in Canada and the causes were different but economically the course followed by the Maritimes was somewhat similar to the southeast US. There were older cities similar to New Orleans or Charleston that were economically vibrant until the second half of the 1800's and now the region is rebounding partly due to being a lower cost place to live. Newfoundland was different, without much of a Victorian era manufacturing base. I'd argue that Halifax and Charlottetown are the only 2 towns that have done reliably well for 200+ years, while Saint John and Sydney declined and Moncton and Fredericton have a history of development more similar to a place like London ON.

One aspect of Halifax seeming more big city than it is on paper is that it's a different style of metro area than most of Canada. Arguably kind of like the US metros but it also has a lot of apartments which is different. It has a developed freeway system (before that, passenger rail) with lots of outlying small towns and exurbs. I guess Toronto or Montreal are like this too, with relatively less exurban development, but not many Canadian cities of 300,000-500,000. A lot of NS, now probably almost 2/3, is a quasi-metro area that can easily get to the same airport or hospitals, shop at IKEA, or whatever.

Here in BC it's much more challenging to build highways and the road network is worse so there's no equivalent of Halifax-style metro. You can't travel 100 km away from Victoria in 3 directions in an hour.

Montréal has an enormous amount of exurbs as well. About 600,000 people live outside the urban area.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by Nite

If we built enough supply, no one would be priced out. the problem with the GTHA currently is that the cities and towns have not been building enough housing, so their is incredible housing shortages.
The article illustrates the problem when you try to built just 1 more housing, how much push back their is in most neighborhoods

Most of these housing affordability conversations get ruined by people conflating housing and houses. It's inevitable that Toronto's houses will become more expensive. It's also pretty much impossible for them to build more, given land constraints. But it's entirely possible to build a lot more housing in multi-family buildings, which will eventually mean reducing the supply of houses and, therefore, making them more expensive still.

It seems like some people thrive on this false equivocation so they can complain about immigrants or whatever. Usually so they can complain about immigrants.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by biguc

Most of these housing affordability conversations get ruined by people conflating housing and houses. It's inevitable that Toronto's houses will become more expensive. It's also pretty much impossible for them to build more, given land constraints. But it's entirely possible to build a lot more housing in multi-family buildings, which will eventually mean reducing the supply of houses and, therefore, making them more expensive still.

It seems like some people thrive on this false equivocation so they can complain about immigrants or whatever. Usually so they can complain about immigrants.

There's also a fallacy that the supply of land for urban development is fixed. It was growing back in the 1950's-70's as new areas were developed. They were in most cases the same sort of greenfield sites as would need to be developed today (forest, farms, low density rural houses), and they were opened up with new transportation infrastructure. There has been a policy decision to dial back this type of development.

Immigration adds to housing demand. I think we all agree Canada can't support 5 million immigrants per year. Yet if you question 400,000 (> 1% of the national population per year) in a similar way you are told that you probably believe that target is too high because you are racist. I don't think the anti-immigrant racists are a significant force in Canada or that this point adds anything useful to the discussion. But either way Canada needs to pick an immigration target and it will affect housing. I'd argue that a lot of the way we talk about environmental impact and population growth is kind of bogus since most of our growth here is from migration, not natural increase. We seem to want to move more of the world's population to Canada yet lower the human footprint in Canada relative to other places at the same time.

The high immigration flow plus heavy red tape on greenfield development is an outlier historically for overall policy. There are other factors as well (interest rates, zoning and planning/taxes/fees), but those 2 alone are significant. And I don't think it's an accident that these policies are extremely friendly toward asset-rich middle aged and older people.

[jd3189]

Canada and the US will have to develop ways to predict and build housing supply in relation to expected population growth, by immigration, internal migration, and births.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by someone123

There's also a fallacy that the supply of land for urban development is fixed. It was growing back in the 1950's-70's as new areas were developed. They were in most cases the same sort of greenfield sites as would need to be developed today (forest, farms, low density rural houses), and they were opened up with new transportation infrastructure. There has been a policy decision to dial back this type of development.

It's not a fallacy when, in Toronto's case, there is a fact of the matter--there's a greenbelt--and that entails fixed land supply. Even without that, there's a limit to how far cities can reasonably sprawl. Transportation infrastructure effectively collapses distances but at a certain point you run out of space for enough roads to serve SFH sprawl, at least in any kind of centralized city, and are stuck intensifying anyway.

