Rivian makes electric vehicles designed for adventure. But in addition to this (I'm deliberately avoiding the word also), they've just spun out another company called Also, which makes e-bikes, quads, and other mobility products. This month, they revealed their new flagship product called the TM-B (transcendent mobile - bike). If you can't see the embedded video above, click here.
I'm not sure how big the market will be for a US$4,500 e-bike, at least in the short term, but the tech seems pretty awesome. And I think the bigger deal here is that this is now a well-funded company focused on "form factors that are all sub-car." Rivian is a car company, but they recognize that to really drive sustainability into our transportation networks, we need to also think beyond the car.
Cover photo: Also
Back in the summer, I wrote about the publication Impossible Toronto that my friends Gabriel Fain, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, and Aleris Rodgers authored for the Neptis Foundation. (If you'd like to purchase a copy of the book, you can now do that online here.) And this past weekend, Alex Bozikovic of The Globe and Mail wrote about it in an article called, "A dense, urban Canada? It's possible."
Here's an excerpt:
The formula is simple: Replace century-old houses in the middle of the city with courtyard blocks – apartment buildings of four to six storeys, lined up side by side along the street and leaving a doughnut-hole of green. Their apartments have windows facing both the street and a green space at the centre of the block. Such buildings make up the fabric of many Western European cities.
Yet they are impossible to build in Canada for a variety of regulatory reasons. Most important: Our building codes require every apartment to have two separate exit stairs. If you eliminate that rule and follow the lead of Switzerland and Germany (two officious, safety-conscious states), everything changes. Buildings become much less bulky. Apartments gain light and fresh air in every room. Homes become more square, with better layouts and better rooms. This means a dramatic improvement in residents’ quality of life.
Alex is exactly right that required exiting is a major hindrance to the housing type proposed in Impossible Toronto. We talk a lot about this on the blog, and as an industry. But big picture, it is only one item in a long list of things that will need to change if we actually want to emulate the housing types that are typical of most Western European cities.
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.
Rivian makes electric vehicles designed for adventure. But in addition to this (I'm deliberately avoiding the word also), they've just spun out another company called Also, which makes e-bikes, quads, and other mobility products. This month, they revealed their new flagship product called the TM-B (transcendent mobile - bike). If you can't see the embedded video above, click here.
I'm not sure how big the market will be for a US$4,500 e-bike, at least in the short term, but the tech seems pretty awesome. And I think the bigger deal here is that this is now a well-funded company focused on "form factors that are all sub-car." Rivian is a car company, but they recognize that to really drive sustainability into our transportation networks, we need to also think beyond the car.
Cover photo: Also
Back in the summer, I wrote about the publication Impossible Toronto that my friends Gabriel Fain, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, and Aleris Rodgers authored for the Neptis Foundation. (If you'd like to purchase a copy of the book, you can now do that online here.) And this past weekend, Alex Bozikovic of The Globe and Mail wrote about it in an article called, "A dense, urban Canada? It's possible."
Here's an excerpt:
The formula is simple: Replace century-old houses in the middle of the city with courtyard blocks – apartment buildings of four to six storeys, lined up side by side along the street and leaving a doughnut-hole of green. Their apartments have windows facing both the street and a green space at the centre of the block. Such buildings make up the fabric of many Western European cities.
Yet they are impossible to build in Canada for a variety of regulatory reasons. Most important: Our building codes require every apartment to have two separate exit stairs. If you eliminate that rule and follow the lead of Switzerland and Germany (two officious, safety-conscious states), everything changes. Buildings become much less bulky. Apartments gain light and fresh air in every room. Homes become more square, with better layouts and better rooms. This means a dramatic improvement in residents’ quality of life.
Alex is exactly right that required exiting is a major hindrance to the housing type proposed in Impossible Toronto. We talk a lot about this on the blog, and as an industry. But big picture, it is only one item in a long list of things that will need to change if we actually want to emulate the housing types that are typical of most Western European cities.
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.
It's important to point out that our current EHON permissions — which support as-of-right 6 storey apartments on all major streets — are already challenging to underwrite and have not yet been proven to work at scale. The starting problem is that developers need to be able to arrive at a residual land value that is greater than the as-is value of what's there today — usually that's a single-family home in the case of the EHON policies.
This can happen in two ways. Developers need to be able to get enough density to justify a higher land value and/or the development cost structure needs to be low enough that enough value can be attributed to the land. This is where things like single-stair buildings come into play. They allow for more efficient designs, which help with project viability on a few different dimensions.
Without a viable acquisition, housing projects do not start. So in my view, we need to attack this impossible problem from two sides. First, as-of-right densities need to translate into land values that are greater than the status quo. This is what will motivate landowners to sell. Second, the end result needs to be high-quality livable housing that as many people as possible can afford.
If we can achieve these two outcomes, then we have a chance to not only make the impossible, possible, but we have a chance to scale it across Toronto and Canada.
Cover photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
It's important to point out that our current EHON permissions — which support as-of-right 6 storey apartments on all major streets — are already challenging to underwrite and have not yet been proven to work at scale. The starting problem is that developers need to be able to arrive at a residual land value that is greater than the as-is value of what's there today — usually that's a single-family home in the case of the EHON policies.
This can happen in two ways. Developers need to be able to get enough density to justify a higher land value and/or the development cost structure needs to be low enough that enough value can be attributed to the land. This is where things like single-stair buildings come into play. They allow for more efficient designs, which help with project viability on a few different dimensions.
Without a viable acquisition, housing projects do not start. So in my view, we need to attack this impossible problem from two sides. First, as-of-right densities need to translate into land values that are greater than the status quo. This is what will motivate landowners to sell. Second, the end result needs to be high-quality livable housing that as many people as possible can afford.
If we can achieve these two outcomes, then we have a chance to not only make the impossible, possible, but we have a chance to scale it across Toronto and Canada.
Cover photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
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