Category: Planning

• Why we shouldn’t blame Uber for traffic congestion

  It has become fairly common to blame Uber (and ridesharing in general) for increased traffic congestion. I hear it all the time: “If only there weren’t so many Ubers on the road, traffic would flow more freely.” While there are studies suggesting that “deadheading” miles do have a negative impact and that Uber can draw people away from public transit (that’s bad), I think it’s important to consider the bigger picture here. So let’s try and do that today.

  Firstly, let’s think about who traffic congestion directly impacts (indirectly it’s everyone). If you’re a pedestrian, you don’t care about traffic congestion. In fact, maybe you gain satisfaction from seeing other people stuck in it. (There’s even a German word for this feeling.) Similarly, if you’re riding the subway, taking any form of transit on its own right-of-way, or riding a bike, you likely also don’t care about traffic congestion. It doesn’t directly impact you.

  Where you do care about congestion is if you’re in something like a bus that is stuck in traffic or if you’re driving. In the former case, you’re probably thinking, “hey why can’t these people take the bus like me. Then we’d have less traffic!” And in the latter case you’re probably thinking, “if only there weren’t so many Ubers and bike lanes, then I wouldn’t be stuck in traffic!” Ironically, this is arguably the biggest segment of people who feel they are being impacted by Ubers.

  Secondly, let’s think about how Uber vs. driving might impact traffic congestion differently. In both cases, I would think that the majority of use cases involve one person (excluding drivers in the case of Uber) going to their desired destination. So from a raw space per person perspective, they both take up a similar amount of urban space.

  The differences are that the Uber likely had some amount of deadhead miles. In other words, it spent time driving around looking for its next passenger. And it likely targeted already busy areas because that’s where it was more likely to find someone. Individual drivers don’t do this. They go from point A to point B.

  However — and this is a big however — drivers do require parking once they get to where they’re going. Ubers don’t. This both takes up more space and oftentimes requires some amount of circling around. This is a significant difference and it begs the question: which is worse? Deadhead miles or all of the parking that cars generally require? I would argue the latter.

  Where I’m going with all of this is that I think the criticism of Uber is misdirected. It doesn’t get at the real underlying problem. If traffic congestion exists, it is because they are too many cars for a finite amount of road space. This includes the people who choose to drive themselves around. In fact, you could argue that they’re the most impactful to cities. The way you solve this is simple: you price congestion and you encourage alternative forms of mobility.

  Everything else is just a distraction.

  2024.05.21

• Salt Lake City wants to turn Main Street into a pedestrian promenade

  Last year, I wrote about how Salt Lake City wants to build a new linear park around its downtown. That post can be found, here.

  Fast forward to today, and the city’s Department of Economic Development has just published a new comprehensive 215-page study that supports turning Main Street into a pedestrian promenade.

  Specifically, the area running from South Temple to 400 South, and including 100 South from Main to West Temple:

  

  As part of the study, they highlight a number of successful case studies from around the world, including 16th Street Mall in Denver, Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne, and Queens Quay here in Toronto.

  In the case of Denver, they cite the one-mile stretch as single-handedly generating over 40% of the city’s total downtown tax revenue! And in the case of Toronto, they refer to Queens Quay as a global destination. (Toronto readers, do you agree?)

  Like most city building initiatives, this vision is will take years to realize. But it’s interesting to note that, of the eight design alternatives included in the study, there is already one clear preference within the local community — option B.

  

  Option B is a pedestrian/transit mall, but with multi-use trails. In other words, it is a no-cars-allowed alternative that would still allow bicycles and scooters. Here’s the street section:

  

  If you’d like to download a copy of the full Main Street Pedestrian Promenade Study, click here.

  2024.05.18

• Do great cities need tall buildings to help them thrive?

  In other words, are tall buildings a prerequisite to competing in today’s global economy? It’s an interesting question. And Jason Barr — professor of economics at Rutgers University-Newark — does think they are an important ingredient. So much so that he wrote a book on the topic called, Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers. While Jason does acknowledge that not every city needs them, he does suggest that not having them could hinder a global city:

  If you look at Paris’ global ranking in terms of its importance in the world economy, as measured by the size and number of international firms, it’s falling. Paris in 2000 was ranked fourth, and by 2020, it was down to eight, losing out to skyscraper cities such as Singapore and Dubai.

  In the last decade, Paris has shrunk by 122,000 residents. As reported by Forbes, “Many of those leaving are choosing either the suburbs or countryside around Paris, or they are relocating to France’s smaller cities such as Bordeaux, Lyon, and Toulouse.” By limiting its building stock, Paris is driving up housing prices, pushing out residents, and causing suburban sprawl.

