Okay, so I haven't been (yet). But if you're an urbanist in search of a new city to check out, consider Pontevedra in northwestern Spain. Pontevedra is famous for its car-free city center. Starting in 1999, then-mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores began making some radical changes to prioritize pedestrians and turnaround a city in decline. They'd still be considered radical today, so I can only imagine what they felt like back in the 90s.
The historic center of the city, which covers an area of about 300,000 m2 (or about 74 acres), was fully pedestrianized. The area surrounding it was also converted to a low-traffic zone, bringing the total size of the pedestrian-oriented area to more than 1.3 million m2 (or about 321 acres). To put this into perspective, High Park in Toronto is just under 400 acres.
The result is that vehicular traffic dropped by ~92% in the historic center and ~53% in the city as a whole. Today, walking accounts for over 65% of all trips and the average resident walks about 5 km per day (roughly equivalent to 6,000 to 7,500 steps). On top of this, over two-thirds of children now walk to school. And the city hasn't reported a single pedestrian death from cars in over a decade!
Okay, so I haven't been (yet). But if you're an urbanist in search of a new city to check out, consider Pontevedra in northwestern Spain. Pontevedra is famous for its car-free city center. Starting in 1999, then-mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores began making some radical changes to prioritize pedestrians and turnaround a city in decline. They'd still be considered radical today, so I can only imagine what they felt like back in the 90s.
The historic center of the city, which covers an area of about 300,000 m2 (or about 74 acres), was fully pedestrianized. The area surrounding it was also converted to a low-traffic zone, bringing the total size of the pedestrian-oriented area to more than 1.3 million m2 (or about 321 acres). To put this into perspective, High Park in Toronto is just under 400 acres.
The result is that vehicular traffic dropped by ~92% in the historic center and ~53% in the city as a whole. Today, walking accounts for over 65% of all trips and the average resident walks about 5 km per day (roughly equivalent to 6,000 to 7,500 steps). On top of this, over two-thirds of children now walk to school. And the city hasn't reported a single pedestrian death from cars in over a decade!
But how has the city performed economically since the change? Some 15,000 people have moved to the city since it became car-free and the total inventory of shops and restaurants has increased. It has also been reported that foot traffic went up (possibly by as much as 30%) and that retail vacancies dropped significantly. This is supported by research showing that well-designed pedestrianized areas do often drive higher retail sales.
This week, Toronto once again demonstrated that there are two cities within our city: There's Old Toronto and then there's the rest of Toronto. The former generally corresponds to the boundaries of Toronto prior to amalgamation in 1998. It represents a city that was built around streetcars and subways and is therefore embedded with certain urban sensibilities. Then there's the rest of Toronto. This part of the city ranges from being reluctantly urban to overly hostile toward it. And it shows up in many areas, from its modal split to its voting patterns.
This week it showed up in a debate to permit multiplexes with up to six homes (sixplexes) in all residential neighborhoods city-wide. It is also important to note that adopting this zoning change is a prerequisite to the city accessing $471.1 million in funding from the federal government. But this is not how City Council voted this week. Instead, a "compromise motion" had to be put forward that isolated sixplexes to Toronto and East York District, and Ward 23 in Scarborough. In other words, we are not that far off from splitting Toronto between Old and the rest.
I'm glad that something, instead of nothing, got done. But it's disappointing that Mayor Olivia Chow did not stand up and show any leadership on this recommendation from planning staff.
I got a notice in the mail this week for a public meeting related to Toronto's multiplex zoning by-law. Multiplexes are house-like buildings with two, three or four dwelling units. This housing type became newly permissible across the city in May 2023, but as part of the approval, the city was asked to keep an eye on things and report back on anything that might need to be changed. What is now being proposed are amendments to this original by-law.
One change is the introduction of the term "houseplex." This is meant to get away from unit-specific terms like duplex, triplex, and fourplex; but it also sounds like it was designed to placate single-family house owners. Another proposed change is a limit on the number of bedrooms in a building. For houseplexes with three or more units, the maximum number of bedrooms is proposed to be 3 x the number of dwelling units. This is designed to block rooming houses.
It's a reminder that zoning is, at least in this part of the world, about fine-grained control. It's typically about narrowing the universe of options down to a minimum so that it's clear what we can expect. This is why zoning by-laws have things called "permitted uses." It's a strict list of things you can do. And if it's not on the list, it's off limits. A different and more flexible approach would be to do the opposite: list only what you can't do. This broadens the universe of possibilities, but gives up some control.
