Thorncliffe Park Drive (TORONTO) by Jenver Rosales on 500px
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Toronto built a lot of towers. A 2010 report by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal identified 1,925 rental apartment towers of 8 storeys or more across the Greater Toronto Area.
That’s the second largest inventory of apartment towers in North America – many or most of which are in car-oriented suburban neighborhoods.
Of course, Toronto continues to build a lot of towers. But this second and current wave of towers is quite different than the last. Virtually all of them are now condo (as opposed to rental) and most are concentrated in central neighborhoods that are generally well-serviced by transit.
This has created a lot of positives for the city. It brought more people into the core to live, which in turn brought more retailers and employers into the city. It has created what I believe is a more vibrant and exciting 24/7 city.
But this return to city centers (as well as the economic spikiness it has created) is now well established both in Toronto, as well as in other cities all around the world. Every real estate conference or panel you go to now talks about Millennials and their desire to be in walkable communities. We got it.
And relatively speaking, those kinds of communities aren’t that difficult to create when you’re infilling city centers. Certainly not at this point. The street grid and bones are usually all in place. And the urban form is often conducive to transit.
The real challenge – and thus opportunity – for Toronto and lots of other cities is how to urbanize the (inner) suburbs and in particular these “towers in a park”. If you follow this space, you’ll know that there’s a lot more that we could be doing.
How do we rethink their relationship to the rest of the city? How do we better connect them through transit? How do we plug them in economically? In my opinion, these are far more difficult tasks. But they’re important ones for the long-term success of our cities.
Last Friday the Financial Post published an interesting article talking about Mattamy Homes and the new office that its founder, Peter Gilgan, is in the process of opening up downtown in the Toronto-Dominion Centre (which just so happens to be my favorite office complex in the city).
At 64 years old, Peter recognizes that his company has changed and the world has changed. He he himself recently moved downtown and now he’s bringing his company with him.
“Our Oakville office [a western suburb of Toronto] is a reflection of what our business was 25 years ago,” he says. “We were a local, west-end Toronto builder. Now we’re the largest home builder in Canada and we’re the largest private home builder in all of North America.”
Come September he will move his finance, legal, IT, human resources and strategic marketing team — about 100 of Mattamy’s 1,100 staff — into the new downtown digs. He wants to attract “the absolute best talent.”
“The young people seem to really want to work down here. So that’s one reason. The other thing is to make sure the business has the capital to move forward and expand. Well, where’s the capital? It ain’t in Oakville.”
This of course isn’t a new thing for suburban homebuilders. Many in Toronto have made the switch – or at least expanded – from suburban houses to downtown/urban condos. And I’m assuming that’s what is going to happen here.
Still, it’s fascinating to see this trend continue. Young people really do want to live and work “down here.”
According to a new report released by City Observatory, US cities have officially reversed a 50-year trend towards decentralization.
We know that urban living has been seeing a renaissance over the last decade or so, but as recently as 2002 - 2007 (pre-Great Recession), the suburbs and peripheral areas were still seeing significantly higher job growth: 1.2% per year in the periphery versus 0.1% in the city center. The “city center” is defined as a 3 mile radius around the center of the city in this study.
However since 2007 things have flipped:
Chart Source: City Observatory
Why is this happening? Here’s a snippet from City Observatory:
The strength of city centers appears to be driven by a combination of the growing attractiveness of urban living, and the relatively stronger performance of urban-centered industries (business and professional services, software) relative to decentralized industries (construction, manufacturing) in this economic cycle. While it remains to be seen whether these same patterns continue to hold as the recovery progresses, (the latest LEHD data on city center job growth are for calendar year 2011), there are structural forces that suggest the trend of center-led growth will continue.
In some ways, it just makes intuitive sense. People started returning to cities and so the jobs followed (although there were also structural changes to the economy).
The big question, however, is whether this trend will continue? My bet is on yes. What do you think?
