Cities used to be adept at creating fine-grained, walkable, mixed-use streets. In fact, if you look at old photos, you'll see it was the norm. But that has become increasingly difficult for a variety of reasons, ranging from parking and servicing requirements to overall suburbanization and chain retailers demanding certain spaces. Today, in many parts of the world, these kinds of streets are by far the exception rather than the rule.

What hasn't changed, however, is our appreciation for human-scaled spaces. This raises the question: How can we create more of them going forward? How might we make more Ossington Avenues? This is especially relevant as many cities look to intensify their existing neighborhoods. More housing is essential, but there are also broader city-building opportunities that can come along with it.

The first thing to keep in mind is that developers will always have a bias toward what is most profitable and what has the least amount of risk. So if a residential apartment at grade is going to be more profitable than a cute coffee shop, developers will build the apartment. But markets and areas do change, and sometimes what didn't make sense before makes sense today.

Let's, for example, return to our discussion of Ossington Avenue. At the intersection of Ossington and Halton, there is a stacked townhouse development that was built just prior to Ossington becoming the cool-ass street that it is today. One of the ways you can tell its vintage, I think, is that it has no retail fronting onto Ossington. Instead, it has townhouse balconies that are likely to remain there until the end of time. If it were built today, I bet you that the developer would have built ground-floor retail.

But you can't really blame the developer. At the time, it likely didn't make economic sense to build retail. Few could have predicted Ossington would become what it is today. And it is this messiness and unpredictability that makes cities so great. But it's also what makes top-down planning difficult. Nobody can predict the future, and nobody knows exactly what the market will want.

As far as I know, a bunch of people didn't sit down in a boardroom and outline how they were going to transform Ossington through top-down planning. It was local change agents who started doing things. And once they had found what the market wanted, it was the people in boardrooms who reacted with, "This is too successful; we better put in place a moratorium on bars and restaurants."

What made Ossington successful was that it had the right "bones" and the ability to be transformed. It allowed for bottom-up change. And if there's one thing to take away from this post, it's that. If we want a chance at creating more Ossingtons, we should be focused on (1) creating the right preconditions in new developments and in our land-use policies, and then (2) getting out of the way through fewer rules and more flexibility.

A good land-use model to consider is that of Japan. By default, most zones are mixed-use and most low-rise residential zones allow "small shops and offices." Because, why not? Of course, not every street can be an Ossington, and not every street can support fine-grained retail. But we won't know exactly what's possible unless we allow our street frontages to evolve along with our cities.

I was out for dinner last night on Ossington (here in Toronto). Afterwards, my business partner Rick and I walked the street for a bit. It was a beautiful evening. Every restaurant had their doors and windows open. All of the patios were full, many with the kind of awnings that I love from Paris. And in between these patios were endless options for beautiful window shopping. So during our walk, we couldn't help but say to each other, "man, what an awesome street."

Our line of thinking then went here: How did this ~600-meter stretch of street between Queen and Dundas become one of the coolest retail streets in the city? As you might expect, it follows the typical urban trajectory. It was a seedy street with cheap(er) rents. Then the artists and creatives started moving in, along with OG dive bars like Sweaty Betty's. And then the city implemented a brief moratorium on bars and restaurants because things were getting a bit too fun.

I also think it's fair to call Ossington's rise as being a spillover from Queen Street West. As rents rose on Queen, Ossington became a natural outlet. It was in the right location, and it already had a commercially-oriented and fine-grained ground plane, meaning the buildings could be easily repurposed for galleries, bars, restaurants, and whatever else. This is also why the strip just dies north of Dundas — there are no more suitable buildings.

To show you just how entrenched this built form was and is, here are a few archival photos from the 1920s and 1940s:

Beyond this, there's nothing particularly special about Ossington as a street. It has a 20-meter width, which is typical of most of Toronto's central main streets, and it's filled with a bunch of 2 to 3 storey buildings. So another thing it does is make you wonder: How many more Ossington Avenues could Toronto have if only we created the right preconditions for new businesses and ideas to flourish?

Of course, not every street can be an Ossington. What I'm talking about is simply creating more walkable, mixed-use streets. That's a lot harder to do when you don't have the bones that Ossington had, and you have primarily large lots and/or residential uses. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. As Toronto works to intensify its major streets, it's crucial that we also consider what the ground plane might one day want to become.

More on this in future posts.

As an add-on to yesterday's post about ground floor retail in mixed-use developments, I thought I would provide a few illustrative and real-world examples to demonstrate some of the challenges that I was trying to describe.

Note that this post is not meant to be critical of any specific projects; instead, it's intended to further explain some of the challenges facing developers, architects, policy makers, and everyone else involved in the built environment.

Let's start in Toronto. Below is an aerial photo of Ossington Avenue. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is one of the most desirable and coolest main streets in city. I mean, check out this recently completed office/retail building at 12 Ossington by Hullmark.