Roughly speaking, this is how zoning works in Japan. Land use planning starts at the national level, as opposed to being strictly delegated to local governments. And from my understanding, there are 12 main zones, ranging from exclusively low-rise residential to exclusively industrial. (
But how has the city performed economically since the change? Some 15,000 people have moved to the city since it became car-free and the total inventory of shops and restaurants has increased. It has also been reported that foot traffic went up (possibly by as much as 30%) and that retail vacancies dropped significantly. This is supported by research showing that well-designed pedestrianized areas do often drive higher retail sales.
This week, Toronto once again demonstrated that there are two cities within our city: There's Old Toronto and then there's the rest of Toronto. The former generally corresponds to the boundaries of Toronto prior to amalgamation in 1998. It represents a city that was built around streetcars and subways and is therefore embedded with certain urban sensibilities. Then there's the rest of Toronto. This part of the city ranges from being reluctantly urban to overly hostile toward it. And it shows up in many areas, from its modal split to its voting patterns.
This week it showed up in a debate to permit multiplexes with up to six homes (sixplexes) in all residential neighborhoods city-wide. It is also important to note that adopting this zoning change is a prerequisite to the city accessing $471.1 million in funding from the federal government. But this is not how City Council voted this week. Instead, a "compromise motion" had to be put forward that isolated sixplexes to Toronto and East York District, and Ward 23 in Scarborough. In other words, we are not that far off from splitting Toronto between Old and the rest.
I'm glad that something, instead of nothing, got done. But it's disappointing that Mayor Olivia Chow did not stand up and show any leadership on this recommendation from planning staff.
I got a notice in the mail this week for a public meeting related to Toronto's multiplex zoning by-law. Multiplexes are house-like buildings with two, three or four dwelling units. This housing type became newly permissible across the city in May 2023, but as part of the approval, the city was asked to keep an eye on things and report back on anything that might need to be changed. What is now being proposed are amendments to this original by-law.
One change is the introduction of the term "houseplex." This is meant to get away from unit-specific terms like duplex, triplex, and fourplex; but it also sounds like it was designed to placate single-family house owners. Another proposed change is a limit on the number of bedrooms in a building. For houseplexes with three or more units, the maximum number of bedrooms is proposed to be 3 x the number of dwelling units. This is designed to block rooming houses.
It's a reminder that zoning is, at least in this part of the world, about fine-grained control. It's typically about narrowing the universe of options down to a minimum so that it's clear what we can expect. This is why zoning by-laws have things called "permitted uses." It's a strict list of things you can do. And if it's not on the list, it's off limits. A different and more flexible approach would be to do the opposite: list only what you can't do. This broadens the universe of possibilities, but gives up some control.
Roughly speaking, this is how zoning works in Japan. Land use planning starts at the national level, as opposed to being strictly delegated to local governments. And from my understanding, there are 12 main zones, ranging from exclusively low-rise residential to exclusively industrial. (
Here's an interesting undergraduate paper
I found on the topic.) What's fascinating about this system is that it's organized by nuisance or intensity level, and it works cumulatively.
Meaning, as you move up in allowable nuisance, things of lesser intensity still tend to be allowed. For example, just because you might have a commercial zone with restaurants and department stores, it doesn't mean you still can't build residential. It's a less intense use. At the same time, the starting point is also more permissive, because even the exclusively low-rise residential zone allows "small shops or offices." What all of this creates is a planning framework where most zones are by default mixed-use.
This is a fundamentally different approach. It relinquishes some degree of control, embraces more flexibility, and accepts that cities are chaotic living organisms. It's impossible to draw lines on a map and figure out exactly where each permitted use should go. We'll never get it right and/or keep up. What this means is that we're artificially stifling our cities by not just focusing on the obviously bad stuff (like heavy industry next to a daycare), and letting the market decide where a ramen stand should go.
I found on the topic.) What's fascinating about this system is that it's organized by nuisance or intensity level, and it works cumulatively.
Meaning, as you move up in allowable nuisance, things of lesser intensity still tend to be allowed. For example, just because you might have a commercial zone with restaurants and department stores, it doesn't mean you still can't build residential. It's a less intense use. At the same time, the starting point is also more permissive, because even the exclusively low-rise residential zone allows "small shops or offices." What all of this creates is a planning framework where most zones are by default mixed-use.
This is a fundamentally different approach. It relinquishes some degree of control, embraces more flexibility, and accepts that cities are chaotic living organisms. It's impossible to draw lines on a map and figure out exactly where each permitted use should go. We'll never get it right and/or keep up. What this means is that we're artificially stifling our cities by not just focusing on the obviously bad stuff (like heavy industry next to a daycare), and letting the market decide where a ramen stand should go.
