Tag: cities

• The city refused my laneway house

  

  This afternoon I stood up at the Committee of Adjustment (Etobicoke York) to present the laneway house proposal that Gabriel Fain Architects and I have been working on for the past year and that I have been working on since 2009.

  But before I could start I was told that Councillor Palacio had just submitted a last minute letter to the Committee. I was given a few minutes to read it, but the big bold “REFUSE” was probably the only word I needed to read.

  I was then asked if I had read planning staff’s report. I acknowledged that I had read it and that I was aware that they were also recommending refusal of the application. I also noted that a number of my immediate neighbors sitting behind me were also opposed to the proposal.

  That’s how my presentation started. 

  At this point you might be wondering: why bother?

  I stood up today because, as most of you already know, laneway housing is something that I feel strongly about. This isn’t just about my individual project. I mean, why do all of this work for one small dwelling unit? For me, this is about city building and trying to affect positive change. (I would also love to live on a laneway.)

  I could go on here about how the proposal was shorter than other existing structures on the lane, how the FSI was in check, how we had carefully studied shadows, and how planning staff had already supported greater densities and multiple dwellings on lots of similar size in the area. 

  But that’s not what today was really about.

  Today I heard loud and clear that whether the proposal was a laneway tiki hut or a 2 storey laneway suite, the community did not want more people living in the area and they most certainly did not want more renters living in the area.

  My message to the Committee was that in my humble opinion this is inevitable. Look to Vancouver. Look to Edmonton. Look to many other cities. What we are debating today, or at least what we should be debating today, is what these laneway houses or suites or tiki huts are going to look like.

  Right or wrong, our proposal was an attempt to answer that question. We looked carefully at what others had done before us, including our friends at Lanescape and Evergreen, and we proposed something that we believed was sensitive to its context.

  We were unsuccessful.

  But here’s the silver lining. At the end of it all, and right before a motion was made to refuse the application, one of the committee members said something very impactful. He more or less said: “I agree with you. This is inevitable.”

  Sadly today was not that day.

  I would like to thank everyone who came out today and everyone who got up to speak in support of laneway housing. It meant a lot to me. Some of you are also readers of this blog and it was great to meet you in person. Thank you.

  2017.08.11

• From retail to logistics

  Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the future of the mall on this blog. It’s a topic that I’m very interested in.

  Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an article talking about the trend of converting retail/shopping facilities to logistic centers. 

  Here’s an excerpt:

  “In Mesquite, Texas, FedEx Corp. next month will open a 340,000 square-foot distribution facility on what once was the site of the former Big Town Mall. Located along U.S. Highway 80 in Texas, the mall declined after newer malls were built nearby. It was demolished in 2006 and the land was later rezoned for industrial use.”

  It turns – and we’ve talked about this – that good retail locations are also good distribution locations. They are usually located close to humans and infrastructure.

  Here’s another example from the article:

  In North Randall, Ohio, Amazon.com Inc. is considering the site of the former Randall Park Mall as a fulfillment center, according to Port of Cleveland, a local government agency focused on spurring job creation and economic growth in Cuyahoga County. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
  

  For a short time when it opened in 1976, Randall Park Mall was the largest shopping center in the world and had been “a thriving heartbeat” for the local economy, according to Mr. Davis. But the mall closed in 2009 as stores struggled with fewer shoppers.

  Assuming this trend continues and people continue to buy things online, one has to wonder about the placemaking that should or needs to happen in these areas.

  2017.08.10

• Skip-stop

  After Junction House was announced, an interesting discussion emerged on Twitter around 2 storey suite designs.

  There are, of course, many examples of multi-level apartments in the city. There’s 75 Portland by CORE Architects. There’s District Lofts and Mozo by architectsAlliance. And there’s Village by the Grange (pointed out during the discussion), which has a number of 2 and even 3 storey suites.

  Another example that was raised by Gil Meslin is 14 Blevins Place. Now demolished, Blevins Place was designed in 1955 and completed in 1957 as part of the Regent Park South urban renewal project. It was designed by the British-born Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and by Page + Steele.

  In 2005, prior to its demolition, the building was identified as a listed heritage building, but it was never elevated to a designated heritage building.

  Perhaps most notable about the building are its “skip-stop corridors” and its 2 storey suites. See below images taken from this Heritage Impact Assessment by ERA Architects.

  

  The reality is that modern architecture has had a long history of employing multi-level units and skip-stop corridors. Le Corbusier and Oscar Neimeyer were said to be experimenting with them as far back as the 1930s.

  But I think most would agree that Toronto is a very different city today compared to what it was in the 1950s. Some still believe that no child should grow up in an apartment, but I disagree with that belief system. I lived in an apartment as a kid and somehow I survived.

  2017.08.07

• Introducing Junction House

  

  Earlier this week I posted this teaser photo on social (full photo above) and said to stay tuned for a big announcement. Well, that announcement is here and you can read all about it over on the Globizen blog. Please let me know what you think in the comment section below.

  2017.08.05

• Just put up a sign

  Back before the 2008 financial crisis, I did a short stint working for a real estate developer in Dublin, Ireland. 

