Earlier today, Christopher Hume of the Toronto Star published a review of The Residences at RCMI building currently under construction on University Avenue. He gave the building a ‘B’ grade.
His main criticism was the faux facade that has been integrated into the base of the building:
Then there’s the question of the historic 1907 building the RCMI occupied until recently. Though listed as a heritage site in 1973, the city approved its demolition. Planners also allowed the neo-classical front façade to be replaced with a replica that will fool no one, another example of the city talking out of both sides of its mouth.
But faux facades aside, one of the things that makes this development project unique in Toronto is actually something that you can’t see from the outside: there’s no resident parking. Apparently there’s 9 spots for deliveries and other short-term uses, but for the 315 suites in the building there’s no parking.
Depending on where in the world you’re from this may not seem like a big deal. I’ve written before about minimum and maximum parking requirements, and how some cities – such as Berlin – don’t have them. But here in Toronto, we do. And the city generally takes them very seriously.
“To assume a residential development of the project’s scale might be totally car-free runs counter to expert study and experience,” municipal staffers argued. “Although there are many households in the downtown without cars, it would be highly unlikely to find 315 of them permanently concentrated in one building.”
The fact planners were dead wrong is a shocking sign of a department either out of touch or that doesn’t believe its own hype.
In so many ways – as Hume pointed out in his article – this is complete hypocrisy. We’re always talking about building walkable communities and encouraging alternate forms of mobility, but when it comes time to build anything new, we force a certain number of parking spots to be included. And so we end up encouraging the exact opposite.
This also has a significant impact on the way we build our cities. Parking minimums can actually render smaller sites “undevelopable” simply because there isn’t enough room to lay out the required parking. In fact, it might surprise you how much of what we do ends up being governed by cars, parking, and traffic.
That’s why I think this image is so impactful:
The most accurate representation of the public space we give up for cars. Courtesy of @tchebotarev :) #athiscity pic.twitter.com/KBUX0Td4fj
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But I’m certain that a lot of this will change as Toronto continues to grow. Progressive cities all around the world are rethinking their positions on parking, and on cars in general.
Earlier this year Sao Paulo joined the club and got rid of parking minimums for sites along major transit corridors. And they actually imposed a parking maximum: 1 spot per residence. The expectation is that this will reduce traffic and improve housing affordability.
Parking minimums may not seem like a big deal, but the reality is that their impacts are far reaching. They change development patterns, they change project economics, and they send a message about the kind of city you hope to build.
Image: Looking south on University Avenue in Toronto (Flickr)
If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a big supporter of public transit. And that’s because, as far as I can tell, it’s the most efficient way of moving lots of people around a big city.
But more and more I’ve been thinking about how technology might change, or even disrupt, this school of thought. Which is why when I wrote this post a few days ago, I was careful to say that private cars aren’t the mobility answer. Because in reality, cars likely aren’t going to go away. We’re just going to use them differently.
Here are the two things I’m thinking about most:
1. Driverless cars
I’ve written about driverless cars before in terms of how they might be used as a form of public transit. But I think it’s worth revisiting them for a moment. There are lots of driverless car critics out there and they usually fixate on the fact that a car is still a car, whether or not you happen to be driving it. It still takes up the same amount of space in our cities. Or does it?
The key thing to keep in mind is that when we’re not longer driving the vehicle, it opens up lots of different possibilities in terms of how they might be used and also how they might be designed. I was watching this fireside chat with the founders of Google the other night and, for them, driverless cars offer the possibility of solving two big problems: traffic and parking.
We know that parking takes up a lot space in our cities. But that’s really symptomatic of the fact that the utilization rate for most people’s cars is incredibly low. Most of the time a car is sitting parked and idle. But with driverless cars, they’ll be able to drop you off at your destination and then continue on to pick up their next ride–thereby minimizing the need for all that parking.
This would bring the utilization rate way up for each car, which would also minimize the number of absolute cars that we’d need to have in our cities to move everybody around. Of course, this would mean that we’d be sharing cars. People wouldn’t own cars; they would be an on-demand service.
2. Networked vehicles
This brings us to my second point: driverless cars will be networked cars. Again, I’ve written about this before, but I specifically wanted to raise it again because of a new service that Lyft just launched in San Francisco called Lyft Line.
The way it works is simple. You input where you’re going and Lyft will match you up with others who are going to more or less the same destination. The routes get shared and this brings down the costs to everyday use. It runs on the same principles as the on-demand minibuses I wrote about in Helsinki.
But if you combine this with driverless cars, you’re starting to get at something incredibly interesting. Now all of sudden you’re getting the door-to-door convenience of private cars with many of the efficiencies of public transit.
So in my mind, it’s very possible that platforms like Uber, Hailo, and Lyft could became major infrastructure backbones in a world of driverless cars. And if you think about it in this context, then I don’t think the valuations for these companies should seem all that surprising. These are potentially huge innovations.
In the end, I don’t know how this will all shake out. I don’t think anybody does. I believe that strong public infrastructure (such as subways, light rail, and so on) will still be needed in big cities, but I’m starting to think that mobile apps and driverless cars will also form a big part of how we get around. Probably more so than most people think today.
Image: Flickr
The cost of a parking spot in downtown Toronto has reached as high as $60,000 (per stall) in some new construction projects. If you convert that to a per square foot price (which is typically how people measure condo prices), you’re looking at over $350 per square foot for that parking stall. Is it worth it?
Most cities around the world have what is called a parking minimum. This means that to build, say a new residential condo, developers need to provide a certain number of parking stalls. In Toronto, those minimums will depend on your unit mix. Bigger units have more stringent parking requirements.
In some cities, though it’s much rarer, they actually have parking maximums. Portland, for instance, has a maximum number of parking stalls that you’re allowed to build, which fluctuates based on the development’s proximity to transit.
And finally, there are some cities, such as Berlin, with no parking minimums or maximums at all. In those cases, the market dictates the number of parking stalls that should be built. If people want a parking spot with their apartment and won’t buy or rent it without one, then the developer builds it.
Though parking variances do happen in Toronto (for reasons such as proximity to transit), the city is generally skeptical of a market led approach to parking requirements. And there are a couple of reasons for that. They worry that investors might be buying the units (with no parking) and so the sales data may not be indicative of the end-user market.
The city also worries that developers might actively discourage purchasers from buying parking spots, as it’s usually more profitable not to build them. Underground parking is costly and often subsidized by the sale of the condo units themselves. In fact, I’ve heard of instances where underground parking has cost upwards of $100,000 per stall because of buoyancy forces and other technical details.
But I’m generally a free market guy. So I question if the market really isn’t capable of figuring out how much parking there truly needs to be. Undoubtedly, there will be families who demand 2 parking spots. I also bought a parking spot with my condo. But there may also be a number of people who would rather pay less for their home than subsidize a parking garage that they’ll rarely use.
And as I wrote in a recent post called, Is traffic the right question?, we could be losing sight of the greater goal. If we truly want to build a sustainable and livable city, then we should be considering how our development activity encourages transit usage over driving, and how we can promote a more balanced modal split across the city.
What are your thoughts? Would you buy a home without parking? Should we get rid of parking minimums, just as cities like Berlin have?