  While I agree that tall buildings are important “geography-shrinking machines”, what we’re really talking about is using land more intensely. We’re talking about urban density. But you don’t necessarily need tall buildings to have high population densities. Consider Barcelona, which is one of the densest cities in Europe, and consider this comparison between Paris (few tall buildings) and Vancouver (more tall buildings).

  So is the argument simply that density is good for cities, and that tall buildings are one way to achieve that? Or is it that, now that cities like Paris are built out (albeit at very high densities), the only option for growth is to go up? I guess I’ll have to read his book.

  2024.05.14

• Toronto’s Major Streets Study approved at Planning and Housing Committee

  Back in March, we spoke about how Toronto wants to allow small-scale apartments on all of its major streets. Well today, this study — known as the Major Streets Study — passed at Planning and Housing Committee.

  It still has to pass at Council. And the Committee did ask for city staff to look at certain amendments, such as reducing setbacks and increasing the maximum dwelling count from 30 to 60 suites. However, all signs point to this new policy being fully approved sometime in the coming months.

  There’s still work to be done. For example, I don’t know why there even needs to be a maximum number of homes. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. We are already dictating the overall built form, so why not let people just build as many homes as possible.

  It feels like we’re saying: “We desperately want more homes on our major streets, but you know, we don’t want the economies of scale to be too great. We’d rather see more, smaller projects. This way each home is more expensive to build!”

  In any event, this is still meaningful progress. It is what so many urbanists have been clamoring for over the years; more homes in our low-rise neighborhoods. So I think it’s important that we recognize today as such. Nice work.

  2024.05.09

• Toronto’s unstable neighborhoods

  

  This is a telling map from Jens von Bergmann. It shows the changes in population density across Toronto from 1971 to 2021 (measured in people per hectare). What is obvious is the spikiness of our city. We have been very effective at adding lots of people downtown, along the central waterfront, and in certain other pockets. But at the same time, we have let our older inner city neighborhoods move in the opposite direction and lose people.

  The irony of this outcome is that we have long created policies that refer to these areas as being “stable” neighborhoods. The idea was that they weren’t supposed to change, at least not too much. But what this data shows is the opposite. By restricting growth, we actually created the right conditions for them to lose people as demographics changed and household sizes got smaller, among other things. We created unstable neighborhoods.

  Thankfully, we have started to change course and allow some intensification. We’re not there yet, but I do believe that the next 50-year map will look quite different than the one you see here.

  2024.04.26

• XS in Philadelphia, not Tokyo

  

  This is the sort of housing project that you’d fully expect to find in Tokyo. Seven homes built on a small urban lot measuring only 11 feet wide by 93 feet deep. But in this case, it’s not Tokyo; it’s Chinatown, Philadelphia, where a residual lot that was created when the sunken Vine Street Expressway was carved through the middle of the city in the 1950s.

  Designed by Philadelphia-based Interface Studio Architects (ISA), the project contains 7 levels of livable space. What’s interesting, though, is that from a building code perspective this is still a 4-story building. There are two mezzanine levels that don’t get counted (and that create some great double-height spaces). This also seems to be what allowed them to get away with a single egress stair in the middle of the building.

  

  The other technique that was used to maximum density is facade projections. Philadelphia’s zoning code allows for projections up to 3 feet in the horizontal dimension. And if you look at the above plans, you’ll see that these were used to “top up” or extend the site’s 11 foot width to 14 feet, when it made sense to do so from a programming standpoint. The result is some very livable spaces.

  

  I am endlessly fascinated by these sorts of projects because they demand creativity and because you ultimately end up unlocking something that the market had been overlooking. Here is an example of a small leftover urban parcel that was previously used as surface parking for two cars. Now it’s seven beautiful homes.

  Photos/drawings: ISA

  2024.04.21

• Dangerously positive precedents

  This is the battle that is now playing out across Toronto — and many other cities — as we look to intensify our existing communities; even in the ones sitting on higher-order transit. Cities rightly want to see it happen. But local ratepayers do not.

  From the Globe and Mail:

  “This project is in no way gentle intensification,” said the architect Terry Montgomery, representing the powerful local group the Annex Residents Association. “It will set a dangerous precedent for all areas in the city which currently [are zoned for] low-scale residential-buildings.”

  It’s not clear whether that legal argument is true. At the meeting, City of Toronto planning manager David Driedger and director Oren Tamir – who, to their great credit, were supporting the development – said it would not set a precedent.

  But if it did, why would that be “dangerous”? It is commonsensical. The Lowther site has two subway stations within an eight-minute walk. Toronto’s Line 1 and Line 2 intersect right here. This is one of the best-located, best-connected places in all of Canada.

  Alex Bozikovic is, of course, right. This is commonsensical. 

  If our goals are to create more homes, improve housing affordability, reduce traffic congestion, and make us overall a more sustainable city, then there’s no better place to build than on top of transit within our already built-up areas.

