Yesterday Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal to my post about homes for families. His argument was that I missed a whole world of building typologies between single family homes and apartments. (Something that architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek calls “The Missing Middle”.)
Now he’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention it – other than provide an option in the survey for townhomes. And he’s right that it’s a tremendous opportunity for cities looking to increase housing supply and improve affordability.
But the reason I didn’t mention it in my survey is because, here in Toronto, we’re not very good at that middle scale.
I previously wrote a post talking about Toronto’s 3 stages of intensification. It went from high-rise to mid-rise, and then to low-rise intensification. And my argument was that we’re still in and figuring out the mid-rise scale. (There are challenges at this scale, but that deserves a separate post.)
Eventually though, I think we will get to low-rise intensification. And that will cover off many of the building typologies that Lloyd is talking about: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, my personal favorite, laneway houses.
This, of course, isn’t the case in every city. Many cities, such as Montreal, have a strong history of neighborhood-scaled apartments. Lloyd points that out in his article. But that’s not the case here in Toronto.
In fact, Toronto’s Official Plan explicitly designates these low-rise “Neighborhoods” as areas that are stable and should not see much intensification. And it was a great selling point for the Places to Grow Act: intensification here, but not there.
But I think this will change. Not because I’m a real estate developer and I think it should change, but because our current arrangement is causing a dramatic erosion of affordability at the low-rise/ground-related housing scale.
If it were up to me, and it most certainly is not, I would start with laneway housing. It’s a great way to intensify low-rise neighbourhoods without altering the character of the streets.
If you live in a single family neighborhood, I would especially love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Kembangan by Jason Waltman on 500px
Earlier this week I attended RealNet’s Q1 2015 market update webinar for the Greater Toronto Area. If you don’t already subscribe to RealNet, you should consider it. They’re one of the best sources for Canadian real estate market information.
During their webinars, they occasionally run interactive surveys where they ask the audience a question and participants respond using their web browser. On this particular webinar, they asked the following question, which I thought was interesting:
What is the likely housing moving by Millennials in raising their families?
A) Move Up - Embrace urban high-rise housing forms
B) Move Out - Accept extended commutes (including the Greater Golden Horseshoe and Hamilton Area) to find affordable ground oriented housing
C) Move In - Cohabitate parental homes
It’s an interesting question because it’s one that I’ve asked myself a number of times. Sure, Millennials are rushing back to cities and living in high density and walkable communities, today, but what are they going to do and where are they going to move when they start having children?
As a Millennial myself, I know that I’ve always told myself that I want to stay urban for as long as I can (i.e. Move Up). But I’m only one data point. And given the seemingly endless demand for low-rise housing in Toronto, I always felt like I was in the minority. I figured that the majority of people, at least here in this city, still want a ground-related home when it comes time to raise a family.
Putting aside economics, I still think that may be the case for a lot of home buyers. But the majority of people on this week’s RealNet webinar (which would be almost exclusively folks from the real estate industry) either think that preference is going to change (or already has) or that consumers won’t have a choice due to affordability.
50% of the people on the call answered A – move up and embrace urban high-rise housing forms. The balance was about 44% for B and 6% for C.
That’s not the outcome I expected to see. So today I’d like to re-ask this question to the Architect This City Community. Where do you think Millennials are going to move once they start having children? Please let us know in the comment section below.