Tag: employment lands

• A mapping of development potential in Toronto

  

  I first met Monika Jaroszonek in 2017, right before she started RATIO.CITY. Since then she has developed some pretty incredible tools for the city building space.

  Yesterday the company published this interactive visualization looking at development potential across the City of Toronto. The mapping looks for the following:

  • Land that has a Mixed Use, Apartment or Regeneration designation in the City of Toronto’s Official Plan
  • Land that is located within a Provincially designated Urban Growth Centre
  • Land that is located within 500m of a Major Transit Station

  The tool then ranks each development site – AAA, AA, A – according to how many of the above criteria it meets.

  It also flags land that it refers to as “Missed Opportunity.” These are lands located within 500m of a Major Transit Station, but that are designated as Neighbourhoods (considered stable) or Employment (whole other discussion).

  Based on this filter, about 5.6% of the City’s land is a “Missed Opportunity” and about 1.2% is AAA.

  When you look at the visualization, that is one of the first things you will probably notice; a lot of our transit infrastructure is currently underutilized as a result of land use policies.

  Image: RATIO.CITY

  2019.01.19

• Anachronistic employment areas

  Today I was at the Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I started live tweeting during the breakfast, but my vintage iPhone 6 couldn’t keep up, so I had to stop. Some insights throughout the day. But a lot of what you would expect. I suppose it’s more about the networking.

  I would, however, like to reiterate something that Ken Greenberg mentioned about Employment Areas/Lands in Toronto. For those of you who aren’t familiar, these lands are essentially intended to serve one, and only one, purpose: employment. And the process for introducing a mix of uses, including residential, is an onerous one to say the least.

  I appreciate why this is the case. But I agree with Greenberg in that this kind of single use zoning is antiquated. It does not reflect the realities of the market today. There are other mechanisms we can use to maintain and provide for employment, and ensure that we don’t end up with a city of all residential.

  2018.05.15