One of the fundamental principles that we espouse on this blog is that land use and transportation planning are integral to one another. This matters if you're trying to build a big, bad global city because there are limits to what you can accomplish with car-oriented planning. Eventually traffic congestion becomes unbearable and the model starts to breakdown (consider Toronto and Atlanta right now).

This means that, if you'd like to continue scaling, eventually you'll need to start getting serious about transit-oriented development and other forms of mobility. Japan is one of the best examples of this. But the key prerequisite for this is urban density. This is the unlock that makes transit practical and convenient for people.

That's why this week's planning announcement is a big one for Toronto. On August 15, the Government of Ontario (through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing) approved, with some modifications, 120 Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas in the City of Toronto. Here's a summary of the MMAH's decision via the City's website, and below is a map of the transit station areas. (Note that some station areas are missing from this map and are still under review.)

At a high level, these are areas that fall within an approximately 500-800 meter radius of transit stations, and would therefore be less than a 10-minute walk for most people. It's land that is best suited to transit-oriented development and that would strengthen any new/existing transit investments. For example, if you have an existing station that is underperforming from a ridership standpoint, the best solution is more density within its immediate catchment area.

Because of this, Ontario's Provincial Planning Statement prescribes the following minimum density targets for MTSAs:

• 200 residents and jobs per hectare for subways

• 160 residents and jobs per hectare for light rail or bus rapid transit

• 150 residents and jobs per hectare for commuter or regional rail

And to satisfy these requirements, cities need to demonstrate how they have planned for these minimum targets.

PMTSAs are a subset of MTSAs and come with some additional features, such as minimum unit counts and/or floor space indexes (floor area ratios). These are also the only transit areas where cities have the option of enabling Inclusionary Zoning, which is something they may do when the market rents in an area are high enough that the subsidies required to build affordable housing can be shifted onto the tenants paying market rents. (My views on inclusionary zoning can be found, here.)

Over the coming weeks, everyone in the industry is going to be analyzing the implications of this new approval. Overland (which is a legal firm that we work with) just posted on their blog that their review is underway and that they'll be posting something shortly. But in the meantime, I'd like to say that this is meaningful progress (and one that has been a longtime coming).

It acknowledges the important link between land use planning and mobility, and it better aligns our policies to support a post-car city. Of course, in many ways, this is an obvious thing to do. I started this post by calling it a fundamental principle of city building. But city planning happens slowly and incrementally. If you're following along, you'll see that Toronto is in fact growing up as a big, bad global city.

Cover photo by Andrii Khrystian on Unsplash

Since 2009, policymakers in Minneapolis having been implementing land use changes to encourage more housing supply. Some of these changes have included eliminating parking minimums, encouraging multi-family buildings up to 6 storeys on commercial corridors, establishing height minimums in high-density zones, and permitting triplexes on all residential lots. It's, from what I can tell, the type of stuff that many cities have now done or are looking to do. But it seems to have worked remarkably well in Minneapolis. According to The Pew, between 2017 and 2022, the city issued permits for nearly 21,000 new homes and nearly 87% of them were for homes in buildings with 20 or more suites.

This is interesting. It tells us that the triplex policies don't seem to be doing all that much, but that the market has certainly taken to larger multi-family projects. This is an accomplishment. Even more importantly, though, is that it seems to be having a measurable impact on average rents. During the same time period as above, Minneapolis increased its housing stock by 12% and average rents increased by only 1%. Whereas the rest of Minnesota only increased its housing stock by 4% and, maybe as a result, average rents went up by 14%. Changes in homelessness also look dramatically different.

It looks to be a similar story to what's playing out in Austin: increased housing supply is tempering rent growth. (Okay, in the case of Austin it seems to be causing rents to fall.) What I would be interested in seeing now is a further breakdown of this 87% share. Because 20 suites is a different kind of build than 300 suites. It's different for developers and it's different for cities. And I'd like to know if the market is favoring one over the other, or if it's building apartments at all scales. If the city is in fact building lots of new apartments at multiple scales, then this is even more of an accomplishment. It means there might be no "missing middle."

Cover photo by Eastman Childs on Unsplash

One of the truly remarkable things about Tokyo is that it manages to be both the largest metropolitan area in the world and one of the most livable cities in the world. That's quite an accomplishment. And one of the key ingredients has to be its heavy reliance on rail for mobility. Look at any list of the busiest train stations in the world and you'll find that the majority of them are in Japan.

But what does this mean for the average person living in a city like Tokyo? Well, every 10 years Tokyo does a "person trip survey" that looks at how people get around. And if you look at the last set of results from 2018, you'll find the following modal splits:

• 33% railway

• 27% private car

• 23% walking

• 13% bicycle

• 4% other (bus and motorcycle)

This is a big deal. Supposedly this is the highest railway split in the world. But the numbers may be even better than this. According to a recent book by Daniel Knowles, who is a correspondent for The Economist, only about 12% of trips in Tokyo are done with a car, giving the city one of the lowest driving rates in the world. Bike usage is also higher than the above at 17%.

Whatever the exact numbers are, it is clear that there's a heavy bias toward rail and other forms of non-car mobility. And you feel that in the city. You feel it in the lack of traffic congestion (which incidentally makes the city feel generally quieter and calmer) and you feel it in the way that density and pedestrian traffic is obviously concentrated around stations.

In the span of a 10 minute walk, you can go from feeling like you are, in fact, in a giant megacity, to feeling like you're in a tranquil community where grade-separated sidewalks aren't even needed because the cars, if any, all drive so slowly. It's an interesting dichotomy that is the result of true transit-oriented development.

On-street parking is also virtually non-existent. According to Knowles, 95% of streets in Japan do not allow it, either day or night.

At the same time, this approach makes it easier to get around by car. We have taken a handful of Ubers on this trip, and they always arrived in a few minutes, and we have yet to be stuck in soul-crushing traffic. It's perhaps ironic that in a city many multiples larger than Toronto, it feels easier to move around. Or maybe it just goes to show you that it's not about how much urban space you have, it's about how efficiently you use it.