What do you think of this beautiful low-rise apartment building? It is called Spadina Gardens and it was built (allegedly illegally) on Toronto’s Spadina Avenue in 1906, shortly before the City enacted an outright ban on “disease-breeding tenements” (i.e. apartment buildings) in all residential neighborhoods.… Read More
I spent much of this morning reading about and listening to discussions about what’s happening in Ukraine and so, instead of a typical post this morning, I’m just going to share a mélange of links. Monocle 24 Foreign Desk episode talking about Russia’s invasion of… Read More
When I was living in Philadelphia as a graduate student, new development was seen as a bit of a gift. I remember developers telling me that it costs the same to build in Philly as it does in New York, except that the rents are… Read More
Somebody on Twitter responded to my recent post about inclusionary zoning and asked: Aren’t all the upzonings that the City is already doing a kind of density bonus? In other words, and this is me elaborating here, why is there an economic “shortfall?” Why does… Read More
Colliers recently hosted a webinar about inclusionary zoning here in Toronto. On the panel was Jeremiah Shamess (SVP at Colliers / moderator), David Bronskill (partner at Goodmans), Giulio Cescato (senior planner at IBI Group), and Richard Witt (principal at BDP Quadrangle). I wasn’t able to… Read More
Back in 2017, Portland, Oregon enacted new inclusionary zoning policies mandating that all new residential projects with 20 or more units must deliver a specified amount of affordable housing. Early accounts, by people like Joe Cortright of City Observatory, suggested that the market was reacting… Read More
I was having a conversation this week with a few friends in the industry about the future of parking. We were specifically talking about Toronto, but I would imagine that much of this holds true for many other cities around the world. Here in Toronto,… Read More
Toronto’s new inclusionary zoning policy went to Planning and Housing Committee this week. Agenda item, here. The recommendations were approved, which means that the item will move onto City Council next month for final approval. Here’s a summary of some what is being proposed (though… Read More
It upsets me when I read things like this (click here if you can’t see the embedded tweet above). I think it creates a false sense of a free lunch and ignores all of the nuances and complexities associated with inclusionary zoning. IZ is an… Read More
Bloomberg CityLab has a new video out talking about how Vienna has seemingly solved the housing unaffordability problem that is impacting most global cities around the world. Each year Vienna builds about 14,000 new housing units and about half of this is supply is “affordable.”… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 