Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
I opened Twitter today and one of the first tweets that I saw was about Austin passing a new resolution that allows 3 homes on every lot by-right; lowers the minimum lot size to 2,500 sf; and expedites planning approvals for triplexes and fourplexes. I then scrolled a bit further and found a tweet on how Vancouver is about to vote on a new motion that will allow 4-6 homes on every residential lot as-of-right. (The US typically uses the term “by-right”, whereas in Canada we use “as-of-right”.)
None of this is surprising. As many of you know, Toronto just did something similar by allowing fourplexes + a laneway or garden suite on every residential lot. But all of this is still noteworthy because it reinforces one simple fact: cities across North America are all starting to rethink their low-rise single-family neighborhoods. I know that many of you will say that fourplexes are not enough. We should be doing more. But I think this is an important step.
The single-family home hegemony is ending. We are now asking our cities to do more with the same amount of land.
One of the things that I have learned over the years from sitting on panel discussions about city building is that, if I talk about the challenges and economic realities of development, I will be less popular than if I just tell feel-good stories about urbanism and architecture. The latter is often what people want to hear. It’s more exciting.
But to ignore the economic realities of the world is to ignore real solutions. And this, as I have talked about before, is one of the main qualms that I had with architecture school. Money, economics, and real estate matters were tertiary, if not entirely taboo. Just focus on the purity of design and everything else will resolve itself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love design. It is fundamental. But so are a bunch of other things, which is why I think this article, by Benjamin Schneider, hits the nail on the head. It is specifically a review of a MoMA exhibit called New York, New Publics, but really the overarching message is this one here: “Enough with the feel-good architecture.”
To tell a feel-good story within this framework, urban development projects must be edited and curated to cleanse them of these associations. Favored projects must somehow appear to transcend capitalism, NIMBYism, an anti-urban federal government, and the compromises inherent in the transformation of the built environment. Because this is impossible—except in the case of marginal beautification projects—the public is left with false expectations about how cities get built, making the hard stuff even harder to pull off.
City building always involves compromises. But the more we’re upfront about what they are, the sooner we’ll get to more optimal solutions.
What is the case for having parking minimums? (i.e. Mandating a certain number of parking spaces in new developments.) I guess the argument is that if you don’t require developers to build it, they won’t build enough. And then people will not have parking and so they will be forced to park on the street somewhere. This might annoy the incumbent residents, who will in turn complain, and so it is best and safest to just to build a lot of parking.
This is pretty much the only reason that I can think of for why a city might want to maintain parking minimums. Because, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you didn’t build enough parking? In the best case scenario, the developer builds fewer parking spaces and people are fine with it. This is ideal because it means people are getting around in other ways: walking, cycling, taking transit, and/or using car share. So it is the most sustainable outcome!
A bad scenario would be that the developer builds too few parking spaces, nobody will rent the spaces, and then goes bankrupt. This would be very bad for the developer; however, it would be a lot less of a concern for the city. The developer is the one who screwed up. Too bad for them. So when I see new transit-adjacent developments — like this one here in Burnaby, BC with 14 levels of below-grade parking — one can’t help but think: WTF!
To be clear, this is not a criticism of the developer. I don’t do that sort of thing on this blog. This is a criticism of parking minimums. They are so last decade. And I’m even being generous with this timeline.
But I suppose I should also answer my own question.
I lean more towards utility. My ideal use — assuming an urban storefront — is not a fancy restaurant or a super cool coffee shop. It would be some sort of quality bodega that:
There is a common narrative that, when it comes time to start a family and have kids, you should probably consider moving to the suburbs. Sure, you’ll have a painful commute, but you’ll get more space for your money, and maybe you’ll end up with better kids.
I don’t know, obviously not everyone agrees with this. I certainly don’t.
But it is something that commonly happens and, in many cities, it is now happening more often. Here is a map from the Centre for London showing the change in the proportion of households with at least one dependent child from 2001 to 2021:
A darker borough means that it lost households with at least one child. And a lighter borough means that it gained more kids. Why this is concerning is that it means the trendline is toward more, and not less, childless cities. Here’s an excerpt from a recent FT article:
A future with dwindling numbers of children is one many cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, are grappling with. In Hong Kong, for every adult over 65 there are, to put it crudely, 0.7 children, and in Tokyo it is even fewer (0.5).
Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. And we know the main drivers:
Randal Cremer is one of several planned primary school closures and mergers in inner London triggered by low birth rates, families moving away because of expensive childcare, Brexit, and parents re-evaluating their lives during the pandemic. The biggest factor, says Riley, is that “housing is just becoming unaffordable”. Philip Glanville, mayor of Hackney, calls it “the acute affordability crisis”.
So how do we start to solve this? Here are a few ideas that we recently talked about on the blog, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. In my opinion, this is a problematic trend that deserves a lot more attention. Because cities are at their best when they work for everyone — from the young to the old.
This is the message that the mayor of Miami Beach, Dan Gelber, delivered this week as it moved to sell $97.6 million of new municipal debt. The proceeds are intended to help the city fund more cultural projects and move away from its “old economic model” of selling Bellinis on Ocean Drive. But it is also a case of Miami Beach flexing its rising property values.
Residential property values across Miami Beach grew by about 125% over the past decade
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of “million-dollar zip codes” more than doubled (presumably these are just zip codes with median home prices above $1 million)
And from 2012 to 2022, the number of high-net-worth individuals in the city increased by about 75% (I wonder how many moved to the city versus just got richer while already living there)
All of this has been good for property tax revenues:
And now the city is leveraging them to invest in culture.
