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A decision on legalizing small businesses like cafés and corner stores in the interior of Toronto’s neighbourhoods — under a framework city planners had winnowed down since last year in the face of heavy opposition from residents’ associations — has once again been punted into the future.
At Toronto’s Planning and Housing committee on Thursday, officials decided to defer a decision on allowing more small businesses in neighbourhood interiors, instead green-lighting changes only along major streets and to the rules for home-based businesses, which still require final approval from city council.
Planning changes always seem to happen slowly, painfully, and incrementally. I remember giving presentations on laneway housing back in 2013-2014, and I would always say "this is inevitable — it's a question of when, not if."
At the time, this felt like a bold statement because it was nearly impossible to get a laneway house approved. You had to be cunning, willing to fight for years and, even then, you might not be successful. Now they're permitted as-of-right and they, frankly, no longer feel novel. They're just something we do around here.
Of course, the same will eventually be true of small-scale neighbourhood retail. Especially because it was what we used to do before we created rules against it. But as always, things happen slowly, painfully, and incrementally.
If you'd like to download the proposed Major Streets Zoning By-law Amendment, click here, and if you'd like to download the proposed Home Occupations Zoning By-law Amendment, click here.
Cover photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash
Over the years, we've spoken a lot about the benefits of cities permitting small-scale commercial uses in residential neighborhoods.
They increase overall urban vibrancy. They promote local consumption (reducing the need for people to do things like drive). And they can help reduce the barriers to entry for small businesses. These spaces tend to be more cost-effective and, in some cases, like here and here, they are spaces that the homeowner already owns.
But there are some important objections to consider. Perhaps the most common one is this: What happens if my neighbor opens a 24-hour taco stand next door? I'm fairly confident that I could single-handedly keep a taco stand in business if it opened up next to me — what an amenity — but I get the concern. It's a legitimate one.
In this part of the world, we have typically responded to this concern by restricting uses. We have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by saying, "Nope, restaurants aren't allowed, because there's a chance it could be a 24-hour taco stand and that might annoy people."
But there are alternatives.
Japan's land-use approach, for example, is (1) generally focused on what you can do (versus what you can't do) and (2) organized around intensity and nuisance. I've never developed in Japan and I don't know the exact nuances of their policy framework, but directionally I think it's an interesting way to moderate this land-use consideration.
An accountant who wants to hang a shingle is different from a coffee shop that's only open from 8am to 3pm (and doesn't have a commercial kitchen), and a coffee shop is different from Peggy Gou DJ'ing next door at an all-night taco bar. But they are all non-residential uses, and that makes them illegal in many/most residential neighborhoods.
Thinking in terms of an intensity gradient is one way to create more mixed-use communities, while at the same time respecting the local context.
I got a notice in the mail this week for a public meeting related to Toronto's multiplex zoning by-law. Multiplexes are house-like buildings with two, three or four dwelling units. This housing type became newly permissible across the city in May 2023, but as part of the approval, the city was asked to keep an eye on things and report back on anything that might need to be changed. What is now being proposed are amendments to this original by-law.
One change is the introduction of the term "houseplex." This is meant to get away from unit-specific terms like duplex, triplex, and fourplex; but it also sounds like it was designed to placate single-family house owners. Another proposed change is a limit on the number of bedrooms in a building. For houseplexes with three or more units, the maximum number of bedrooms is proposed to be 3 x the number of dwelling units. This is designed to block rooming houses.
It's a reminder that zoning is, at least in this part of the world, about fine-grained control. It's typically about narrowing the universe of options down to a minimum so that it's clear what we can expect. This is why zoning by-laws have things called "permitted uses." It's a strict list of things you can do. And if it's not on the list, it's off limits. A different and more flexible approach would be to do the opposite: list only what you can't do. This broadens the universe of possibilities, but gives up some control.
Roughly speaking, this is how zoning works in Japan. Land use planning starts at the national level, as opposed to being strictly delegated to local governments. And from my understanding, there are 12 main zones, ranging from exclusively low-rise residential to exclusively industrial. (
Meaning, as you move up in allowable nuisance, things of lesser intensity still tend to be allowed. For example, just because you might have a commercial zone with restaurants and department stores, it doesn't mean you still can't build residential. It's a less intense use. At the same time, the starting point is also more permissive, because even the exclusively low-rise residential zone allows "small shops or offices." What all of this creates is a planning framework where most zones are by default mixed-use.
This is a fundamentally different approach. It relinquishes some degree of control, embraces more flexibility, and accepts that cities are chaotic living organisms. It's impossible to draw lines on a map and figure out exactly where each permitted use should go. We'll never get it right and/or keep up. What this means is that we're artificially stifling our cities by not just focusing on the obviously bad stuff (like heavy industry next to a daycare), and letting the market decide where a ramen stand should go.
Cover photo by Susann Schuster on Unsplash
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