"...he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city."
All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.
I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.
"...he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city."
All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.
I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I have a thing for narrow streets. Which is why when I travel I sometimes (okay, oftentimes) bring a laser distance measuring device with me. I like measuring things so that I have dimensions that I can feed back into our own development projects. But perhaps most importantly, it allows me to appear as nerdy as humanly possible while traveling. Walking around with just a camera in hand isn't enough. You need to try harder than that. And so far the narrowest street that I have come across was in Noto, Sicily at just over 1.3m wide.
If you also like to fawn over narrow European streets, you may enjoy this recent video by City Beautiful. In it, Dave Amos compares European cities, like Rome, to US cities, like Salt Lake City and Philadelphia, and then asks: Can the US build European-style street networks? His immediate answer is, "probably not." And this is something that we have talked about before on the blog. Street networks tend to be really sticky. They're hard to change. However, there is another possible solution: create new smaller mid-block streets. And that's the focus of Dave's video:
https://youtu.be/iv9fWEekFUM
But if you think about it, this condition already exists in a number of cities. Here in Toronto, we have somewhere around 300 kilometers of laneways, which tend to range in width from 4 to 6m. These are European-scaled streets and amazingly they're already in place! The only difference is that, today, they mostly serve a back-of-house function. They provide access to garages. However, that is quickly changing with the introduction of laneway suites. And so over a long enough time horizon, our laneways are going to inevitably flip from back-of-house to primarily residential.
Though maybe there's even more we could do with this asset. European cities manage to fit retail, restaurants, patios, and more within 6m. Why not do the same with some of our narrowest streets?
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I have a thing for narrow streets. Which is why when I travel I sometimes (okay, oftentimes) bring a laser distance measuring device with me. I like measuring things so that I have dimensions that I can feed back into our own development projects. But perhaps most importantly, it allows me to appear as nerdy as humanly possible while traveling. Walking around with just a camera in hand isn't enough. You need to try harder than that. And so far the narrowest street that I have come across was in Noto, Sicily at just over 1.3m wide.
If you also like to fawn over narrow European streets, you may enjoy this recent video by City Beautiful. In it, Dave Amos compares European cities, like Rome, to US cities, like Salt Lake City and Philadelphia, and then asks: Can the US build European-style street networks? His immediate answer is, "probably not." And this is something that we have talked about before on the blog. Street networks tend to be really sticky. They're hard to change. However, there is another possible solution: create new smaller mid-block streets. And that's the focus of Dave's video:
https://youtu.be/iv9fWEekFUM
But if you think about it, this condition already exists in a number of cities. Here in Toronto, we have somewhere around 300 kilometers of laneways, which tend to range in width from 4 to 6m. These are European-scaled streets and amazingly they're already in place! The only difference is that, today, they mostly serve a back-of-house function. They provide access to garages. However, that is quickly changing with the introduction of laneway suites. And so over a long enough time horizon, our laneways are going to inevitably flip from back-of-house to primarily residential.
Though maybe there's even more we could do with this asset. European cities manage to fit retail, restaurants, patios, and more within 6m. Why not do the same with some of our narrowest streets?
Last week, Sierra Communities (developer) and my friend Gabriel Fain (architect of Mackay Laneway House fame) submitted the above development proposal for 2760 Dundas Street West in the Junction. It is a beautiful proposal. So not surprisingly, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are the first batch of comments from Urban Toronto:
It also happens to be one block west of our Junction House project, so I definitely would have been annoyed if somebody proposed something ugly here. I am 99.9% biased, but I think the Junction has some of the best new mid-rise buildings in the city. Presumably, this is what "Mrgeosim" was getting at with their comment about "the number of good proposals for this neighbourhood."
But here's the thing. This is a relatively small proposal. It's a 6-storey mid-rise building with 28 new homes on top of a tiny 482 square meter site (16m frontage). This makes it a challenging new development to execute on. So the fact that this is required to go through the typical rezoning and site plan processes is, in my opinion, a painful problem.
We should be doing everything we can to encourage these kinds of new housing developments all across the city. And that necessarily means removing as many barriers as possible. A pair of development applications and a few community meetings may seem benign, but they're not. They add time and real costs that then need to be passed onto future residents.
There is also a very valid question around what kind of development charges (or impact fees) we should be levying on projects of this scale. If you want to build a laneway suite in the City of Toronto, you can have the development charges deferred and eventually forgiven. Why? Because we want more rental housing and we have arguably recognized that it's important for project feasibility.
Should the same apply if you're building 2 new homes, or perhaps 28 new homes? At what point should the "impacts" kick in and the fees be levied? And might there be an argument that adding many new homes on top of small 482 square meter parcels is actually an incredibly efficient way of using existing public infrastructure? I think so.
Congratulations to the team on a beautiful proposal! I'm looking forward to this being our neighbor.
Last week, Sierra Communities (developer) and my friend Gabriel Fain (architect of Mackay Laneway House fame) submitted the above development proposal for 2760 Dundas Street West in the Junction. It is a beautiful proposal. So not surprisingly, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are the first batch of comments from Urban Toronto:
It also happens to be one block west of our Junction House project, so I definitely would have been annoyed if somebody proposed something ugly here. I am 99.9% biased, but I think the Junction has some of the best new mid-rise buildings in the city. Presumably, this is what "Mrgeosim" was getting at with their comment about "the number of good proposals for this neighbourhood."
But here's the thing. This is a relatively small proposal. It's a 6-storey mid-rise building with 28 new homes on top of a tiny 482 square meter site (16m frontage). This makes it a challenging new development to execute on. So the fact that this is required to go through the typical rezoning and site plan processes is, in my opinion, a painful problem.
We should be doing everything we can to encourage these kinds of new housing developments all across the city. And that necessarily means removing as many barriers as possible. A pair of development applications and a few community meetings may seem benign, but they're not. They add time and real costs that then need to be passed onto future residents.
There is also a very valid question around what kind of development charges (or impact fees) we should be levying on projects of this scale. If you want to build a laneway suite in the City of Toronto, you can have the development charges deferred and eventually forgiven. Why? Because we want more rental housing and we have arguably recognized that it's important for project feasibility.
Should the same apply if you're building 2 new homes, or perhaps 28 new homes? At what point should the "impacts" kick in and the fees be levied? And might there be an argument that adding many new homes on top of small 482 square meter parcels is actually an incredibly efficient way of using existing public infrastructure? I think so.
Congratulations to the team on a beautiful proposal! I'm looking forward to this being our neighbor.
