Bianca and I went for a walk around the Junction over the weekend, as we like to do, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of "multiplexes" under construction. That is, small infill rental projects with four or five homes, sometimes including a laneway house at the back. (Sorry, no sixplexes were spotted just yet.) It immediately made me think, "Wow, it's happening! Toronto is intensifying its neighborhoods."

For those of you who haven't been following closely, many of Toronto's neighborhoods have been bleeding population over the past few decades. It's only where we've allowed larger-scale new developments that we've really seen populations increase. That's what has precipitated our current push to expand housing options in our low-rise neighborhoods. And already, you can find evidence that it's starting to work.

That said, it's worth mentioning a few things. Some of the planning notice signs that I stumbled upon dated back to 2022, and some were current. This raises at least two lines of questions. One, why is a small project that went to the Committee of Adjustment in 2022 still under construction? Was it because of planning delays, or something else? And two, why are today's projects still having to go to the CofA? Are we still not there yet in terms of the planning policies?

I don't know the precise answers to these questions, but I do know that planning staff actively monitor which variances are requested and ultimately approved. If the same variance continues to show up, then it's a clear indication that it should just become policy, and not be something that needs to be sought. This should give some comfort that we should only get better at facilitating this scale of housing.

Toronto has been making great progress when it comes to allowing more housing in its low-rise neighborhoods. We now allow laneway suites, garden suites, multiplexes, and soon we'll allow 6-storey apartments. But interestingly enough, there is one small part of the city that is looking to regress. This past summer, council asked planning staff to bring forward a zoning by-law amendment to remove garden suite permissions for some of the properties backing onto Craven Road, near Danforth and Coxwell.

Here's a community consultation flyer that went out to residents and that shows the affected properties:

We've spoken about Craven Road before. It's a relatively odd street with a unique history. Its most obvious characteristic is that it's a kind of single-sided street. For the most part, there are homes on the east side of the street, but no homes on the west side. On the non-home side there is typically a garage, or the longest municipally-owned fence in the city. Here's some of the backstory on Craven Road's infamous fence (which occurs on a stretch further south), and below is what the study area in question looks like today:

So why remove the garden suite permissions here? The answer is to block housing. The people who live on Craven Road like it the way it is and don't want anyone to build new housing on the other side of the street. What's interesting about this is that it roughly mirrors what happened over a century ago. We couldn't figure out how to broker a deal between two adjacent streets and so we just said "screw it, let's build a really really long fence and call it a day."

Today we're saying, "yeah, we really need more housing in the city, but I dunno, somebody might get upset here." There is nothing sacrosanct about the old garages, or the fence, that line the west side of Craven. It is a street, proximate to a major subway station, that is missing homes on one entire side. It's low hanging fruit for infill housing. In fact, there's an easy argument to be made that garden suites aren't nearly enough density for a location like this. We should be encouraging a lot more.

But this is just my opinion. If you'd like to share yours, the City of Toronto is hosting a community meeting this week on September 19, 2024 from 7 - 830 PM. To participate, register here.

Back in March, we spoke about how Toronto wants to allow small-scale apartments on all of its major streets. Well today, this study -- known as the Major Streets Study -- passed at Planning and Housing Committee.

It still has to pass at Council. And the Committee did ask for city staff to look at certain amendments, such as reducing setbacks and increasing the maximum dwelling count from 30 to 60 suites. However, all signs point to this new policy being fully approved sometime in the coming months.

There's still work to be done. For example, I don't know why there even needs to be a maximum number of homes. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. We are already dictating the overall built form, so why not let people just build as many homes as possible.

It feels like we're saying: "We desperately want more homes on our major streets, but you know, we don't want the economies of scale to be too great. We'd rather see more, smaller projects. This way each home is more expensive to build!"

In any event, this is still meaningful progress. It is what so many urbanists have been clamoring for over the years; more homes in our low-rise neighborhoods. So I think it's important that we recognize today as such. Nice work.

