A reader recently suggested that I do a post explaining why we aren’t seeing more midrise buildings going up in Toronto. Specifically, why are midrise buildings considered to be “too risky” for developers and what could be done to improve the situation? So today I’d like to focus on that topic.

But first, let me say that I think Toronto is already in the midst of its midrise development era. The push for intensification first brought about towers, but we’ve come to realize that the tower isn’t necessarily going to serve everybody’s needs.

Here’s what John Bentley Mays recently wrote in the Globe and Mail regarding midrise developments:

With Duke, SQ, Nest and similar structures, we may be seeing the start of a promising design trend in Toronto’s multifamily housing market.

And given that our Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, has been a vocal supporter of midrise, I think there’s no question that we’ll only see more and more of this type of development. Nonetheless, there are challenges. Here are a few that come to mind.

1. Fragmented sites

Because midrise developments typically target established main streets with smaller lot sizes, developers often have to contend with fragmented ownership in order to assemble a site. So instead of talking to one owner (say the owner of a large parking lot downtown), a developer may have to contend with a dozen owners who all need to get on board for the development to happen.

2. Scale is too small

Developers have a lot of fixed costs that don’t materially change whether you’re putting up a 50 storey tower or an 8 storey midrise building. Some costs are certainly variable, but there are overall economies to scale to having more units in which to distribute costs over.

3. Community opposition

The whole point of midrise intensification is to increase the housing supply in established neighborhoods. But along with this comes greater risk for community opposition. You may have a neighbor who’s been living for 30 years adjacent to where you want to build. And when you come along and try and build a 10 storey midrise building, they can get grouchy.

4. Strict guidelines 

To try and counteract community opposition (and promote good urbanism), the city has developed a number of design guidelines for midrise buildings. And while they’re well intentioned, they can be onerous for developers and designers. For example, the requirement to terrace down towards adjacent residential neighborhoods produces a lot of inefficiencies (though it does create spectacular terraces). Oftentimes you’ll end up with more unit types than you would in a large tower.

All this said, I’m a big believer in the midrise building typology. At TAS, I’m involved in two such projects–DUKE and Kingston&Co. Both are exciting projects and both, I think, are at the forefront of a new development era for Toronto. Vancouver pioneered the podium + point tower typology. Toronto is about to do the same with midrise buildings.

Last night I attended the kick off party for a new loft / laneway / condo development called Lanehouse. It’s in the Bloor and Dufferin area of Toronto, which is an area I know quite well as I used to hang out there when I was living off St Clair West. I used to go to 3 Speed, Bar Neon, Tall Boys and Bassline.

The project is located at 50 Bartlett Avenue. It’s a renovation of an existing 2-storey laneway structure, as well as the addition of a new building fronting onto Bartlett. In total there will be 16 units. For the 13 “loft houses” going into the existing building, a third floor will be added containing indoor space and a terrace. I’m not exactly sure what the balance of the other units will be like.

It’s a really neat project. But what I’m also excited about is that it’s a type of laneway housing. As many of you will know, I’m a big fan of laneway housing–however difficult they may be to achieve in our great city. But one of the ways you can often build them, is if there’s an existing laneway structure in place–which is the case at 50 Bartlett.

It’s also helpful to have frontage onto a street with a proper name. Otherwise you have a “house behind a house” condition. Most laneways aren’t named and the city doesn’t consider them to be a real street. They’ll ask: what would your address be? So even though you may be able to access them from a laneway, the city would view those houses as having no real frontage.

There are of course many other obstacles, but those are some big ones.

While I would love to see the city actually jump on board with laneway housing (and develop proper policy around them), I’ll take this project as evidence that we’re headed in the right direction–towards a city where laneways have been rebranded, repurposed and entirely reimagined. That’ll be an exciting time.

If you’ve ever ridden a busy Toronto streetcar, you’ll know this story:

You’re waiting outside in the cold for a streetcar. When one–actually 4–finally arrive all bunched up together, they’re so packed with people that you’re not actually able to get on. You try one anyways and the driver makes an announcement for everyone to “move back” so that more people can onboard via the front door. After a few minutes of people shuffling to try and get further back, you’re finally able to squeeze on–even if you are virtually sitting on the driver’s lap. You then travel about 2 blocks before the streetcar stops and the same thing repeats. The result is an absolutely infuriating mobility experience that usually makes walking the preferred choice. Who said that downtown already has enough subways?

Over the weekend, I was watching this TED talk with Charlie Rose interviewing Larry Page of Google. One question that Rose asks Page is about why he’s so fascinated with transportation and mobility. That is, why is Google so committed to driverless cars? Page then talks about his experience of waiting for buses when he was a student at the University of Michigan and how he would think about all the inefficiencies in the system. He also talks about how half of the urban fabric of Los Angeles is made up of roads and parking lots and that this is a terrible outcome of the mobility choices made in that city.

I’ve said before that transportation is one of the biggest challenges facing Toronto today. And I truly believe that. But that’s probably the case in most, if not all big cities. Getting people around a city efficiently is such a fundamental need. It stimulates economic growth and it improves quality of life. And those are typically the reasons why people choose to live in cities: to make money and to have a better life. 

Now, I’m a big proponent of public transportation, but I’m also excited by the advances being made outside of mass transit. With driverless cars, electric cars, networks such as Uber and Hailo, and the emergence of the sharing economy, you could easily imagine a bunch of different ways in which mobility could be improved in our cities. Take, for my example, my own driving patterns. I probably drive my car 2, maybe 3 hours per week these days. That translates into a weekly utilization rate of roughly 1.2%! (2 hours / 168 hours week). That’s terribly inefficient. We can do better. And I think we will.