I think we've agreed before that behind the expensiveness of Canada's cities looms a severe infrastructure deficit. It's a big problem. It's why our cities have taken the comical shapes they have, with intense cores and super-dense tower developments strung along scant metro lines. If Vancouver and Toronto doubled their existing transit systems, the populations of each could loosen their belts, so to speak, and stand to move to many suddenly more desirable, areas.

Speaking of belts, something we don't understand well in Canada, or North America, is that the suburbs have hemmed the cities in. If we hadn't binged on sprawl, it would be easy for cities to extend their transit systems into greenfield and for housing development to follow. This used to happen all the time. It still happens in some parts of the world.

But, again, that's housing. Not houses. If we wanted cheap houses we'd allow nothing but SFHs and sprawl to the end of earth. But does that make housing affordable? Probably not. And it definitely wouldn't make living more affordable--transport expenses are part of the calculation when we choose a place we can afford to live. Anyway, even if we want cheaper houses in Toronto, at the expense of cheaper housing, let's not pretend that a house in Markham is a substitute good for a house in the Annex.

Originally Posted by someone123

Immigration adds to housing demand. I think we all agree Canada can't support 5 million immigrants per year. Yet if you question 400,000 (> 1% of the national population per year) in a similar way you are told that you probably believe that target is too high because you are racist. I don't think the anti-immigrant racists are a significant force in Canada or that this point adds anything useful to the discussion. But either way Canada needs to pick an immigration target and it will affect housing. I'd argue that a lot of the way we talk about environmental impact and population growth is kind of bogus since most of our growth here is from migration, not natural increase. We seem to want to move more of the world's population to Canada yet lower the human footprint in Canada relative to other places at the same time.

The high immigration flow plus heavy red tape on greenfield development is an outlier historically for overall policy. There are other factors as well (interest rates, zoning and planning/taxes/fees), but those 2 alone are significant. And I don't think it's an accident that these policies are extremely friendly toward asset-rich middle aged and older people.

Can't really disagree with anything you're saying here.

5 million immigrants a year is an interesting question. Canada couldn't support that many with its current laissez-faire approach (which is actually a great way of doing things). But if Canada decided to go all USSR and launch massive top-down infrastructure improvements in underpopulated areas like Northern Ontario, the prairies, and the Maritimes, complete with huge government housing developments? It would be massively disruptive but it could also be massively successful.

Contemplating this leads us back to the point that Canada isn't building enough infrastructure to support its growth.

The immigration + climate change thing is a source of crazy dissonance all around. A ruthless climate change hawk would suggest that we kick Canadians out of Canada to lower emissions. Instead we get arguments from every other part of the map.

"I don't think it's an accident that these policies are extremely friendly toward asset-rich middle aged and older people."

Yeah, absolutely. And that's created another wrinkle in the Canadian property market: irrational exuberance. At the end of the day, prices are high because people are paying them. Some of those people are immigrants, but there are plenty of born Canadians who believe that owning property is going to make them rich because it worked out for those middle-aged and older people--their parents.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by biguc

It's not a fallacy when, in Toronto's case, there is a fact of the matter--there's a greenbelt--and that entails fixed land supply.

The greenbelts and agricultural reserve areas are political choices, not natural constraints. I'm not even sure they make a whole lot of sense globally when rural areas are emptying out, farm yields are going up, and most of our growth comes from immigration. There's a lot of correlation between the most protected areas and which regions are the "backyard" of politically influential interest groups who already own land.

There's probably marginal rural developed land that could be returned to wilderness even in Southern Ontario that would provide better cost-benefit than taking urban fringe greenfield sites off the table around the GTA.

I think it would be better to have rules about what development should look like rather than a complicated system that takes lots of land off of the table, though I don't have strong feelings about it. It annoys me how certain things are sacrosanct due to political reasons when others are not and I think enviro concerns are often fake political cover. If we truly believe that we desperately must preserve our farmland for strategic or economic reasons why wouldn't population growth through immigration throw this off just as much as whittling away at the agricultural land supply?

High housing prices could have been created more or less regardless of the style of development allowed by adopting ultra-low interest rates, implementing NIMBY/land restrictions, and continuing ~400k annual population growth through immigration. Expensive Canadian housing is "overdetermined".

