I first met Monika Jaroszonek in 2017, right before she started RATIO.CITY. Since then she has developed some pretty incredible tools for the city building space.
Yesterday the company published this interactive visualization looking at development potential across the City of Toronto. The mapping looks for the following:
Land that has a Mixed Use, Apartment or Regeneration designation in the City of Toronto’s Official Plan
Land that is located within a Provincially designated Urban Growth Centre
Land that is located within 500m of a Major Transit Station
The tool then ranks each development site – AAA, AA, A – according to how many of the above criteria it meets.
It also flags land that it refers to as “Missed Opportunity.” These are lands located within 500m of a Major Transit Station, but that are designated as Neighbourhoods (considered stable) or Employment (whole other discussion).
Based on this filter, about 5.6% of the City’s land is a “Missed Opportunity” and about 1.2% is AAA.
When you look at the visualization, that is one of the first things you will probably notice; a lot of our transit infrastructure is currently underutilized as a result of land use policies.
Image: RATIO.CITY
On Monday, RioCan REIT announced its new residential brand: RioCan Living. This is the group that will now be responsible for redeveloping the 43 properties within their portfolio that they have identified as having intensification potential. Here’s how they are describing the new brand: “RioCan Living delivers best in class purpose-built rental units and condos along Canada’s most prominent public transit lines.”
It has been interesting watching RioCan over the last 6 months. In the fall they announced that they would be selling off somewhere around $1.5 billion of their portfolio to rebalance toward Canada’s six largest markets, and in particular the Toronto market. And with this recent unveiling it is clear that they are doubling down on transit-oriented mixed-use communities as a way to future-proof their retail portfolio against disruption.
Major markets. High-density. Transit-oriented. This shouldn’t surprise any of you. Here is a link to their latest investor presentation in case you’re curious.
Earlier this week I posted this teaser photo on social (full photo above) and said to stay tuned for a big announcement. Well, that announcement is here and you can read all about it over on the Globizen blog. Please let me know what you think in the comment section below.