Cities used to be adept at creating fine-grained, walkable, mixed-use streets. In fact, if you look at old photos, you'll see it was the norm. But that has become increasingly difficult for a variety of reasons, ranging from parking and servicing requirements to overall suburbanization and chain retailers demanding certain spaces. Today, in many parts of the world, these kinds of streets are by far the exception rather than the rule.
What hasn't changed, however, is our appreciation for human-scaled spaces. This raises the question: How can we create more of them going forward? How might we make more Ossington Avenues? This is especially relevant as many cities look to intensify their existing neighborhoods. More housing is essential, but there are also broader city-building opportunities that can come along with it.
The first thing to keep in mind is that developers will always have a bias toward what is most profitable and what has the least amount of risk. So if a residential apartment at grade is going to be more profitable than a cute coffee shop, developers will build the apartment. But markets and areas do change, and sometimes what didn't make sense before makes sense today.
Let's, for example, return to our discussion of Ossington Avenue. At the intersection of Ossington and Halton, there is a
Cities used to be adept at creating fine-grained, walkable, mixed-use streets. In fact, if you look at old photos, you'll see it was the norm. But that has become increasingly difficult for a variety of reasons, ranging from parking and servicing requirements to overall suburbanization and chain retailers demanding certain spaces. Today, in many parts of the world, these kinds of streets are by far the exception rather than the rule.
What hasn't changed, however, is our appreciation for human-scaled spaces. This raises the question: How can we create more of them going forward? How might we make more Ossington Avenues? This is especially relevant as many cities look to intensify their existing neighborhoods. More housing is essential, but there are also broader city-building opportunities that can come along with it.
The first thing to keep in mind is that developers will always have a bias toward what is most profitable and what has the least amount of risk. So if a residential apartment at grade is going to be more profitable than a cute coffee shop, developers will build the apartment. But markets and areas do change, and sometimes what didn't make sense before makes sense today.
Let's, for example, return to our discussion of Ossington Avenue. At the intersection of Ossington and Halton, there is a
that was built just prior to Ossington becoming the cool-ass street that it is today. One of the ways you can tell its vintage, I think, is that it has no retail fronting onto Ossington. Instead, it has townhouse balconies that are likely to remain there until the end of time. If it were built today, I bet you that the developer would have built ground-floor retail.
But you can't really blame the developer. At the time, it likely didn't make economic sense to build retail. Few could have predicted Ossington would become what it is today. And it is this messiness and unpredictability that makes cities so great. But it's also what makes top-down planning difficult. Nobody can predict the future, and nobody knows exactly what the market will want.
As far as I know, a bunch of people didn't sit down in a boardroom and outline how they were going to transform Ossington through top-down planning. It was local change agents who started doing things. And once they had found what the market wanted, it was the people in boardrooms who reacted with, "This is too successful; we better put in place a moratorium on bars and restaurants."
What made Ossington successful was that it had the right "bones" and the ability to be transformed. It allowed for bottom-up change. And if there's one thing to take away from this post, it's that. If we want a chance at creating more Ossingtons, we should be focused on (1) creating the right preconditions in new developments and in our land-use policies, and then (2) getting out of the way through fewer rules and more flexibility.
A good land-use model to consider is that of Japan. By default, most zones are mixed-use and most low-rise residential zones allow "small shops and offices." Because, why not? Of course, not every street can be an Ossington, and not every street can support fine-grained retail. But we won't know exactly what's possible unless we allow our street frontages to evolve along with our cities.
I was lollygagging on Bloor last night while waiting for my take-out sushi to be prepared when I happened to notice the above building at 1639 Bloor Street West.
What stood out to me was that it’s six storeys, has no stepbacks, is brick all around, and is more or less the kind of infill housing that Toronto is now trying to encourage along its major streets. Except, this building is old. The internet tells me it was built in 1954 (and houses 46 apartments). Which made me immediately wonder: did we used to know how to build this housing typology and then simply forget? Or was this the work of a cowboy developer who somehow managed to slip it through the cracks?
Either way, I decided to walk the perimeter and take a closer look. The first thing I noticed was a row of garbage bins along the building’s east elevation, with about a dozen or so cameras keeping a close eye on them. If anyone in building management is wondering why a handsome man in a black t-shirt and stylish Birkenstocks was so curious about garbage bins — don’t worry. I was just trying to determine if you had a Type-G loading bay hidden around the back. I can now confirm: no such loading facility.
Looking at Toronto’s maps, the site is approximately 30 meters wide by 40 meters deep — so roughly the equivalent of five lots, given the prevailing lot fabric in the area. The building itself appears to have a footprint of about 660 square metres (~7,100 square feet). If I multiply this by six floors and then by an efficiency ratio of 0.80, I get a very rough gross rentable area of 31,000 square feet. Divide this by 46 apartments and you end up with an average suite size of ~741 square feet.
Imagine that: assemble five lots on Bloor, employ an all-brick façade on all elevations, and build to an average suite size that is probably close to 200 square feet larger than some of the city’s most recent downtown developments. The math would never math today.
I came across this tweet the other night showing Toronto's Yonge Street.
In the foreground are small, two-storey main street—type buildings. And behind them are tall buildings. This is very Toronto. What you're seeing here is a condition that occurs all around the city. Though in many ways, it feels counterintuitive. I mean, shouldn't the tallest buildings be right on the main street?
In my opinion, this condition is happening for at least two reasons.
The first is that Toronto's historic main streets tend to have a fine-grained lot fabric, which means they're more challenging to assemble for larger developments. Assemblies are a complex art, and they get exponentially more difficult the more property owners and feuding siblings you add into the mix. So the path of least resistant is larger and chunkier sites.