Thorncliffe Park Drive (TORONTO) by Jenver Rosales on 500px
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Toronto built a lot of towers. A 2010 report by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal identified 1,925 rental apartment towers of 8 storeys or more across the Greater Toronto Area.
That’s the second largest inventory of apartment towers in North America – many or most of which are in car-oriented suburban neighborhoods.
Of course, Toronto continues to build a lot of towers. But this second and current wave of towers is quite different than the last. Virtually all of them are now condo (as opposed to rental) and most are concentrated in central neighborhoods that are generally well-serviced by transit.
This has created a lot of positives for the city. It brought more people into the core to live, which in turn brought more retailers and employers into the city. It has created what I believe is a more vibrant and exciting 24/7 city.
But this return to city centers (as well as the economic spikiness it has created) is now well established both in Toronto, as well as in other cities all around the world. Every real estate conference or panel you go to now talks about Millennials and their desire to be in walkable communities. We got it.
And relatively speaking, those kinds of communities aren’t that difficult to create when you’re infilling city centers. Certainly not at this point. The street grid and bones are usually all in place. And the urban form is often conducive to transit.
The real challenge – and thus opportunity – for Toronto and lots of other cities is how to urbanize the (inner) suburbs and in particular these “towers in a park”. If you follow this space, you’ll know that there’s a lot more that we could be doing.
How do we rethink their relationship to the rest of the city? How do we better connect them through transit? How do we plug them in economically? In my opinion, these are far more difficult tasks. But they’re important ones for the long-term success of our cities.
Last Friday the Financial Post published an interesting article talking about Mattamy Homes and the new office that its founder, Peter Gilgan, is in the process of opening up downtown in the Toronto-Dominion Centre (which just so happens to be my favorite office complex in the city).
At 64 years old, Peter recognizes that his company has changed and the world has changed. He he himself recently moved downtown and now he’s bringing his company with him.
“Our Oakville office [a western suburb of Toronto] is a reflection of what our business was 25 years ago,” he says. “We were a local, west-end Toronto builder. Now we’re the largest home builder in Canada and we’re the largest private home builder in all of North America.”
Come September he will move his finance, legal, IT, human resources and strategic marketing team — about 100 of Mattamy’s 1,100 staff — into the new downtown digs. He wants to attract “the absolute best talent.”
“The young people seem to really want to work down here. So that’s one reason. The other thing is to make sure the business has the capital to move forward and expand. Well, where’s the capital? It ain’t in Oakville.”
This of course isn’t a new thing for suburban homebuilders. Many in Toronto have made the switch – or at least expanded – from suburban houses to downtown/urban condos. And I’m assuming that’s what is going to happen here.
Still, it’s fascinating to see this trend continue. Young people really do want to live and work “down here.”
According to a new report released by City Observatory, US cities have officially reversed a 50-year trend towards decentralization.
We know that urban living has been seeing a renaissance over the last decade or so, but as recently as 2002 - 2007 (pre-Great Recession), the suburbs and peripheral areas were still seeing significantly higher job growth: 1.2% per year in the periphery versus 0.1% in the city center. The “city center” is defined as a 3 mile radius around the center of the city in this study.
However since 2007 things have flipped:
Chart Source: City Observatory
Why is this happening? Here’s a snippet from City Observatory:
The strength of city centers appears to be driven by a combination of the growing attractiveness of urban living, and the relatively stronger performance of urban-centered industries (business and professional services, software) relative to decentralized industries (construction, manufacturing) in this economic cycle. While it remains to be seen whether these same patterns continue to hold as the recovery progresses, (the latest LEHD data on city center job growth are for calendar year 2011), there are structural forces that suggest the trend of center-led growth will continue.
In some ways, it just makes intuitive sense. People started returning to cities and so the jobs followed (although there were also structural changes to the economy).
The big question, however, is whether this trend will continue? My bet is on yes. What do you think?
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