The Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) is a non-profit group that works all around the world -- everywhere from Jakarta to Rio de Janeiro -- to design and implement both transport solutions and policies that help to make our cities more livable, equitable, and sustainable. If you're interested in learning more about the kind of work that they do, you can download a copy of their latest annual report, here.
Most recently, the group published a report called, "The Compact City Scenario - Electrified." In it they argue that two things need to happen together if we are to move humanity toward net-zero carbon emissions and reduce global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. One, we need to fully electrify our transport (which I think is fairly obvious at this point). And two, we need a modal shift.
To be even clearer, ITDP argues that both of these things need to happen at the same time in order to successfully hit our targets. Full electrification of our transport without any sort of modal shift isn't going to cut it, and the same is true for a modal shift without electrification.
Why all of this is important is because electrification is in many ways just a technical problem. We need electric vehicles, we need batteries, and we need the infrastructure in place to charge these vehicles. Among other things, this has meant building new charging stations, retrofitting existing buildings, and encouraging/requiring new buildings to make provisions for a future with predominantly electric vehicles.
But for the most part, EVs allow us to continue living the way that we have already been living. Just instead of pumping gas, we now plug in our cars at the end of the day. On the other hand, encouraging a modal shift is a fairly significant behavioral change. Though we know that one of the most effective ways to encourage less driving is to build more compact cities.
This means changing the way we live. Changing the way we get around. And accepting more intense forms of development in our own backyards. It is fundamentally linked to land use planning and so it is going to be much harder to achieve. But if you agree with the above report, we won't be able to meet our sustainability goals without it.
We knew it was coming. But it's important and worth mentioning again. This week, Toronto City Council adopted new Zoning Bylaw Amendments that will remove most parking minimums across the city. We now join many other cities across North America who have done similar things in order to try and encourage more sustainable forms of mobility.
If you'd like to take a spin through the draft amendments, you'll find them linked here. I haven't gone through them in detail, but I did do a word search for "maximum" given that this week's adoption represents a pretty clear change in perspective. Here's an excerpt from the staff recommendation report that speaks to what I'm talking about:
Recognizing these challenges, this review of the parking standards in the city-wide
Zoning By-law 569-2013 was guided by the principle that parking standards should
allow only the maximum amount of automobile parking reasonably required for a given
use and minimums
The cost of container shipping continues to come to the forefront in this current environment. Today I was reviewing prices from a number of our suppliers and the rates for a FEU (forty-foot equivalent container) now seem to range anywhere from $8k to almost $18k (both CAD), depending on the origin.
This is up from a few thousand at the beginning of the year, and from far less prior to that. To help illustrate this point, above is a chart I found over at Statista showing an aggregated global container freight rate index from July 2019 to November 2021. This chart, which is in USDs, suggests that container rates may have peaked and be now tapering off, but who knows really.
This is a challenge for our suppliers and partners to manage through and it is a challenge for us to manage through. In some cases these additional costs will necessarily trickle down to the end consumers of the spaces that we and others are building. But in other cases that is not possible.
The Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) is a non-profit group that works all around the world -- everywhere from Jakarta to Rio de Janeiro -- to design and implement both transport solutions and policies that help to make our cities more livable, equitable, and sustainable. If you're interested in learning more about the kind of work that they do, you can download a copy of their latest annual report, here.
Most recently, the group published a report called, "The Compact City Scenario - Electrified." In it they argue that two things need to happen together if we are to move humanity toward net-zero carbon emissions and reduce global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. One, we need to fully electrify our transport (which I think is fairly obvious at this point). And two, we need a modal shift.
To be even clearer, ITDP argues that both of these things need to happen at the same time in order to successfully hit our targets. Full electrification of our transport without any sort of modal shift isn't going to cut it, and the same is true for a modal shift without electrification.
Why all of this is important is because electrification is in many ways just a technical problem. We need electric vehicles, we need batteries, and we need the infrastructure in place to charge these vehicles. Among other things, this has meant building new charging stations, retrofitting existing buildings, and encouraging/requiring new buildings to make provisions for a future with predominantly electric vehicles.
But for the most part, EVs allow us to continue living the way that we have already been living. Just instead of pumping gas, we now plug in our cars at the end of the day. On the other hand, encouraging a modal shift is a fairly significant behavioral change. Though we know that one of the most effective ways to encourage less driving is to build more compact cities.
This means changing the way we live. Changing the way we get around. And accepting more intense forms of development in our own backyards. It is fundamentally linked to land use planning and so it is going to be much harder to achieve. But if you agree with the above report, we won't be able to meet our sustainability goals without it.
We knew it was coming. But it's important and worth mentioning again. This week, Toronto City Council adopted new Zoning Bylaw Amendments that will remove most parking minimums across the city. We now join many other cities across North America who have done similar things in order to try and encourage more sustainable forms of mobility.
If you'd like to take a spin through the draft amendments, you'll find them linked here. I haven't gone through them in detail, but I did do a word search for "maximum" given that this week's adoption represents a pretty clear change in perspective. Here's an excerpt from the staff recommendation report that speaks to what I'm talking about:
Recognizing these challenges, this review of the parking standards in the city-wide
Zoning By-law 569-2013 was guided by the principle that parking standards should
allow only the maximum amount of automobile parking reasonably required for a given
use and minimums
The cost of container shipping continues to come to the forefront in this current environment. Today I was reviewing prices from a number of our suppliers and the rates for a FEU (forty-foot equivalent container) now seem to range anywhere from $8k to almost $18k (both CAD), depending on the origin.
This is up from a few thousand at the beginning of the year, and from far less prior to that. To help illustrate this point, above is a chart I found over at Statista showing an aggregated global container freight rate index from July 2019 to November 2021. This chart, which is in USDs, suggests that container rates may have peaked and be now tapering off, but who knows really.
This is a challenge for our suppliers and partners to manage through and it is a challenge for us to manage through. In some cases these additional costs will necessarily trickle down to the end consumers of the spaces that we and others are building. But in other cases that is not possible.
One other thing I found in the documents that went to Council was this map of parking spot selling prices in active high-rise developments across the city. Not surprisingly, downtown and midtown are showing the highest prices per parking space. I can't vouch for the accuracy of all of these dots, but it looks directionally right and I can tell you that at least one of them is correct.
All of us in the industry know how much parking drives decision making. There's a joke (half-joke) that when you're designing a building, first you lay out the parking and then you design all of the residential suites around that structural grid. That's not the way things should be done. The future of this city should not and cannot be centered around the car. This week's adoption is in service of that.
One other thing I found in the documents that went to Council was this map of parking spot selling prices in active high-rise developments across the city. Not surprisingly, downtown and midtown are showing the highest prices per parking space. I can't vouch for the accuracy of all of these dots, but it looks directionally right and I can tell you that at least one of them is correct.
All of us in the industry know how much parking drives decision making. There's a joke (half-joke) that when you're designing a building, first you lay out the parking and then you design all of the residential suites around that structural grid. That's not the way things should be done. The future of this city should not and cannot be centered around the car. This week's adoption is in service of that.
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