A beautiful new 43-storey rental building was just approved in Toronto's Liberty Village neighborhood. More info about the project can be found, here. Not surprisingly, some people in the community were against it. Here is a recent article that blogTO published talking about people who live in high-rises not wanting a new high-rise next to them.

One argument that is being made is that the neighborhood is already full. It has reached its density limit. We also hear this about the City of Toronto as a whole. But we know this isn't true. Architect Naama Blonder recently did a study that found we could fit another 12 million people within our boundaries with more efficient land use policies.

This particular site in Liberty Village is also about 400 meters from a future subway stop on the Ontario Line. So it is exactly where we should be putting more density. The problem today is that the area is suffering from a massive infrastructure deficit. The road network is inadequate and the King streetcar hasn't been prioritized.

It's no wonder the area feels full. But the reality is that there are lots of examples of highly livable neighborhoods from around the world with much higher population densities. The difference is that they have the right infrastructure, the right public realms, and the right modal splits.

Liberty Village will get there as well and it's already underway. For a preview of the future, check out the City of Toronto's Public Realm Strategy for the area. It was published in April 2024 and it includes things like new streets, new mid-block connections, and new parks. It is what the area needs and it's exciting to see it happening.

This is the battle that is now playing out across Toronto — and many other cities — as we look to intensify our existing communities; even in the ones sitting on higher-order transit. Cities rightly want to see it happen. But local ratepayers do not.

From the Globe and Mail:

“This project is in no way gentle intensification,” said the architect Terry Montgomery, representing the powerful local group the Annex Residents Association. “It will set a dangerous precedent for all areas in the city which currently [are zoned for] low-scale residential-buildings.”

It’s not clear whether that legal argument is true. At the meeting, City of Toronto planning manager David Driedger and director Oren Tamir – who, to their great credit, were supporting the development – said it would not set a precedent.

But if it did, why would that be “dangerous”? It is commonsensical. The Lowther site has two subway stations within an eight-minute walk. Toronto’s Line 1 and Line 2 intersect right here. This is one of the best-located, best-connected places in all of Canada.

Alex Bozikovic is, of course, right. This is commonsensical. 

If our goals are to create more homes, improve housing affordability, reduce traffic congestion, and make us overall a more sustainable city, then there’s no better place to build than on top of transit within our already built-up areas.

When we build next to transit, we often call this transit-oriented development. 

What’s interesting about this moniker is that it implies we’re doing something a little special — something out of the ordinary. And I guess that makes sense because, in many cities, it is often out of the ordinary. 

That’s why you don’t hear people at real estate conferences saying, “check out this new cutting edge car-oriented development that our firm is developing.” That doesn’t need to be specified.

But at the end of the day, I’m not sure how special transit-oriented development really is; it’s basically just urban development. Meaning, you put density on top of and next to transit stations and then more people take transit. That’s how this works.

On that note, here is an interesting study from the School of Cities that looked at Toronto’s transit network and how the populations around each station have changed (or not changed) between 1996 and 2021 (census data). 

If you look at the various transit lines, you’ll see that, in some cases, like downtown, we have added a lot of new transit-oriented development. This is good. Populations increased. 

But in many/most other cases, populations remained flat; or worse, they declined. This is a serious problem, and it shows how land use restrictions are forcing us to underutilize our existing transit assets.

Maybe what we need to do is stop thinking about transit-oriented development as something special, and instead remind ourselves that this is standard operating procedure. It’s just what you do next to transit.

Thanks to Sam Kulendran for sharing the above study with me.

A beautiful new 43-storey rental building was just approved in Toronto's Liberty Village neighborhood. More info about the project can be found, here. Not surprisingly, some people in the community were against it. Here is a recent article that blogTO published talking about people who live in high-rises not wanting a new high-rise next to them.

One argument that is being made is that the neighborhood is already full. It has reached its density limit. We also hear this about the City of Toronto as a whole. But we know this isn't true. Architect Naama Blonder recently did a study that found we could fit another 12 million people within our boundaries with more efficient land use policies.

This particular site in Liberty Village is also about 400 meters from a future subway stop on the Ontario Line. So it is exactly where we should be putting more density. The problem today is that the area is suffering from a massive infrastructure deficit. The road network is inadequate and the King streetcar hasn't been prioritized.

It's no wonder the area feels full. But the reality is that there are lots of examples of highly livable neighborhoods from around the world with much higher population densities. The difference is that they have the right infrastructure, the right public realms, and the right modal splits.

Liberty Village will get there as well and it's already underway. For a preview of the future, check out the City of Toronto's Public Realm Strategy for the area. It was published in April 2024 and it includes things like new streets, new mid-block connections, and new parks. It is what the area needs and it's exciting to see it happening.

This is the battle that is now playing out across Toronto — and many other cities — as we look to intensify our existing communities; even in the ones sitting on higher-order transit. Cities rightly want to see it happen. But local ratepayers do not.

From the Globe and Mail:

“This project is in no way gentle intensification,” said the architect Terry Montgomery, representing the powerful local group the Annex Residents Association. “It will set a dangerous precedent for all areas in the city which currently [are zoned for] low-scale residential-buildings.”

It’s not clear whether that legal argument is true. At the meeting, City of Toronto planning manager David Driedger and director Oren Tamir – who, to their great credit, were supporting the development – said it would not set a precedent.

But if it did, why would that be “dangerous”? It is commonsensical. The Lowther site has two subway stations within an eight-minute walk. Toronto’s Line 1 and Line 2 intersect right here. This is one of the best-located, best-connected places in all of Canada.

Alex Bozikovic is, of course, right. This is commonsensical. 

If our goals are to create more homes, improve housing affordability, reduce traffic congestion, and make us overall a more sustainable city, then there’s no better place to build than on top of transit within our already built-up areas.

When we build next to transit, we often call this transit-oriented development. 

What’s interesting about this moniker is that it implies we’re doing something a little special — something out of the ordinary. And I guess that makes sense because, in many cities, it is often out of the ordinary. 

That’s why you don’t hear people at real estate conferences saying, “check out this new cutting edge car-oriented development that our firm is developing.” That doesn’t need to be specified.

But at the end of the day, I’m not sure how special transit-oriented development really is; it’s basically just urban development. Meaning, you put density on top of and next to transit stations and then more people take transit. That’s how this works.

On that note, here is an interesting study from the School of Cities that looked at Toronto’s transit network and how the populations around each station have changed (or not changed) between 1996 and 2021 (census data). 

If you look at the various transit lines, you’ll see that, in some cases, like downtown, we have added a lot of new transit-oriented development. This is good. Populations increased. 

But in many/most other cases, populations remained flat; or worse, they declined. This is a serious problem, and it shows how land use restrictions are forcing us to underutilize our existing transit assets.

Maybe what we need to do is stop thinking about transit-oriented development as something special, and instead remind ourselves that this is standard operating procedure. It’s just what you do next to transit.

Thanks to Sam Kulendran for sharing the above study with me.