This morning I spoke to the Globe and Mail about the evolving nature of Dupont Street here in Toronto. The impetus for the discussion was this: Dupont Street is now seeing a lot of residential intensification, but the street itself remains a bit of a crosstown highway. It's not yet a "complete street." And since Junction House is effectively on the west end of this midtown artery, John Lorinc asked to get my thoughts.
The point I tried to make is that, in my opinion, this is first and foremost a zoning issue. Dupont Street is seeing intensification, but it is largely happening on the north side of the street, abutting the rail corridor (purple and red in the above Official Plan map). The south side of the street is, for the most part, a low-rise neighborhood (yellow in the above map).
This kind of edge condition is somewhat unique in the city: low-rise on one side of the street; higher density housing, retail, and office on the other. But it is particularly problematic if you're trying to create a great main street, because single-sided retail streets generally don't work very well.
We could certainly have a discussion about sidewalk widths, bike lanes, and other streetscape improvements; but in my mind, there is nothing inherently bad about the cross section of this street. The right-of-way width is 20 meters, meaning there are generally two lanes going in each direction. This is a dimension you'll find all over the city, including on beloved streets like Queen Street.
The problem here is what is abutting the street, and it is something that is systemic across the city: we have too many arterial roads that only allow for low-rise housing. So if you were to ask me what to do next, and I was asked this morning, the first thing I would do is up-zone the south side of Dupont and allow for non-residential uses at grade.
And once this is done, I am certain it will snowball many other positive improvements.
The City of Toronto is currently studying ways to increase housing options/supply and planning permissions in areas of the city that are designated as Neighbourhoods in the Official Plan.
These are areas that are sometimes referred to as the "Yellowbelt", because they are seeing very little intensification and, in a number of cases, actually losing population. (They're also colored yellow in Toronto's land use map.)
Ultimately, the goal is to encourage more "missing middle" type housing forms; housing that is denser than single-family homes but smaller in scale than say mid-rise housing like Junction House.
Here are a couple of interesting charts from the City. Based on Toronto's Official Plan, "Neighbourhoods" make up 35.4% of the city's land area.
This morning I spoke to the Globe and Mail about the evolving nature of Dupont Street here in Toronto. The impetus for the discussion was this: Dupont Street is now seeing a lot of residential intensification, but the street itself remains a bit of a crosstown highway. It's not yet a "complete street." And since Junction House is effectively on the west end of this midtown artery, John Lorinc asked to get my thoughts.
The point I tried to make is that, in my opinion, this is first and foremost a zoning issue. Dupont Street is seeing intensification, but it is largely happening on the north side of the street, abutting the rail corridor (purple and red in the above Official Plan map). The south side of the street is, for the most part, a low-rise neighborhood (yellow in the above map).
This kind of edge condition is somewhat unique in the city: low-rise on one side of the street; higher density housing, retail, and office on the other. But it is particularly problematic if you're trying to create a great main street, because single-sided retail streets generally don't work very well.
We could certainly have a discussion about sidewalk widths, bike lanes, and other streetscape improvements; but in my mind, there is nothing inherently bad about the cross section of this street. The right-of-way width is 20 meters, meaning there are generally two lanes going in each direction. This is a dimension you'll find all over the city, including on beloved streets like Queen Street.
The problem here is what is abutting the street, and it is something that is systemic across the city: we have too many arterial roads that only allow for low-rise housing. So if you were to ask me what to do next, and I was asked this morning, the first thing I would do is up-zone the south side of Dupont and allow for non-residential uses at grade.
And once this is done, I am certain it will snowball many other positive improvements.
The City of Toronto is currently studying ways to increase housing options/supply and planning permissions in areas of the city that are designated as Neighbourhoods in the Official Plan.
These are areas that are sometimes referred to as the "Yellowbelt", because they are seeing very little intensification and, in a number of cases, actually losing population. (They're also colored yellow in Toronto's land use map.)
