Development density used to have significant value here in Toronto. Every square meter mattered. In fact, as many of you know, entire development businesses were centered around assembling sites, rezoning for the maximum amount of area, and then selling to another developer who would then build out the final project. The process of rezoning a site often takes years, and sometimes much longer, so there's a logic to splitting up these efforts.

But then demand waned and, all of a sudden, development density had much less value, if it was even liquid at all. This business model no longer works. On top of this, the City of Toronto is now in the process of updating its zoning by-laws to allow greater heights and densities across 120 major transit station areas and protected major transit station areas across the city. These updates are expected to be brought to City Council in the spring of this year.

The result is that these areas will have minimum heights and densities that may take a site's zoning from 4 storeys to 30 storeys. And the great irony will be that sites that spent years, and sometimes decades, battling for taller buildings, may soon receive as-of-right permissions that exceed their hard-fought zoning approvals. This is how much the planning and development landscape has changed in Toronto over the years.

And it further reinforces the point I made back in 2024 when I wrote that development value has shifted from land to the build. Density is now widely available. Execution is what matters most today.

Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Toronto's Eglinton Line 5 opened last weekend — finally. I have yet to ride it, but I'm really looking forward to doing so the next time my day brings me north of St. Clair or I find the time for a joyride. Notwithstanding the fact that it took a really long time, it's a crucial piece of transit infrastructure for the city.

It's a need that we arguably recognized in the 80s with a proposed busway, and then started and stopped construction on in the 90s with the Eglinton West line. Some four decades later, we now have a 25-station, 19-kilometre rapid transit line that runs across the middle of the city.

Transit consultant Jarrett Walker is calling it the first major transit investment that shows Toronto is moving away from its downtown-oriented network. Historically, Toronto's transit network has emphasized bringing commuters from the suburbs and other lower-density parts of the city to downtown for work. Then, at the end of the day, these people would return home. Simple.

But this kind of network no longer reflects the reality of today's city, which has become and is continuing to become far more polycentric.

Walker's argument is that Toronto needs a transit network to match its grid geography, so that "people can go from anywhere to anywhere in a simple L-shaped trip, usually with a single transfer." Line 5 is an example of this approach and, of course, we need much more of it.

But the other thing that is needed alongside a "grid transit network" is the right land-use approach. One of the fundamental principles that we espouse on this blog is that land-use and transportation planning are interdependent.

In this regard, Toronto is undertaking some important planning work. It has been proposing new Avenues (a defined term that you can read about here) and encouraging more housing along all of its Major Streets (also a defined term).

These efforts remain a work in progress, but at their core, they serve to broadly increase the average density across the city (which is a prerequisite for transit ridership) and to, what I'm going to call, "strengthen the urban grid." It helps move Toronto further away from being a monocentric, downtown-oriented city toward something more akin to a Paris.

What we have is a really interesting moment in time where transportation efforts and land-use policies are starting to coalesce around a new kind of Toronto. One that is decidedly more urban and less car-oriented. This is good. Now, let's do it faster.

Transit map via the TTC

Last September, Dubai announced a new initiative called the Urban Think Tank & Design Lab (officially D.M-ULab). Then, this month, they announced that architects Santiago Calatrava and Kengo Kuma would be joining the think tank as "principal contributors."

The lab is focused on several key areas, but grouping them together, it's broadly focused on encouraging participatory design (as opposed to top-down planning), driving the use of new technologies such as AI, and enhancing quality of life through human-centric urban design.

This includes the creation of 20-minute communities where 80% of daily needs are within walking or riding distance.

This last focus area is particularly interesting because one could easily argue that modern Dubai started on the opposite end of this spectrum. Rather than focusing on the human scale, it was focused on the global-attention-grabbing-superlative scale.

When a remarkable new building is announced, the focus tends to be on the building as a symbolic object, not how it meets the ground and fits into its broader urban context. That's largely irrelevant to a global audience.

But it is this latter quality that will largely determine how human-centric the city ends up feeling — it's the spaces in between the buildings where public life happens.

So, how does this think tank intend to shift the city's focus? One of the first projects is the renewal of the city's older neighbourhoods through the creation of Barcelona-like superblocks that push vehicular traffic to their edges.

It's an admirable move, but it is noteworthy that this implementation is planned for the city's older neighbourhoods. Older neighbourhoods have the advantage of street grids that are already more human-centric in scale.

The true test of this lab will be whether it can transform its newer neighbourhoods. If it succeeds, it will be a model worth exporting to the rest of the world.

Cover photo by Dubai Travel Blog on Unsplash