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This week we speak about the problem of not enough density next to transit stations. More specifically, we spoke about Toronto's low-rise residential neighborhoods, which are colored yellow in the city's Official Plan. Well, as many of you know, the city is, in fact, working to "expand housing options" in these neighhorhoods through their EHON program. One component of the program covers laneway and garden suites, another covers multiplexes (up to fourplexes), and another hopes to allow 6-story apartment buildings on all major streets.
Here are the city's major streets:
And here's what these "small-scale apartments" might look like:
The setbacks are intended to be 6m in the front (to be consistent with existing neighborhood setbacks); 1.8m on the sides (so there's rear access and so that these elevations only get fenestration for secondary rooms); and 7.5m in the back (which is consistent with the current mid-rise guidelines). Now, directionally, and without referring to any of the specific details, this is good. Toronto's major streets are, in most cases, painfully underdeveloped; the existing built form feels generally entirely out of place. But the important question remains: Will developers actually build these at scale?
Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue, for example, already allow mid-rise buildings that, for the most part, are bigger than what is being proposed here as part of the EHON program. But again, they remain underdeveloped. And there's a subway running underneath these streets! So why will it be any different on our other major streets? One key difference is that these small-scale apartments are expected to be fully as-of-right. Meaning, no rezoning process and no community meetings. This will save a lot of time and money.
Still, this is almost certainly going to require some iterative finessing to get it right. I think you'll see developers looking to do little to no parking, no basements, no dedicated loading areas (certainly no type "G" spaces), slab-on-grade construction, and standardized and repeatable designs. And even then, this may not be enough. Rental replacement policies are yet another major barrier to consider. It's going to have to be all about speed and efficiency, which is why it will likely also create a greater push to rethink some building code items, such as the requirement for two means of egress.
At the end of the day, I want something like this to happen. It would increase housing supply, and make Toronto far more vibrant and far more conducive to non-driving forms of mobility. It's, no doubt, a really positive thing. But for this to become a reality, it needs to work at scale. Meaning, the development pro formas need to work at scale, and with sufficient margin that developers won't just automatically look to other opportunities. If the development community can make money building this housing typology, they will look for every opportunity to build it. But if they can't make money, they won't. It's as simple as that.
Images: City of Toronto
This is a lovely little infill rental project in Tokyo by ETHNOS (architect) for Real Partners (developer):
https://youtu.be/zXRlxh237Bo
The building is 4 storeys plus a rooftop terrace. From the plans, it looks like there are 8 units, all of which are two-storey suites.
The A and B suites are accessible from the ground floor. For the A suites, you enter at grade, and then go down into the first basement level. And for the B suites, you enter at grade and then go up to your second level. One of the entrances (suite B-3) is via an exterior walkway.
The middle of the ground floor is the lobby entrance and there's a single elevator that services the second and third floors (it then drops off for the fourth floor). On the second level is a co-working space, and so the upper C suites (these sound fancy) are all accessible from the third floor.
The fourth floor and fifth floor terraces are all accessible from within the C suites, which means that the only real common area corridors in this building are on the third level. And it looks like they wanted this particular corridor to have a view to the street, because they could have easily reduced it even further to increase the building's overall efficiency.
What is also interesting to look at this building's dimensions. Based on the above section, the floor-to-floor heights are 2500mm, which is low compared to the 2950/3000mm that is typically used here in Toronto for new reinforced concrete builds.
In terms of the overall building, it is only about 10m deep and it is less than 10m tall if you exclude the stair popups on the rooftop terraces. For context here, our Junction House lot is about 30m deep and the build is about 30m tall, so actually a similar kind of box proportion.
But let's scan more of Toronto.
If you move away from designated "Avenues" (which is where Junction House sits) and look at some of our other major streets (which is something the City of Toronto is in fact doing), you can sometimes/oftentimes find even deeper lots.
Below is a random area that I quickly panned too on Dufferin Street -- these single-family house lots are around 36m deep:
Now obviously Toronto is not Tokyo and Tokyo is not Toronto. But my point with all of this was to demonstrate just how much space we actually have within our existing boundaries, should we ever feel the need to increase our overall housing supply.
As I have argued many times before, I think one of the greatest opportunities to quickly do this sits along our majors streets.
Architectural drawings: ETHNOS
It is obvious that Toronto needs to find new ways to increase housing supply. And I have written before about how I think our major streets are a good place to look.
The above proposal by Naama Blonder of Smart Density is one way to start thinking about how we could do that. Dubbed the "mini mid-rise", the idea here was to show how a single lot might be intensified with a small multi-unit building.
This is a great idea. It was one of five projects that just won the Ontario Association of Architects' annual design challenge. But for it to have a chance at working, we're going to need to remove all of the friction associated with building this kind of housing.
These would need to be permissible as-of-right. No rezoning. No site plan control. Just straight to building permit.
We would also need to eliminate all parking requirements (which we are thankfully doing). The market will very quickly correct if these homes cannot be rented without parking.
We would need to ensure that these homes can be built without any cooperation from the adjacent neighbors. Because that cooperation may not always be there.
We would need to ensure that there are no funny code requirements that might serve as an additional obstacle.
And we will probably also need to look at subsidies and other incentives so that these homes are economically feasible to build. This might include development charge waivers and/or tax abatements.
None of this is, of course, impossible. It's just a question of how bad we want this to happen.
Image via Smart Density
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