Bianca and I went for a walk around the Junction over the weekend, as we like to do, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of "multiplexes" under construction. That is, small infill rental projects with four or five homes, sometimes including a laneway house at the back. (Sorry, no sixplexes were spotted just yet.) It immediately made me think, "Wow, it's happening! Toronto is intensifying its neighborhoods."

For those of you who haven't been following closely, many of Toronto's neighborhoods have been bleeding population over the past few decades. It's only where we've allowed larger-scale new developments that we've really seen populations increase. That's what has precipitated our current push to expand housing options in our low-rise neighborhoods. And already, you can find evidence that it's starting to work.

That said, it's worth mentioning a few things. Some of the planning notice signs that I stumbled upon dated back to 2022, and some were current. This raises at least two lines of questions. One, why is a small project that went to the Committee of Adjustment in 2022 still under construction? Was it because of planning delays, or something else? And two, why are today's projects still having to go to the CofA? Are we still not there yet in terms of the planning policies?

I don't know the precise answers to these questions, but I do know that planning staff actively monitor which variances are requested and ultimately approved. If the same variance continues to show up, then it's a clear indication that it should just become policy, and not be something that needs to be sought. This should give some comfort that we should only get better at facilitating this scale of housing.

Toronto has been making great progress when it comes to allowing more housing in its low-rise neighborhoods. We now allow laneway suites, garden suites, multiplexes, and soon we'll allow 6-storey apartments. But interestingly enough, there is one small part of the city that is looking to regress. This past summer, council asked planning staff to bring forward a zoning by-law amendment to remove garden suite permissions for some of the properties backing onto Craven Road, near Danforth and Coxwell.

Here's a community consultation flyer that went out to residents and that shows the affected properties:

We've spoken about Craven Road before. It's a relatively odd street with a unique history. Its most obvious characteristic is that it's a kind of single-sided street. For the most part, there are homes on the east side of the street, but no homes on the west side. On the non-home side there is typically a garage, or the longest municipally-owned fence in the city. Here's some of the backstory on Craven Road's infamous fence (which occurs on a stretch further south), and below is what the study area in question looks like today:

So why remove the garden suite permissions here? The answer is to block housing. The people who live on Craven Road like it the way it is and don't want anyone to build new housing on the other side of the street. What's interesting about this is that it roughly mirrors what happened over a century ago. We couldn't figure out how to broker a deal between two adjacent streets and so we just said "screw it, let's build a really really long fence and call it a day."

Today we're saying, "yeah, we really need more housing in the city, but I dunno, somebody might get upset here." There is nothing sacrosanct about the old garages, or the fence, that line the west side of Craven. It is a street, proximate to a major subway station, that is missing homes on one entire side. It's low hanging fruit for infill housing. In fact, there's an easy argument to be made that garden suites aren't nearly enough density for a location like this. We should be encouraging a lot more.

But this is just my opinion. If you'd like to share yours, the City of Toronto is hosting a community meeting this week on September 19, 2024 from 7 - 830 PM. To participate, register here.

Back in March, we spoke about how Toronto wants to allow small-scale apartments on all of its major streets. Well today, this study -- known as the Major Streets Study -- passed at Planning and Housing Committee.

It still has to pass at Council. And the Committee did ask for city staff to look at certain amendments, such as reducing setbacks and increasing the maximum dwelling count from 30 to 60 suites. However, all signs point to this new policy being fully approved sometime in the coming months.

There's still work to be done. For example, I don't know why there even needs to be a maximum number of homes. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. We are already dictating the overall built form, so why not let people just build as many homes as possible.

It feels like we're saying: "We desperately want more homes on our major streets, but you know, we don't want the economies of scale to be too great. We'd rather see more, smaller projects. This way each home is more expensive to build!"

In any event, this is still meaningful progress. It is what so many urbanists have been clamoring for over the years; more homes in our low-rise neighborhoods. So I think it's important that we recognize today as such. Nice work.