So, I of course think this is silly. But here's a claim that living in high-rises -- that is, buildings with elevators -- is bad for people's physical and mental health:

In the midst of a Vancouver civic election where housing is a hot issue, Vancouver councillor and mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick stated that “highrises are not good for people’s physical and mental health.”

Last week we asked Hardwick to expand further on her views about health and building types. She told The Tyee she believes highrises radically reduce chance encounters between people because they separate people from the street and from each other.

“Ground-oriented housing typologies are ideal,” she said, referring to housing that allows a resident to reach their place of residence using stairs, perhaps, but not an elevator.

Apparently what happens when you get into an elevator is that you immediately lose your ability to interact meaningfully with other humans. Yeah, I'm not the only one who disagrees:

“Coun. Hardwick is cherry-picking her data” about highrise living and the isolating effects of structures with elevators, accused urbanist and author Charles Montgomery. A six-storey building with an elevator, he told The Tyee, is “the most social place I’ve ever lived.”

Cities, it turns out, are complicated. And there are always trade-offs to be made. During the pandemic, some people thought it would be nice to live in a ground-oriented home in the country and now they are realizing that the country lacks things like amenities and, you know, other people.

Personally, I will happily take an elevator over a soul-crushing commute to a home without one. I also agree with Charles that multi-family buildings can be very social.

Building height and density are not one and the same. You can have tall buildings configured in a low-density way (think post-war towers in the park). And you can have low/mid-rise buildings configured in a high-density way (think Paris and Barcelona). This is one of the reasons why it is important to decouple density and tallness when thinking about our cities.

This line of thinking is the approach that a recent study took when trying to determine the optimal built form for minimizing climate impact. In the study they define four building typologies: 1) high density, high-rise, 2) low density, high-rise, 3) high density, low-rise, and 4) low density, low-rise.

What they found was that taller environments tend to have higher life cycle GHG emissions, but that lower-density environments are (obviously) far more land consumptive. To determine life cycle GHG emissions they looked at both embodied and operating emissions, which is why the taller stuff didn't score as well under their methodology. There's typically a lot of concrete and steel in tall buildings.

This lead the team to conclude that if you want to optimize around climate impact, you should probably aim for that perfect middle ground: dense, but not super tall.

But as Joe Cortright (City Observatory) rightly pointed out in his email newsletter, one of the big limitations of this analysis is that it does not consider transportation-related impacts. And since we know that transportation is one of if not the largest source of GHG emissions and that how we get around is heavily dependent on land use patterns, it is probably an important piece to consider.

Photo by Alfons Taekema on Unsplash

The Urban Land Institute Toronto is hosting an event and panel discussion on April 8, 2021 about the future of high-rises in our cities. Here's the blurb:

Against the backdrop of the pandemic and its toll, what is the future of high-rises in our cities? What role do tall towers now play in shaping Toronto’s identity? While the pandemic has accelerated existing large trends, residential tall towers are proving the durability of a quality urban centre and hyper-urban lifestyles in Toronto and around the world.

An introduction will be provided by James Parakh (author, Fellow of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and Urban Design Manager for the Toronto & East York District) and then a discussion will be moderated by Robyn Player (Director, BTY).

The discussion will be focused on what ULI is calling three of Toronto's most exciting tower projects under development: Pinnacle One Yonge, One Delisle, and 11 Yorkville.

I will be on the panel (talking One Delisle) alongside Lee Koutsaris (VP, Sales and Marketing, Metropia) and Anson Kwok (VP, Sales and Marketing, Pinnacle International).

If you'd like to register, you can do that over here. It should be a great/timely conversation.