Last night was The Laneway Project’s inaugural summit here in Toronto. And I think it was a huge success. This is what the crowd looked like (don’t forget to check the upstairs balcony area):
This is what over 350 people who #lovethelaneways of Toronto looks like! Amazing night. #athiscity pic.twitter.com/ywMOKX6bYD
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Over 350 people showed up to fill The Great Hall at Queen West and Dovercourt. It was absolutely incredible. To be honest, I initially thought that it would end up as a small group of city geeks. I mean, it was a summit to effectively talk about back alleys.
But it turns out that there are a ton of people in this city who are passionate about rethinking our urban fabric and finding new uses for these underutilized public spaces. And that’s both really encouraging and exciting. Many thanks to everyone who came out!
The Laneway Project team did an incredible job spreading awareness and, given the success of this initial summit, I can only imagine where this initiative will end up in the future. So a big congratulations to Mackenzie Keast, Ariana Cancelli, and Michelle Senayah for making this happen.
I’m not sure if the event was filmed or not, but hopefully it was and it’ll be made available online. But in the event that it wasn’t, I did want to share one question that the panel got during the Q&A session after our presentations.
The comment made was basically that Toronto will never be Sydney, Melbourne, or Seattle when it comes to our laneways. They have a temperate climate and we don’t. So while it’s nice to show great pictures of their laneways, it’s just not going to happen here.
And that really pissed me off.
So I responded by saying that I disagree. Saying that we’ll never be Sydney or Seattle is capitulating. There are many months of the year where it’s beautiful outside in Toronto, so just because we have a winter doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in the air and give up.
I then went on to argue that the fact that we have a “shorter season” should be all the more reason that we need fantastic outdoor and public spaces. For the months of the year where it’s beautiful outside, we should be maximizing our enjoyment!
I hope many of you agree as well. Happy Friday all :)
Earlier this month the Toronto Star published an article talking about the resurgence of streetcars in American cities. According to the Star, 89 cities in the US are currently implementing or at least considering building some form of surface-rail system.
But the article also goes on to argue that it could be a snobbish fad. Streetcars are new. They’re shiny. And they make yuppies – who don’t like taking buses – feel better about themselves. But is the ROI really there? Is the economic impact of streetcars as big as people are making it out to be?
To support this argument, the Star quoted transportation planner Jarrett Walker, who I’ve mentioned here before on Architect This City. But according to a follow-up post that Walker did on his blog, it would appear that he was misrepresented in the article. Here’s a snippet of his response:
Here’s the bottom line. Streetcars are just a tool. They can be used in smart ways and in stupid ways. Asking a transit planner for an opinion about a transit technology is like asking a carpenter what his favorite tool is. A good carpenter sees his tools as tools and choses the right one for the task at hand. He doesn’t use his screwdriver to pound nails just because he is a “screwdriver advocate” or “hammer opponent”. Yet the Toronto Star assumes that nobody involved in transit debates is as smart as your average competent carpenter.
I wanted to share this because I think it’s a great way to approach transportation planning and because I think it gets at a larger issue that we continue to face here in Toronto: We keep politicizing mobility tools. Cyclists have become pinkos. Streetcars are a war on the car. And the list goes on. How about we just look at the problem, and figure out what solution would work best?
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?