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
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0PSuXZ0TqScZZE1AfbbEeT?si=N19JwisSS4O-_2ckyodNkw
A friend of mine sent me the above podcast episode this morning (click here if you can't see it embedded above). I've only listened to a bit of it, but I plan to finish it up over the long weekend. Here are the topics it covers:
We discuss why the states with the highest homelessness rates are all governed by Democrats, the roots of America’s homelessness crisis, why economists believe the U.S. gross domestic product could be over a third — a third! — higher today if American cities had built more housing, why it’s so hard to build housing where it’s needed most, the actual (and often misunderstood) causes of gentrification, why public housing has such a bad reputation in the U.S.; how progressives’ commitment to local democracy and community voice surprisingly lies at the heart of America’s housing crises, why homeownership is still the primary vehicle of wealth accumulation in America (and the toxic impact that has on our politics), what the U.S. can learn from the housing policies of countries like Germany and France, what it would take to build a better politics of housing and much more.
One of the things that you need to do when you're constructing a building is arrange for new utility connections. Sometimes there's enough capacity to support what you're building and sometimes the capacities need to be upgraded (which usually becomes the responsibility of the developer).
But according to this recent Financial Times article, some new applicants in west London are now being told that there won't be "sufficient electrical capacity for a new connection" until, oh I don't know, maybe 2035. And it could affect all new housing projects with 25 or more units.
This is a pretty wild piece of news. And it certainly won't be good for overall housing supply. The three west London boroughs that are being impacted by this capacity issue were responsible for about 5,000 new homes between 2019-2020. That's about 11% of London's total housing supply.
So what and who is to blame for this? The Greater London Authority is saying that data centers are at least partially responsible. Too many new data centers in the area with high electrical loads.
I don't know exactly what is going on here (maybe some of you do), but now feels like a good time to turn our attention to solar power. I recently visited a large 3,000 panel rooftop installation here in the Greater Toronto Area, and so naturally there is a blog post in the works. Stay tuned.
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