The Eglinton Crosstown line is going to open, here in Toronto, sometime next year — I think. And I’m sure that it is going to be a massively beneficial addition to Toronto’s transit network. But at the same time, we should be talking about this:
Urban transit stations shouldn’t look like this. It’s a missed opportunity, both in terms of the foregone housing (and other uses) that could be on top of these stations and the additional value that could have been captured from these air rights. Transit is a crucial lever for land values and development overall, and so it’s no wonder that many of the best transit authorities around the world think in terms of “rail + property”.
So what happened here?
I don’t know exactly. But I do know that nearly a decade ago I called up Metrolinx and said, “Hey, so I’m a developer who can build things. I see that you’re building a number of exciting transit stations along Eglinton. Want me to build on top of them for you?” Now obviously Metrolinx wasn’t going to be able to sole-source to Brandon, but regardless, I thought it should happen and I just hoped to be in the mix.
In 2015, things did start to happen. Avison Young, on behalf of Metrolinx, issued a request for proposal to developers for 4 sites/stations along the line. There were two at Keele Street, one at Weston Road, and one at Bathurst Street. And at the time, it was thought that these sites could generate somewhere between $14-22 million (speaking of reasonable).
I think it was also being viewed as a bit of a pilot. If things went well with these 4 initial sites, then this same approach was going to be rolled out across all suitable sites on the line. I’m not sure what happened with the RFP or the broader intent — maybe some of you know — but it clearly didn’t pan out as planned.
That’s too bad. But I suppose done is better than perfect. Plus, now we’re building the Ontario Line and so we have another opportunity to get it right. And right means lots of density on top of stations — both directly on top and all around it.
I think the most important point of this post (by Alfred Twu) about “corridor zoning”, is that it is the result of a political compromise. By corridor zoning, I’m talking about the tradition in many North American cities of putting lots of density on main streets, and then almost nowhere else. It is indeed the result of a compromise.
We knew we needed to build more housing, but we didn’t want to disturb any of the low-rise housing that forms the majority land use in most North American cities. So we said “look, we’re going to build some taller buildings; but don’t worry, they’re only going to go here and maybe here. You’re probably not even going to notice them that much.” The result is a very spiky city, which is in many ways a suboptimal form.
I guess that is slowly starting to change with things like laneway housing and smaller-scale multi-family developments like this one here. But these housing typologies are still rooted in the above compromise. In this particular case, though, they are the answer to the question: “What could we build in our low-rise communities that still respects their “character” and doesn’t piss off too many people?” The solution is still a spiky city.
What Alfred proposes in the above post it something called “second street housing.” And it is what it sounds like. It is about going one street beyond main corridors and adding more, or perhaps the most, density there. Directionally, this starts to break the above compromise. It is recognition that maybe we shouldn’t always respect neighborhood character; maybe we sometimes need to rethink it.
But compared to Alfred, I would say I’m less fussed about housing and density on main streets. In fact, there’s something to be said about corridors with the right kind of urban grandeur. Instead, I think the important point is that “second street housing” breaks the status quo and proposes going beyond single corridors.
So I would take it even further. We know that cities work really well as circles, versus lines. And so what we really should be doing is encouraging more than a second interior corridor. What we should be doing is encouraging higher density circles around, at the very least, our transit nodes. That’ll take us beyond just a second street and, yeah, that’s a good thing.
I love cycling. And I have been using Toronto’s bike share system to get around over the last few weeks (both for work and personal stuff). There’s no better way to get around when the city is busy. But it was also a reminder that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to cycling infrastructure.
Here are a few observations:
The Bike Share mobile app has got to be the worst app that I have ever used. First of all, it’s called PBSC. I think this was a deliberate choice so that it’s impossible to remember and impossible to locate on your phone. Because once you do find it, it’s an awful experience.
I struggled to make it from downtown up to midtown a few days ago. Can I blame the Bike Share bike instead of my lack of physical conditioning? I can’t see the majority of people wanting to do this sort of ride. This is where e-bikes and e-scooters come in.
Many of the bikes have something wrong with them.
We don’t have enough bike lanes and bike-friendly streets. I know that some you don’t want to hear this. But it’s the truth. There are a lot of streets in Toronto where it is terrifying to be on a bicycle. This is true even in the center of the city.
If you’re not familiar with Toronto, you won’t get this point. But Queens Quay is a seemingly complicated street for many people to navigate. Cycling along here in peak summer is an exercise in dodging people as they meander across the bike lane.
We need dockless bikes. I’m sure that the team is doing their best to load balance across the network, but it is often a challenge to find an available dock at the end of a trip. There are ways to do this that avoid bikes being left everywhere.
This past week at Collision Toronto, Canada unveiled a new “Tech Talent Strategy” that includes a number of initiatives designed to attract more human capital across the science, technology, engineering, and math sectors. (Sidebar: The STEM sectors are great, but I’m really a fan of STEAM.)
At a high level, these measures are intended to continue to grow Canada as a hub for global tech talent. So they cover things like promoting Canada as a destination for digital nomads, improving the Start-up Visa Program, and dunking on US immigration policies by creating an open work permit stream for H-1B specialty occupation visa holders.
Overall, it seems great.
But there are people who are concerned about the pace of immigration in Canada. Over the past year (ending in Q2-2023), the country added about 1.2 million people. This is a record. And perhaps the greatest concern, is that we simply aren’t building enough housing and related infrastructure.
But I don’t get this logic. Canada is a relatively small country. Attracting smart and ambitious people from around the world is good for us. And there are simple ways to address these concerns: build more housing and related infrastructure. I’m pretty sure that we can figure out how to do that.