The second reason has to do with context. We tend to want to preserve the feel of our historic main streets. One Delisle is an example of this. The podium of the tower is scaled to exactly match what was there before — an Art Deco-style facade from the 20s that will return to the site.
However, we didn't have this same constraint on its other elevation (Delisle Avenue) and so we fought not to have your typical podium + setback tower. Instead, we wanted a street level experience that had more presence and urban grandeur.
This, to me, is an important distinction to consider. Are we setting height back because of history and context? Both of which are important. Or are we setting it back because we're pretending to still be a provincial Anglo-Protestant town? Sometimes it seems like it's because of the latter.
that was built just prior to Ossington becoming the cool-ass street that it is today. One of the ways you can tell its vintage, I think, is that it has no retail fronting onto Ossington. Instead, it has townhouse balconies that are likely to remain there until the end of time. If it were built today, I bet you that the developer would have built ground-floor retail.
But you can't really blame the developer. At the time, it likely didn't make economic sense to build retail. Few could have predicted Ossington would become what it is today. And it is this messiness and unpredictability that makes cities so great. But it's also what makes top-down planning difficult. Nobody can predict the future, and nobody knows exactly what the market will want.
As far as I know, a bunch of people didn't sit down in a boardroom and outline how they were going to transform Ossington through top-down planning. It was local change agents who started doing things. And once they had found what the market wanted, it was the people in boardrooms who reacted with, "This is too successful; we better put in place a moratorium on bars and restaurants."
What made Ossington successful was that it had the right "bones" and the ability to be transformed. It allowed for bottom-up change. And if there's one thing to take away from this post, it's that. If we want a chance at creating more Ossingtons, we should be focused on (1) creating the right preconditions in new developments and in our land-use policies, and then (2) getting out of the way through fewer rules and more flexibility.
A good land-use model to consider is that of Japan. By default, most zones are mixed-use and most low-rise residential zones allow "small shops and offices." Because, why not? Of course, not every street can be an Ossington, and not every street can support fine-grained retail. But we won't know exactly what's possible unless we allow our street frontages to evolve along with our cities.
I was lollygagging on Bloor last night while waiting for my take-out sushi to be prepared when I happened to notice the above building at 1639 Bloor Street West.
What stood out to me was that it’s six storeys, has no stepbacks, is brick all around, and is more or less the kind of infill housing that Toronto is now trying to encourage along its major streets. Except, this building is old. The internet tells me it was built in 1954 (and houses 46 apartments). Which made me immediately wonder: did we used to know how to build this housing typology and then simply forget? Or was this the work of a cowboy developer who somehow managed to slip it through the cracks?
Either way, I decided to walk the perimeter and take a closer look. The first thing I noticed was a row of garbage bins along the building’s east elevation, with about a dozen or so cameras keeping a close eye on them. If anyone in building management is wondering why a handsome man in a black t-shirt and stylish Birkenstocks was so curious about garbage bins — don’t worry. I was just trying to determine if you had a Type-G loading bay hidden around the back. I can now confirm: no such loading facility.
Looking at Toronto’s maps, the site is approximately 30 meters wide by 40 meters deep — so roughly the equivalent of five lots, given the prevailing lot fabric in the area. The building itself appears to have a footprint of about 660 square metres (~7,100 square feet). If I multiply this by six floors and then by an efficiency ratio of 0.80, I get a very rough gross rentable area of 31,000 square feet. Divide this by 46 apartments and you end up with an average suite size of ~741 square feet.
Imagine that: assemble five lots on Bloor, employ an all-brick façade on all elevations, and build to an average suite size that is probably close to 200 square feet larger than some of the city’s most recent downtown developments. The math would never math today.
I came across this tweet the other night showing Toronto's Yonge Street.
In the foreground are small, two-storey main street—type buildings. And behind them are tall buildings. This is very Toronto. What you're seeing here is a condition that occurs all around the city. Though in many ways, it feels counterintuitive. I mean, shouldn't the tallest buildings be right on the main street?
In my opinion, this condition is happening for at least two reasons.
The first is that Toronto's historic main streets tend to have a fine-grained lot fabric, which means they're more challenging to assemble for larger developments. Assemblies are a complex art, and they get exponentially more difficult the more property owners and feuding siblings you add into the mix. So the path of least resistant is larger and chunkier sites.
The second reason has to do with context. We tend to want to preserve the feel of our historic main streets. One Delisle is an example of this. The podium of the tower is scaled to exactly match what was there before — an Art Deco-style facade from the 20s that will return to the site.
However, we didn't have this same constraint on its other elevation (Delisle Avenue) and so we fought not to have your typical podium + setback tower. Instead, we wanted a street level experience that had more presence and urban grandeur.
This, to me, is an important distinction to consider. Are we setting height back because of history and context? Both of which are important. Or are we setting it back because we're pretending to still be a provincial Anglo-Protestant town? Sometimes it seems like it's because of the latter.
Tall buildings now line up along Yonge Street in behind the low-rise commercial storefronts that have lined the street for decades. In this image looking northwest across Yonge at the corner with Wellesley Street by UrbanToronto Forum contributor Lachlan Holmes, the new
Tall buildings now line up along Yonge Street in behind the low-rise commercial storefronts that have lined the street for decades. In this image looking northwest across Yonge at the corner with Wellesley Street by UrbanToronto Forum contributor Lachlan Holmes, the new
Tall buildings now line up along Yonge Street in behind the low-rise commercial storefronts that have lined the street for decades. In this image looking northwest across Yonge at the corner with Wellesley Street by UrbanToronto Forum contributor Lachlan Holmes, the new