Ultimately, the goal is to encourage more "missing middle" type housing forms; housing that is denser than single-family homes but smaller in scale than say mid-rise housing like Junction House.
Here are a couple of interesting charts from the City. Based on Toronto's Official Plan, "Neighbourhoods" make up 35.4% of the city's land area.
On the exact same day last week, the Toronto Star published two articles about housing. The first one, this one here, is about how "Toronto has protected huge parts of the city from anything denser than detached or semi-detached houses" and how this has resulted in an "uneven city." The second article, this opinion piece, is about the "many repercussions to replacing little bungalows." And one of the implied repercussions is that 3-storey sun blockers that invade privacy might actually kill people. Hmm.
In effect, these are the two sides of this debate. If you zoom out and look at Toronto, you will largely see a contrasting and uneven city of tall buildings and low-rise housing. Instead of building like Paris, which is consistently mid-rise -- but also far denser on average than Toronto -- we have chosen peaks and large plains to constrain new housing. And if you zoom in across those plains, you'll find many areas without sidewalks, along with people, such as the author of the second article above, who believe that nothing more than a single storey is appropriate for human health.
All of this has persisted because it has been politically popular. But time continues to show us that it actually runs counter to our goals of building an inclusive and globally competitive city region. Thankfully, it feels like we are finally reaching a tipping point.
Photo by Jackson Case on Unsplash
In Toronto's Zoning By-law, the "Residential" category makes up 47.1% of the city's land area.
Digging deeper, 31.3% of Toronto's total area is zoned for only detached houses -- which would mean no missing middle type housing. But 15.8% of the city's total area is already zoned to permit other types of low-rise residential buildings, such as duplexes and triplexes.
So why isn't more of that happening?
As we've talked about before on the blog, the problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to make the math work on projects of this scale, which is why most developers don't want to do them. The web of bureaucracy that you need to navigate in order to build anything in the city is also imposing for non-developers (and developers really).
But to be a developer, I think you need to be an optimist. So I am going to remain hopeful that this study -- and the pilot they want to do in Ward 19 -- will result in a streamlined solution for housing of this scale.
Images: City of Toronto
On the exact same day last week, the Toronto Star published two articles about housing. The first one, this one here, is about how "Toronto has protected huge parts of the city from anything denser than detached or semi-detached houses" and how this has resulted in an "uneven city." The second article, this opinion piece, is about the "many repercussions to replacing little bungalows." And one of the implied repercussions is that 3-storey sun blockers that invade privacy might actually kill people. Hmm.
In effect, these are the two sides of this debate. If you zoom out and look at Toronto, you will largely see a contrasting and uneven city of tall buildings and low-rise housing. Instead of building like Paris, which is consistently mid-rise -- but also far denser on average than Toronto -- we have chosen peaks and large plains to constrain new housing. And if you zoom in across those plains, you'll find many areas without sidewalks, along with people, such as the author of the second article above, who believe that nothing more than a single storey is appropriate for human health.
All of this has persisted because it has been politically popular. But time continues to show us that it actually runs counter to our goals of building an inclusive and globally competitive city region. Thankfully, it feels like we are finally reaching a tipping point.
Photo by Jackson Case on Unsplash
In Toronto's Zoning By-law, the "Residential" category makes up 47.1% of the city's land area.
Digging deeper, 31.3% of Toronto's total area is zoned for only detached houses -- which would mean no missing middle type housing. But 15.8% of the city's total area is already zoned to permit other types of low-rise residential buildings, such as duplexes and triplexes.
So why isn't more of that happening?
As we've talked about before on the blog, the problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to make the math work on projects of this scale, which is why most developers don't want to do them. The web of bureaucracy that you need to navigate in order to build anything in the city is also imposing for non-developers (and developers really).
But to be a developer, I think you need to be an optimist. So I am going to remain hopeful that this study -- and the pilot they want to do in Ward 19 -- will result in a streamlined solution for housing of this scale.
Images: City of Toronto
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