One of the fundamental principles that we espouse on this blog is that land use and transportation planning are integral to one another. This matters if you're trying to build a big, bad global city because there are limits to what you can accomplish with car-oriented planning. Eventually traffic congestion becomes unbearable and the model starts to breakdown (consider Toronto and Atlanta right now).
This means that, if you'd like to continue scaling, eventually you'll need to start getting serious about transit-oriented development and other forms of mobility. Japan is one of the best examples of this. But the key prerequisite for this is urban density. This is the unlock that makes transit practical and convenient for people.
That's why this week's planning announcement is a big one for Toronto. On August 15, the Government of Ontario (through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing) approved, with some modifications, 120 Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas in the City of Toronto. Here's a summary of the MMAH's decision via the City's website, and below is a map of the transit station areas. (Note that some station areas are missing from this map and are still under review.)
At a high level, these are areas that fall within an approximately 500-800 meter radius of transit stations, and would therefore be less than a 10-minute walk for most people. It's land that is best suited to transit-oriented development and that would strengthen any new/existing transit investments. For example, if you have an existing station that is underperforming from a ridership standpoint, the best solution is more density within its immediate catchment area.
Because of this, Ontario's Provincial Planning Statement prescribes the following minimum density targets for MTSAs:
200 residents and jobs per hectare for subways
160 residents and jobs per hectare for light rail or bus rapid transit
150 residents and jobs per hectare for commuter or regional rail
And to satisfy these requirements, cities need to demonstrate how they have planned for these minimum targets.
PMTSAs are a subset of MTSAs and come with some additional features, such as minimum unit counts and/or floor space indexes (floor area ratios). These are also the only transit areas where cities have the option of enabling Inclusionary Zoning, which is something they may do when the market rents in an area are high enough that the subsidies required to build affordable housing can be shifted onto the tenants paying market rents. (My views on inclusionary zoning can be found, here.)
Over the coming weeks, everyone in the industry is going to be analyzing the implications of this new approval. Overland (which is a legal firm that we work with) just posted on their blog that their review is underway and that they'll be posting something shortly. But in the meantime, I'd like to say that this is meaningful progress (and one that has been a longtime coming).
It acknowledges the important link between land use planning and mobility, and it better aligns our policies to support a post-car city. Of course, in many ways, this is an obvious thing to do. I started this post by calling it a fundamental principle of city building. But city planning happens slowly and incrementally. If you're following along, you'll see that Toronto is in fact growing up as a big, bad global city.
Cover photo by Andrii Khrystian on Unsplash