  Most of our projects were in Ireland, but our consultant teams were sometimes from all over.

  One day we were having a meeting with our architect from Germany and we started talking about a particular project’s green space.

  But this wasn’t the sort of green space that was supposed to be actively used. It was a green space that, I guess, you were just supposed to look at and admire for its greenness. 

  So one of my Irish colleagues asked, while referencing the proposed design: “How are we going to keep people off the grass?”

  Our German friends didn’t immediately appreciate the concern and responded with: “What do you mean?”

  Irish: “How will we stop people from walking and hanging out on the grass?”

  German with serious face: “Oh. We will put up a sign.”

  At that point, every Irish person in the room just started laughing and more or less said: “Yeah, that’ll never work.”

  Cultural differences can be subtle.

  2017.08.04

• Less is more

  The Wall Street Journal recently asked: Venice Beach Is a Hot Place to Live, So Why Is Its Housing Supply Shrinking? 

  According to Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, it’s because Venice Beach is the toughest place in America to build housing.

  Here are some numbers from the WSJ:

  “The Venice Beach population is shrinking even as the local economy has boomed. The neighborhood had about 27,000 residents in 2015, about 3,800 fewer than in 2000, according to U.S. Census data. At the same time, the ZIP Code has added 4,000 new jobs, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at employment website Indeed.”

  And here is a chart that speaks to the relationship between housing prices and housing supply:

  

  Housing supply, alone, isn’t going to solve all of our problems. But it certainly matters. Also, what’s up with Chicago?

  2017.07.29

• Where’d the night go?

  I’m a few months behind on this one, but back in April the CBC published a documentary called: Where’d the night go? 

  It’s about Toronto’s grassroots music community and “DIY venues”, all of which are under pressure as a result of rising real estate values and an overall crackdown on illegal venues. This is a perfect example of what Jane Jacobs was getting at when she said that new ideas require old buildings. 

  If you can’t see the video below, click here. When I watched it, I got stuck watching 3 pre-roll ads. Sorry if that happens to you as well.

  //www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=924601923901

  2017.07.27

• Only 9% of new homes sold last month were low-rise single-family

  

  BILD (the Building Industry and Land Development Association) just released its June 2017 data for the Greater Toronto Area’s new housing market. You can read the full release here. But I would like to point out a couple of things:

  About 91 percent of the 6,046 new homes sold last month were multi-family condo apartments in high-rise and mid-rise buildings and stacked townhomes, while only nine percent were low-rise single-family homes.

  The average price of available new condo apartments continued to rise with an increase of more than $22,000 from May. June’s $627,000 average price marked a 34 percent increase from a year ago. The average available unit was 845 square feet with an average price per square foot of $742. A year ago, the average price per square foot was $587.

  From this, it’s once again clear that Toronto is in the midst of an incredible transformation from a low-rise city to a more vertical city. New supply on the low-rise side of the market is heavily constrained.

  I get the sense sometimes that many people in this city, and others, believe that access to a low-rise detached house should be a right. Go to school. Get a good job. And then buy that house with a backyard. 

  The data speaks to a very different reality.

  Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

  2017.07.25

• Architecture pour tous!

  In 2015, Studiolada Architectes (of Nancy, France) completed a 117 square meter home for a retired couple. On the firm’s website they call the project: Réalisation d’une maison individuelle à Baccarat. 

  Here are two photos (1 exterior and 1 interior) via the architects:

  

  Most of the house is finished in wood. It was a modest build costing 174,361 € in total before taxes. The house itself cost 146,506 € and the standalone garage cost 20,245 € (both before taxes). The balance of the costs seem to have gone to exterior landscaping.

  If you consider only the house, that works out to be about 1,252 € per square meter or about 115 € per square foot. Speaking of reasonable.

  What’s particularly interesting about this project though is that after it was completed the architects published what they call a dossier de synthèse en Open Source (click through to download) – effectively an open source file of all the project’s documents.

  Included are all of the plans, assembly details, construction photos, and even the entire construction budget. The ambition was to build an affordable and sustainable house and then make all of the information publicly available so that others might replicate what was done.

  I think this is great.

  So I’ve decided to publicly commit to doing the same for my proposed laneway house. If and when it gets built, I will document and publish the entire journey – including all development/construction costs – and make it freely available on this blog and probably elsewhere.

  I got a bit of flak (on the internet) for calling my laneway house a “prototype” project. But that’s truly what I want it to be for Toronto. Hopefully sharing more, rather than less, information will help it to serve that purpose.

  2017.07.25

• Second Nature

  There is a deep connection between skateboarding and cities. Skateboarders are constantly surveying the built environment and looking for new and creative ways to engage with it. I think it’s a beautiful way to experience cities. (Sadly, we often respond by making it illegal.)

  The below video is a perfect example of this connection. It’s a 20 minute documentary about pro skater Janne Saario (of Finland) who eventually went on to become a successful landscape architect. Here is his firm. And if you can’t see the embedded video below, click here.

  [vimeo 46685196 w=640 h=360]

  2017.07.21