The City of Toronto requires amenity spaces to be provided in new housing developments of a certain size. Here, for example, is the relevant excerpt from the recommended zoning by-law amendment that is expected to allow small-scale apartments along all major streets:

The triggers are 20 and 30 dwelling units, which represents a housing scale that Toronto doesn't build a lot of. I mean there's a reason it's called the missing middle. That is, of course, the point of the major streets study. It's to build more of it. But for that to happen, these amenity requirements have got to go.

Firstly, because it's not feasible at this scale. Think of it this way: two square meters of indoor amenity space x 20 dwelling units = 40 square meters of indoor amenity space or ~430 square feet. Multiply this by an average rent of $5 psf (and then 12 months) and that's nearly $26k of foregone revenue for the project.

This may not seem like a big number for a development project, but consider that at an NOI margin of 77% (i.e. if you deduct operating expenses), this revenue number works out to a net operating income of just over $20k. Capitalize this at 4% and you've just removed $500k of value from the project.

Another way to look at this would be to divide the $26k of foregone rental revenue by the 20 dwelling units. This works out to nearly $1,300 of annual revenue per suite — revenue that will then need to be made up by everyone who lives in the building.

The second reason why I think this requirement needs to go is because it's a suburban way of thinking. In the suburbs, people tend have their own backyards. And so the logic goes that in multi-family buildings, people should also have their own private (albeit shared) amenities.

That's fine if it makes sense for the project. But we shouldn't forget that the reason cities are so wonderful is that they are rich in amenities, culture, and the myriad of other things made possible by collective contribution. World-class museums and galleries, for instance, almost always require big city resources to be viable.

On some level, I think you could argue that there's an irony to this planning requirement. We mandate amenity spaces because amenities are of course good. But it hurts project feasibility, especially at smaller scales, which then limits the amount of new homes, density, and people we have in our existing neighborhoods.

And because we are limiting density, we are indirectly limiting the kind of private and public amenities that might otherwise be feasible if only there were more humans to support them. So I would strongly encourage the city to rethink its position on required amenity areas. At the very least, the triggering unit counts should be raised.

For more on this topic, here's a recent article from the Globe and Mail by John Lorinc.

Photo by Filip Mishevski on Unsplash

Here is another great video from About Here talking about how breaking certain rules could make for better apartment buildings.

The basis for the video is a design competition put on by Urbanarium, called Decoding Density, which asked participants to propose creative solutions for "six-story plus apartment forms in Metro Vancouver."

More specifically, the competition asked: How might Vancouver intensify its single-family neighborhoods with small-scale wood-frame apartments?

The About Here video covers some of the common themes from the submissions and, not surprisingly, the first is single-stair buildings. Requiring only a single point of egress can really unlock small sites.

Some of the other ideas are, perhaps, a bit more adventurous; but these are valuable exercises. Many rules are dumb. So it's important that we continually question them and search for better ways.

Following yesterday's post on small-scale apartments, a number of people commented on the 6m front yard setback that was shown on the city's drawings and that I mentioned in my post. Well, it turns out that I wasn't entirely correct about the 6m. What is proposed in the draft zoning by-law is the following:

The modelling has illustrated building setbacks that are appropriate for townhouse developments and small-scale apartment buildings on major streets in a Neighbourhoods context. Based on the review, Urban Design staff recommend that the front yard setback be implemented through use of the average of the existing neighbouring setbacks, or a minimum of 3 meters, whichever is greater. This approach maintains consistency with the existing character of the Neighbourhoods supports protection of existing mature trees.

As you might expect, the approach with these small-scale apartments is to be mindful of the existing low-rise context. But as many of you rightly pointed out when you saw the 6m, the existing context may not be appropriate or ideal for the planned context, especially if there's retail at grade.

This is just one of the many details that we'll need to be careful with as this initiative moves forward.