At the beginning of the year, I wrote this:
The desire to add more housing to single-family neighborhoods will continue to pick up steam across North America. How exactly this plays out will be market specific, but in Toronto I expect to see new planning policies put in place, as well as supportive building code changes.
And this continues to happen. Right now, the City of Toronto is working on making fourplexes permissible in all low-rise neighborhoods across the city.
This is exciting. But it's not done yet. And it's not perfect.
The biggest change that I think still needs to happen is around maximum densities. If we actually want to encourage more missing middle housing, we need to increase the permitted FSIs or, better yet, remove them all together.
Urban planner Sean Galbraith does a good job of explaining this in NRU:
I responded to the city's multiplex survey last night and this was one of my main comments. If you'd also like to voice your opinion, you have until March 10, 2023. Here's the link.
Merry Christmas and/or happy whatever you happen to celebrate around this time of year.
Hopefully things have slowed down for you all and you’re relaxing with family and friends either at home or somewhere on vacation. I’ll be doing that here in Toronto and making pancakes for breakfast, because that’s what I like to do on Christmas morning.
If you’re in the market for some long form reading material while you relax, I recommend you check out an article in The Walrus called, After the Troubles. It’s by Toronto-based planner Joe Berridge – who is a partner at Urban Strategies – and it’s the story behind his team’s Belfast City Centre Regeneration Strategy and Investment Plan.
It’s a fascinating and entertaining read, and there are lots of comparisons between Toronto and Belfast. Here’s a little taste: