Toronto's Chief Planner, Gregg Lintern, posted this on Twitter a few days (if you can't see it below, click here):
https://twitter.com/GreggLintern/status/1196265311491776512?s=20
A couple things came to mind when I saw this.
First, it's a reminder that census data is painfully slow. Five years is a long time and a lot can and will change during that time period, including the kind of built form that people are living in.
Second, I agree with Gregg. Toronto is in the process of transforming into a majority apartment/condo dwelling city (if it hasn't already), and it signals a pretty important juncture in our city's history.
It also begs an important question: How should our planning response change and adjust as this percentage of urban dwellers continues to creep upward?
Berlin just approved a five year "rent freeze" on apartments in the German capital. The rent caps will be implemented on January 1, 2020, but will apply retroactively to all rental agreements from June 18, 2019 onward (which is when the decision was made). It is estimated that this new law will apply to some 1.5 million apartments.
The move is in response to rapidly rising apartment rents, which grew about 12% in 2017 alone. So I can appreciate where this is coming from.
From what I have read, it will not apply to new construction, which is the first thing I checked when I saw the decision. That would have almost certainly choked off any new apartment construction in the city. With a capped top line, it wouldn't take long for costs to increase and make new rental construction infeasible.
That said, a similar squeeze is liable to happen for existing buildings. It is one thing to cap rents (revenue), but what about utility, maintenance, labor, and other operating costs (expenses)? As costs rise and operating margins tighten, it can become exceedingly difficult to reinvest in, or even maintain, an apartment building.
For more on the announcement, here's an article from FT.
Below is an interesting Kickstarter project by photographer and art director Cody Ellingham. I think many of you will appreciate it. It is a photobook of Japanese public housing apartments, which are known as Danchi. All of the photos were taken by Cory at night, hence the dream part. The book is about the promise that these projects represented in the post-war years, but it is also about their decline in the subsequent decades.