This will probably be my last Gardiner East post before the decision goes to City Council next week on June 10th. But I have such good news that I need to share it with you all.

This morning 14 “CityBuilders” came together for the first time in support of removing the elevated Gardiner East and replacing it with a surface boulevard. They are real estate developers, investors, and other prominent business leaders in the city. And they sent a letter this morning to every single Toronto City Councillor outlining their position. 

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see this happen, so I’d like to call out each and every member of the CityBuilders. They are (in alphabetical order):

1. Castlepoint Numa
   

2. Cityzen Development Corporation
   

3. Context Development
   

4. Continental Ventures
   

5. Daniels Corporation
   

6. Distillery Historical District
   

7. Dream Unlimited Corporation
   

8. Greybrook Capital and Greybrook Realty Partners
   

9. Kerbel Group Inc.
   

10. Manulife Real Estate
    

11. QQE 162
    

12. Streetcar Developments
    

13. TAS
    

14. Tridel Group of Corporations

These are some of Toronto’s most important city builders and I am sure this will get the attention of both Mayor John Tory and the rest of City Council.

If you haven’t yet signed the Gardiner East petition that Stephen and I started, please do so by clicking here.

Happy Friday :)

This past February, a new central train station opened up in Delft in the Netherlands. As part of the train station, there’s an underground parking facility for 5,000 bicycles.

Here’s a video of how it all works:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuhLv1AN0bE?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Isn’t it amazing what you can achieve when you decide to make something a priority?

Yesterday Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal to my post about homes for families. His argument was that I missed a whole world of building typologies between single family homes and apartments. (Something that architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek calls “The Missing Middle”.)

Now he’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention it – other than provide an option in the survey for townhomes. And he’s right that it’s a tremendous opportunity for cities looking to increase housing supply and improve affordability.

But the reason I didn’t mention it in my survey is because, here in Toronto, we’re not very good at that middle scale.

I previously wrote a post talking about Toronto’s 3 stages of intensification. It went from high-rise to mid-rise, and then to low-rise intensification. And my argument was that we’re still in and figuring out the mid-rise scale. (There are challenges at this scale, but that deserves a separate post.)

Eventually though, I think we will get to low-rise intensification. And that will cover off many of the building typologies that Lloyd is talking about: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, my personal favorite, laneway houses.

This, of course, isn’t the case in every city. Many cities, such as Montreal, have a strong history of neighborhood-scaled apartments. Lloyd points that out in his article. But that’s not the case here in Toronto.

In fact, Toronto’s Official Plan explicitly designates these low-rise “Neighborhoods” as areas that are stable and should not see much intensification. And it was a great selling point for the Places to Grow Act: intensification here, but not there.

But I think this will change. Not because I’m a real estate developer and I think it should change, but because our current arrangement is causing a dramatic erosion of affordability at the low-rise/ground-related housing scale.

If it were up to me, and it most certainly is not, I would start with laneway housing. It’s a great way to intensify low-rise neighbourhoods without altering the character of the streets.

If you live in a single family neighborhood, I would especially love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.