Just over a year ago, Toronto's former chief planner, Gregg Lintern, announced that he would be retiring at the end of 2023. Here's the post I wrote thanking him for everything he had done for our city. He was a positive force in so many ways and I remember feeling sad at the time.

Following the announcement, nobody knew who would replace him. But I remember thinking to myself, "you know who would be fantastic for this position, Jason Thorne." Jason and I met when Slate first started investing in Hamilton (he was the general manager of planning and economic development). I then became an avid follower of him on Twitter, which is the case for many people in our industry.

In 2018, we even got a few planners together for a bike ride around downtown Toronto to look at some new city building initiatives. In a nod to Jerry Seinfeld, we called it "planners on bikes getting coffee." We really should reignite this meetup.

Fast forward six years and this week it was announced that on December 30, 2024, Jason will assume the role of Toronto's chief planner. This is great news for our city. He is a true city builder and he understands the task at hand. Toronto is one of the fastest growing global cities in the world and yet we are battling with the transition from a car-oriented suburban region to a multi-modal urban center.

This is why traffic is so crippling and housing is so expensive. We haven't fully embraced this future urban state. But real progress is being made, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who cares more about cities and who spends as much as time as he does thinking through the ingredients that make them great places to live, work, play, and invest.

Congratulations on the new role, Jason!

If you'd like to follow Jason, check him out on Bluesky. I think this is where he is now most active.

Cover photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

It was bittersweet to learn last week that Toronto's chief planner -- Gregg Lintern -- will be retiring at the end of this year.

He accomplished a lot during his six-year tenure. Here's an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article by Alex Bozikovic:

"...he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city."

All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.

I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.

Thank you for your service, Gregg.

Toronto's chief planner, Gregg Lintern, published this piece in the Toronto Star over the weekend where he argued that "expanding housing options in [Toronto's] neighbourhoods is the missing piece of the growth puzzle."

What he is saying is that if we're going to have any chance at reasonably accommodating the 700,000 or so people who are expected to move to this city over the next three decades, we're going to have to evolve our low-rise neighborhoods. That includes more retail, more amenities, more density, and yes, built form that houses multiple units.

I immediately thought that this was meaningful progress in the right direction. It is acknowledgement that things need to change and that our low-rise communities need to change.

But others felt that this was a case of soft-serve ice cream, arguing that there's "danger in praising incremental, belated change when dramatic change is what's needed." I also see this point.

To quote the late architect Daniel Burnham, "make no little plans." But this is arguably a little easier to subscribe to when you're rebuilding after a great fire has decimated your entire city (he was instrumental in the rebuild of Chicago following its fire of 1871).

The unfortunate reality today, at least in this environment, is that bold vision isn't often rewarded politically. The status quo bias is simply so great. Change is painfully slow. That's why we rely so heavily on pilot projects when it comes to city building.

So while I too am a fan of bold vision, I also see value in what Simon Sinek and others refer to as consistency over intensity. Small, repetitive, and compounding actions can have powerful long-term results. You just have to keep going in the right direction.

And I think that many of us, or perhaps most, will agree that the right direction is rethinking our low-rise neighborhoods.

Photo by Tungsten Rising on Unsplash