If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I'm a fan of narrow streets. It's one of the reasons I have been such a supporter of laneway housing here in Toronto, and why I think they should ultimately allow for some non-residential uses.
If you have narrow streets and reasonably decent buildings that frame them, you have a base condition that has worked remarkably well since the creation of cities. Almost by default, and even if you don't have proper sidewalks, it is going to feel pedestrian-oriented.
The challenge, however, is that it's usually difficult to create these after the fact. Street networks are powerfully sticky; they generally don't change unless you have someone like Haussmann rebuilding your city. So if you have these in your city, try and take advantage of them. You're fortunate to have them.
The above two photos/measurements are from Milan. Both streets are around 20 feet wide (or 6 meters), which happens to be the required width of a standard two-way drive aisle here in Toronto. It's a good example of how differently cities can view and allocate space.
You can do a lot with 6 meters.
Last week I wrote about Toronto's plan to make fourplexes as-of-right across the city, but also why this form of missing middle housing shouldn't have a maximum floor space index.
Today, let's look at the numbers in a bit more detail.
If you look at a zoning map of Toronto, you'll see that many neighborhoods across the city have a maximum floor space index (FSI) of 0.6. What this means is that if you have a piece of land like this:
Lot width: 20'
Lot depth: 115'
Site area: 2,300 sf
Your total allowable gross floor area would be 1,380 square feet (0.6 x 2,300 sf).
If you build a laneway suite in this city, that won't count towards your total allowable GFA (otherwise they'd be very challenging/impossible to build). But if you want to build something like a triplex or a fourplex, it counts.
The one important caveat is that if you're building a residential building -- that isn't an apartment building with 5 or more homes -- you can deduct the floor area of the basement:
This, of course, helps the situation. But it doesn't solve all of our problems.
If you assume that the basement can be one home, that still only leaves 1,380 square feet for the other three, technically permissible, homes. This equals: 3 homes x 460 square feet.
Another option would be 2 homes x 690 square feet. But still, we're not exactly making it easy to deliver more "family-sized homes" in the city.
And herein lies one of the problems (plural, because there are others). We can say that fourplexes are allowed across the city, but it may not actually be technically feasible or practical to build them.
Note: I am not a planner. If you are, leave a comment below.
In 2019, Seattle made it easier to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Among other things, they started allowing two ADUs per lot, they stopped requiring the owner to live on site, and they stopped requiring off-street parking. The result is that the city is now permitting close to 1,000 ADUs per year (2022 figure). And for the first time ever, this figure now exceeds the number of permits issued for single-family houses.
Part of what's driving this adoption is that the City created 10 pre-approved plans that owners/builders can choose from. And since they were launched in September 2020, these plans have been permitted 130 times. (Los Angeles did something very similar with its "standard plan program.")
In general though, Seattle's policies seem more permissive than what we have here in Toronto. According to this recent "annual report", it is estimated that about 12% of ADUs in Seattle are licensed as short-term rentals. About a third are also being permitted as condominiums. In Toronto, any sort of severance is heavily discouraged. The objective was and is to create new rental housing.
But for Seattle, this seems to be creating more affordable homes for sale. The median selling price for an ADU is apparently $732,000, compared to $1.2 million for a single-family house. This sounds kind of good.
Image: The Seattle Times