  2024.04.08

• San Francisco is highly proficient at making housing more expensive

  

  If you’re looking to block new development, drive up the cost of housing, and appear “progressive” all at the same time, one generally effective technique is to do it under the guise of historic preservation. San Francisco is really good at this, as are many other cities. And it works because, who doesn’t think that history is important?

  This exact thing just transpired in San Francisco, where earlier this year Supervisor Aaron Peskin passed an ordinance enacting new density controls for most development in the Northeast Waterfront Historic District, the Jackson Square Historic District, and the Jackson Square Historic District Extension (solid neighborhood names).

  Of course, sometimes you can run into resistance when you’re trying to push through new anti-housing policies. And in this case, San Francisco Mayor London Breed actually vetoed Peskin’s bill. In a letter dated March 14, 2024, she wrote:

  Restricting new housing runs counter to the goals of our Housing Element, which the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved just over a year ago. It also runs counter to what we need to do to make this City a place that creates opportunities for new homes for the people who need them today and for future generations growing up in San Francisco.

  This ordinance passes off anti-housing policy in the guise of historic protections. Existing rules already protect against impacts to historic resources. I believe we can add new homes while also supporting and improving the vibrancy of our unique neighborhoods. Many areas of San Francisco, including eastern neighborhoods like the South of Market, Potrero Hill, and the Mission, have also already removed density limits to encourage new housing.

  However, her veto was ultimately overridden by the Board of Supervisors and so, as far as I understand it, the above density controls stand.

  What’s particularly frustrating about this outcome — sarcasm now firmly off — is that it so obviously reeks of NIMBY selfishness. Here’s an elaborate infographic created by Max Dubler explaining what many in San Francisco believe is the real reason behind this downzoning:

  

  Here is also a street view image from the area, along The Embarcadero:

  

  But like I said, San Francisco seems to be really adept at this sort of maneuvering.

  2024.03.30

• The Walk-Up

  

  Today on the blog, I thought we’d feature a new fourplex being developed here in Toronto at 2343 Gerrard Street East called The Walk-Up. Designed by Studio JCI and presented by Paul Johnston of Unique Urban Homes, this is the first in a series of “missing middle” projects now being developed by Urbinco.

  Housed on your typical single-family lot, The Walk-Up is somewhere between 3-4 stories and has four homes: a garden suite, a ground suite, a center suite, and a sky suite. And each is family-oriented both in terms of design and size. They all have over 1,000 square feet of interior space, have two bedrooms, and have access to outdoor space.

  In other words, it is exactly the kind of housing solution that Toronto needs a lot more of! Thankfully, this form of housing has been permitted (as-of-right) in Toronto since May 2023. Unfortunately, there are still many municipalities and politicians who don’t seem to get it. But that’s okay. This is usually how things go. Toronto leads, and then others follow.

  For more information on The Walk-Up, click here.

  2024.03.23

• FYI, new home coming soon

  This is not a post about laneway housing. Okay, it sort of is. But there’s a broader point to discuss. Recently, a local Toronto newspaper ran this article talking about how a bunch of people are upset that their neighbor is building an as-of-right garden suite. Here’s an excerpt:

  “The members of the community know that they can’t stop the building of this ‘garden suite’. However, they want to change the bylaw to ensure that future ‘garden suites’ can’t be built without community consultation and an environmental assessment,” said a news release from a number of residents in the area that was sent to Toronto media outlets including Beach Metro Community News last week.

  This raises some interesting questions.

  For one, what would be the purpose of this community consultation? Is it just a “Hey, I’m going to be building a garden suite” and then homeowners go do it exactly how they want anyway? Or, would it be an extensive community engagement process where homeowners would be expected to gather feedback, submit a report to the city, and consider design changes?

  And, would this apply to all low-rise housing? In other words, would all homeowners need to consultant their neighbors and do an environmental assessment before pulling a building permit? What if someone just wants to build a small extension or a shed? Or, are we only talking about laneway and garden suites?

  I’m not really sure what the exact intentions are here — besides delaying new housing — but I can tell you that it’s a terrible idea.

  Laneway and garden suites should never require community consultation and/or an environmental assessment. I mean, this is the whole point of allowing them as-of-right. It’s so you don’t have to do these things and you can go straight to a building permit. This is way too small of a housing type to burden with obstacles.

  In fact, the same is true of larger housing types. In my opinion, conventional mid-rise buildings should not have to go through a full rezoning and they should not have to consult with the community. We already know what these buildings look like. We know that they make for great homes. And yet they’re our most expensive housing type to build.

  Removing barriers (and reducing project durations) is a sure-fire way to make them cheaper. Especially in a higher interest rate environment.

  2024.03.20