The City of Toronto is currently reviewing its Official Plan, which is a city planning document that acts as a kind of master guide for land user matters. It is a pretty important document in that it dictates, among other things, what kind of development should go where. One way that it is often explained is that our OP is the "vision", whereas our zoning by-laws are the "precision."

This update will be completed by next summer. Why? Because the Province of Ontario said so. (That's how things work around here. I think cities should have more power.)

Toronto is expected to grow by more than 700,000 people and add some 450,000 jobs by 2051. Where these people and jobs will be accommodated is a big part of the exercise here.

As part of this review, the City of Toronto published this Story Map. It is pretty neat. It looks at how the city has grown over the years (the above image is Toronto's 1943 Master Plan). It explains a little bit about how planning works. And it has a bunch of stats on how people live and work in the city. I just used it to confirm my hunch that there are exactly zero single-family homes in my neighborhood.

Looking at the above map from 1943, it is, of course, interesting to see how much the city has grown. But it also interesting to note that many of the neighborhoods that now form part of the city were just "New Residential Areas with Prospective Populations." They were colors and numbers on a map in areas that had yet to be built out by developers.

When I see this, I can't help but wonder what the narrative was like at the time with respect to these new developments. Were people upset? Were people happy? Did people even notice what was happening on the edges of their city? Because sprawl, and that's what this was, is quite different from intensification.

Our focus today is on the latter. It is about building up as opposed to out. There's no more room for yellow shaded areas with numbers. This means that we will end up using our land and other resources more efficiently, but it also presents a whole host of issues. Change is hard. Intensification is hard. Part of the job of this document is to navigate some of these challenges.

If you'd like to get engaged with the city's Official Plan review, head over here.

My recent post about minimum project sizes triggered some great follow-up discussions over email. Today, I learned about a Master Plan that was recently completed for Little Havana, Miami by the urban design and planning firm Plusurbia.

In it, they try to address some of the problems that I described in my post through something they call "Inverse Density." Given the tendencies toward larger projects, they are proposing to incentivize the development of smaller and underused lots with more density.

The idea being that if you can encourage more smaller scale development, you can actually help to protect the character of a place. In 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the neighborhood a national treasure.

Here's a screenshot from the plan:

What you are seeing here is existing vs. proposed policies. The proposed scenarios both result in higher densities, even though the lots are smaller. Alongside this, they are proposing to get rid of parking minimums for lots less than 7,500 sf.

It's an intriguing idea and I'm glad they shared it with me. If you'd like to download a copy of the full Little Havana Master Plan, click here.

I’m going through and dissecting Elon Musk’s second “Master Plan” this morning. 

I love how he drops earth-shattering news in such a casual and honest way. Two days ago he tweeted that he was planning to pull an all-nighter to complete the “master product plan.” And then yesterday, he outlined his vision in a simple – and at times personal – blog post for how Tesla is going to change the world. It all feels very genuine.

Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There are so many interesting snippets from the master plan, that I’m simply going to quote them all here. There’s lots to think about and discuss.

A reminder of the broader vision:

The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.

By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.

The solar roof and other electric vehicles that Tesla has in the pipeline:

Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.

In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.

Thoughts on self-driving vehicles:

Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.

The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.

Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.

Why an even lower cost vehicle (compared to the Model 3) may never be necessary:

You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.

And finally, Uber has a new competitor (that, to me, is a good thing):

In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.

I’ll provide my thoughts on all of the above in a subsequent post. I’m out of writing time for today.

The City of Toronto is currently reviewing its Official Plan, which is a city planning document that acts as a kind of master guide for land user matters. It is a pretty important document in that it dictates, among other things, what kind of development should go where. One way that it is often explained is that our OP is the "vision", whereas our zoning by-laws are the "precision."

This update will be completed by next summer. Why? Because the Province of Ontario said so. (That's how things work around here. I think cities should have more power.)

Toronto is expected to grow by more than 700,000 people and add some 450,000 jobs by 2051. Where these people and jobs will be accommodated is a big part of the exercise here.

As part of this review, the City of Toronto published this Story Map. It is pretty neat. It looks at how the city has grown over the years (the above image is Toronto's 1943 Master Plan). It explains a little bit about how planning works. And it has a bunch of stats on how people live and work in the city. I just used it to confirm my hunch that there are exactly zero single-family homes in my neighborhood.

Looking at the above map from 1943, it is, of course, interesting to see how much the city has grown. But it also interesting to note that many of the neighborhoods that now form part of the city were just "New Residential Areas with Prospective Populations." They were colors and numbers on a map in areas that had yet to be built out by developers.

When I see this, I can't help but wonder what the narrative was like at the time with respect to these new developments. Were people upset? Were people happy? Did people even notice what was happening on the edges of their city? Because sprawl, and that's what this was, is quite different from intensification.

Our focus today is on the latter. It is about building up as opposed to out. There's no more room for yellow shaded areas with numbers. This means that we will end up using our land and other resources more efficiently, but it also presents a whole host of issues. Change is hard. Intensification is hard. Part of the job of this document is to navigate some of these challenges.

If you'd like to get engaged with the city's Official Plan review, head over here.

My recent post about minimum project sizes triggered some great follow-up discussions over email. Today, I learned about a Master Plan that was recently completed for Little Havana, Miami by the urban design and planning firm Plusurbia.

In it, they try to address some of the problems that I described in my post through something they call "Inverse Density." Given the tendencies toward larger projects, they are proposing to incentivize the development of smaller and underused lots with more density.

The idea being that if you can encourage more smaller scale development, you can actually help to protect the character of a place. In 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the neighborhood a national treasure.

Here's a screenshot from the plan:

What you are seeing here is existing vs. proposed policies. The proposed scenarios both result in higher densities, even though the lots are smaller. Alongside this, they are proposing to get rid of parking minimums for lots less than 7,500 sf.

It's an intriguing idea and I'm glad they shared it with me. If you'd like to download a copy of the full Little Havana Master Plan, click here.

I’m going through and dissecting Elon Musk’s second “Master Plan” this morning. 

I love how he drops earth-shattering news in such a casual and honest way. Two days ago he tweeted that he was planning to pull an all-nighter to complete the “master product plan.” And then yesterday, he outlined his vision in a simple – and at times personal – blog post for how Tesla is going to change the world. It all feels very genuine.

Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There are so many interesting snippets from the master plan, that I’m simply going to quote them all here. There’s lots to think about and discuss.

A reminder of the broader vision:

The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.

By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.

The solar roof and other electric vehicles that Tesla has in the pipeline:

Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.

In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.

Thoughts on self-driving vehicles:

Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.

The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.

Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.

Why an even lower cost vehicle (compared to the Model 3) may never be necessary:

You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.

And finally, Uber has a new competitor (that, to me, is a good thing):

In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.

I’ll provide my thoughts on all of the above in a subsequent post. I’m out of writing time for today.