However, when the above townhouse complex was built (circa 2005), Ossington was not the street that it is today. In fact, it used to be pretty scuzzy. When I moved to the US for grad school in 2006, I don't recall anyone going out on Ossington. Then when I returned in 2009, suddenly, everyone was going to restaurants and bars on Ossington.

So when this project was being planned, residential directly on the street, was probably the highest-and-best use, which is why that's what was built. But looking at it today, it feels like a suboptimal outcome for one of the most desirable retail streets in the city. And now that it has been built, it's unlikely to change anytime soon. Should retail have been mandated?

Here is another example from Toronto. This is the north side of High Park. In this case, the street (Bloor Street) is not a great retail street. It's single-sided because of the park. There's only a scattering of restaurants and small businesses. There are a lot of single-use buildings. And even some of the newish developments don't have any ground floor retail.

In this particular instance, it's certainly more of a stretch to force retail. But at the same time, I think there's an argument to be made that the edges of Toronto's primary urban park should do more. The buildings should be taller. The street walls should be more defined. And yes, maybe there should be more retail.

Now here's a counter example from Paris:

This is the 7th and there's absolutely no ground floor retail in sight and pretty much only blank and non-active facades. It's hard to imagine retail opening up here today or anytime in the future -- and that's okay. The streets are still narrow and walkable. And the buildings are just what you'd expect from the capital. The point here: ground floor retail can't and doesn't need to go everywhere.

Finally, let's return to Salt Lake City:

This is maybe the antithesis of our Paris example. 300 W is a wide street clearly designed for Toyota 4Runners. It's hard to imagine a lot of people walking around here. Even though it's relatively close to the central business district and it's on the edge of the emerging and very cool Granary District. (This is The Post District.) But you know what, retail seems to work just fine here:

You just need to think about it in the right way. SLC's wide streets and large blocks may not make for a broadly walkable environment. But they do give you the room to create your own internal street network and, of course, build a bunch of parking. And that's what was done and needed here.

I also find it interesting to think at this sub-block level and consider how it might become a new network and layer to the city over time. Maybe Salt Lake needs its own version of Barcelona's superblocks. And maybe this has already been considered.

So once again, ground floor retail is good. Everyone wants that cool coffee shop in the bottom of their building. But sometimes we miss the boat. Sometimes it's unclear what we should do. Sometimes it's not necessary or viable. And sometimes we get it just right. That's, I guess, retail.

If you find yourself on 300 W, check out Urban Sailor Coffee.

Site Plan: Post District

Cities used to be adept at creating fine-grained, walkable, mixed-use streets. In fact, if you look at old photos, you'll see it was the norm. But that has become increasingly difficult for a variety of reasons, ranging from parking and servicing requirements to overall suburbanization and chain retailers demanding certain spaces. Today, in many parts of the world, these kinds of streets are by far the exception rather than the rule.

What hasn't changed, however, is our appreciation for human-scaled spaces. This raises the question: How can we create more of them going forward? How might we make more Ossington Avenues? This is especially relevant as many cities look to intensify their existing neighborhoods. More housing is essential, but there are also broader city-building opportunities that can come along with it.

The first thing to keep in mind is that developers will always have a bias toward what is most profitable and what has the least amount of risk. So if a residential apartment at grade is going to be more profitable than a cute coffee shop, developers will build the apartment. But markets and areas do change, and sometimes what didn't make sense before makes sense today.

Let's, for example, return to our discussion of Ossington Avenue. At the intersection of Ossington and Halton, there is a stacked townhouse development that was built just prior to Ossington becoming the cool-ass street that it is today. One of the ways you can tell its vintage, I think, is that it has no retail fronting onto Ossington. Instead, it has townhouse balconies that are likely to remain there until the end of time. If it were built today, I bet you that the developer would have built ground-floor retail.

But you can't really blame the developer. At the time, it likely didn't make economic sense to build retail. Few could have predicted Ossington would become what it is today. And it is this messiness and unpredictability that makes cities so great. But it's also what makes top-down planning difficult. Nobody can predict the future, and nobody knows exactly what the market will want.

As far as I know, a bunch of people didn't sit down in a boardroom and outline how they were going to transform Ossington through top-down planning. It was local change agents who started doing things. And once they had found what the market wanted, it was the people in boardrooms who reacted with, "This is too successful; we better put in place a moratorium on bars and restaurants."

What made Ossington successful was that it had the right "bones" and the ability to be transformed. It allowed for bottom-up change. And if there's one thing to take away from this post, it's that. If we want a chance at creating more Ossingtons, we should be focused on (1) creating the right preconditions in new developments and in our land-use policies, and then (2) getting out of the way through fewer rules and more flexibility.

A good land-use model to consider is that of Japan. By default, most zones are mixed-use and most low-rise residential zones allow "small shops and offices." Because, why not? Of course, not every street can be an Ossington, and not every street can support fine-grained retail. But we won't know exactly what's possible unless we allow our street frontages to evolve along with our cities.