[Nite]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Canada and the US will have to develop ways to predict and build housing supply in relation to expected population growth, by immigration, internal migration, and births.

The market will more than build enough supply on it's own. it's city governments which is stopping more housing being built not the builders.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Immigration adds to housing demand. I think we all agree Canada can't support 5 million immigrants per year. Yet if you question 400,000 (> 1% of the national population per year) in a similar way you are told that you probably believe that target is too high because you are racist. I don't think the anti-immigrant racists are a significant force in Canada or that this point adds anything useful to the discussion. But either way Canada needs to pick an immigration target and it will affect housing. I'd argue that a lot of the way we talk about environmental impact and population growth is kind of bogus since most of our growth here is from migration, not natural increase. We seem to want to move more of the world's population to Canada yet lower the human footprint in Canada relative to other places at the same time.

The high immigration flow plus heavy red tape on greenfield development is an outlier historically for overall policy. There are other factors as well (interest rates, zoning and planning/taxes/fees), but those 2 alone are significant. And I don't think it's an accident that these policies are extremely friendly toward asset-rich middle aged and older people.

Canada's population growth rate is not high compared to its historic rates. Immigration just happens to constitute a higher proportion of that growth than in prior eras. Having an immigration rate of over 10x greater would obviously make overall growth rates higher than normal and it's growth rates that drive demand for housing. So the unrelenting fixation on immigration doesn't make sense. We haven't always had the affordability challenges we're currently experiencing even in eras when growth rates were higher so even growth more broadly shouldn't be the major focus.

The fact is, in my experience, a large percentage of people react differently to growth originating externally than growth originating internally even though growth in general is the issue regardless of origin. This is far from the only example. The narrative or reducing it to this false binary is just not true. It isn't just, "small percentage of full on racist, white supremacist, card-carrying people's party members" versus perfectly rational general public. It's that there are varying degrees of irrationality when it comes to the issue and pointing out when people are acting irrational is very important as it is when any topic. And doing so doesn't require speculation on the specific cause of said irrationality.

Originally Posted by someone123

The greenbelts and agricultural reserve areas are political choices, not natural constraints. I'm not even sure they make a whole lot of sense globally when rural areas are emptying out, farm yields are going up, and most of our growth comes from immigration. There's a lot of correlation between the most protected areas and which regions are the "backyard" of politically influential interest groups who already own land.

There's probably marginal rural developed land that could be returned to wilderness even in Southern Ontario that would provide better cost-benefit than taking urban fringe greenfield sites off the table around the GTA.

I think it would be better to have rules about what development should look like rather than a complicated system that takes lots of land off of the table, though I don't have strong feelings about it. It annoys me how certain things are sacrosanct due to political reasons when others are not and I think enviro concerns are often fake political cover. If we truly believe that we desperately must preserve our farmland for strategic or economic reasons why wouldn't population growth through immigration throw this off just as much as whittling away at the agricultural land supply?

High housing prices could have been created more or less regardless of the style of development allowed by adopting ultra-low interest rates, implementing NIMBY/land restrictions, and continuing ~400k annual population growth through immigration. Expensive Canadian housing is "overdetermined".

The point of greenbelts and limiting the land that's available for development is as much or more about increasing density as about limiting sprawl. Yes the most fertile farm land is disproportionately near cities so that is a concern. But if you don't have any growth, it's mostly pointless because there won't be much demand for new housing to begin with.

The low density nature of large swaths of our metro areas is unsustainable in terms of their energy and infrastructure requirements so filling in those areas with greater density is important. And our metro areas can absorb a great deal of growth before they're anywhere near being actually dense by global standards, so growth strengthens the case for land restriction. It doesn't weaken the case. Meanwhile, if the policy toolkit had no land restrictions and only consisted of rules pertaining to new land development, how would that promote infill? Other than maybe that requiring green fields to have denser development would make the developments less appealing to people? But that just doesn't seem like it would be very effective, and would also result in higher prices since if people didn't want the greenfield housing, there would be higher demand and prices for infill.

Overall, higher prices isn't actually a bad thing. If we want more housing and housing that's more sustainable, we know that redeveloping in built-up areas is more costly than on greenfields. And basic economics tells us that more units of a product will be supplied at higher points on the supply curve. The problem comes in the demand side when people can't afford the higher prices.