I was out for dinner last night on Ossington (here in Toronto). Afterwards, my business partner Rick and I walked the street for a bit. It was a beautiful evening. Every restaurant had their doors and windows open. All of the patios were full, many with the kind of awnings that I love from Paris. And in between these patios were endless options for beautiful window shopping. So during our walk, we couldn't help but say to each other, "man, what an awesome street."

Our line of thinking then went here: How did this ~600-meter stretch of street between Queen and Dundas become one of the coolest retail streets in the city? As you might expect, it follows the typical urban trajectory. It was a seedy street with cheap(er) rents. Then the artists and creatives started moving in, along with OG dive bars like Sweaty Betty's. And then the city implemented a brief moratorium on bars and restaurants because things were getting a bit too fun.

I also think it's fair to call Ossington's rise as being a spillover from Queen Street West. As rents rose on Queen, Ossington became a natural outlet. It was in the right location, and it already had a commercially-oriented and fine-grained ground plane, meaning the buildings could be easily repurposed for galleries, bars, restaurants, and whatever else. This is also why the strip just dies north of Dundas — there are no more suitable buildings.

To show you just how entrenched this built form was and is, here are a few archival photos from the 1920s and 1940s:

Beyond this, there's nothing particularly special about Ossington as a street. It has a 20-meter width, which is typical of most of Toronto's central main streets, and it's filled with a bunch of 2 to 3 storey buildings. So another thing it does is make you wonder: How many more Ossington Avenues could Toronto have if only we created the right preconditions for new businesses and ideas to flourish?

Of course, not every street can be an Ossington. What I'm talking about is simply creating more walkable, mixed-use streets. That's a lot harder to do when you don't have the bones that Ossington had, and you have primarily large lots and/or residential uses. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. As Toronto works to intensify its major streets, it's crucial that we also consider what the ground plane might one day want to become.

More on this in future posts.

As an add-on to yesterday's post about ground floor retail in mixed-use developments, I thought I would provide a few illustrative and real-world examples to demonstrate some of the challenges that I was trying to describe.

Note that this post is not meant to be critical of any specific projects; instead, it's intended to further explain some of the challenges facing developers, architects, policy makers, and everyone else involved in the built environment.

Let's start in Toronto. Below is an aerial photo of Ossington Avenue. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is one of the most desirable and coolest main streets in city. I mean, check out this recently completed office/retail building at 12 Ossington by Hullmark.

However, when the above townhouse complex was built (circa 2005), Ossington was not the street that it is today. In fact, it used to be pretty scuzzy. When I moved to the US for grad school in 2006, I don't recall anyone going out on Ossington. Then when I returned in 2009, suddenly, everyone was going to restaurants and bars on Ossington.

So when this project was being planned, residential directly on the street, was probably the highest-and-best use, which is why that's what was built. But looking at it today, it feels like a suboptimal outcome for one of the most desirable retail streets in the city. And now that it has been built, it's unlikely to change anytime soon. Should retail have been mandated?

Here is another example from Toronto. This is the north side of High Park. In this case, the street (Bloor Street) is not a great retail street. It's single-sided because of the park. There's only a scattering of restaurants and small businesses. There are a lot of single-use buildings. And even some of the newish developments don't have any ground floor retail.

In this particular instance, it's certainly more of a stretch to force retail. But at the same time, I think there's an argument to be made that the edges of Toronto's primary urban park should do more. The buildings should be taller. The street walls should be more defined. And yes, maybe there should be more retail.

Now here's a counter example from Paris:

This is the 7th and there's absolutely no ground floor retail in sight and pretty much only blank and non-active facades. It's hard to imagine retail opening up here today or anytime in the future -- and that's okay. The streets are still narrow and walkable. And the buildings are just what you'd expect from the capital. The point here: ground floor retail can't and doesn't need to go everywhere.

Finally, let's return to Salt Lake City:

This is maybe the antithesis of our Paris example. 300 W is a wide street clearly designed for Toyota 4Runners. It's hard to imagine a lot of people walking around here. Even though it's relatively close to the central business district and it's on the edge of the emerging and very cool Granary District. (This is The Post District.) But you know what, retail seems to work just fine here:

You just need to think about it in the right way. SLC's wide streets and large blocks may not make for a broadly walkable environment. But they do give you the room to create your own internal street network and, of course, build a bunch of parking. And that's what was done and needed here.

I also find it interesting to think at this sub-block level and consider how it might become a new network and layer to the city over time. Maybe Salt Lake needs its own version of Barcelona's superblocks. And maybe this has already been considered.

So once again, ground floor retail is good. Everyone wants that cool coffee shop in the bottom of their building. But sometimes we miss the boat. Sometimes it's unclear what we should do. Sometimes it's not necessary or viable. And sometimes we get it just right. That's, I guess, retail.

If you find yourself on 300 W, check out Urban Sailor Coffee.

Site Plan: Post District