Tag: park

• Living vs. just visiting — do these two things require different built environments?

  

  Many years ago I was in a community meeting talking about a proposal we had to add retail uses adjacent to a park. Residential was the highest and best use, but we were excited by what retail could do for the project and area. We were imagining something like a Parisian cafe where everyone would sit facing outward toward the park.

  Much to our surprise, the community was vehemently opposed. And when we eventually asked who had been to Europe and sat outside in a nice cafe, the response we generally got was, “yeah, we have, and it’s obviously nice there, when on vacation. But that’s Europe. It won’t work here and it’s not appropriate for the area.”

  Hmm. This raises all sorts of interesting questions. But for today, let’s ask this one here: Why is it that some people choose to live in places that are so different than the ones they visit when on vacation?

  Is it because we, as humans, want fundamentally different experiences when we travel? i.e. We want to escape from our current reality. “Oh look how novel this is.” In this case, I guess you could say that our markets are fairly efficient and people are getting the kind of lifestyles that they truly want, both at home and abroad.

  Or, is it because, for a variety of reasons, we’ve created rules and obstacles that force certain built form outcomes? We think the other ways won’t work. I often find myself in this latter camp, meaning that when I travel, I at some point end up thinking: “This is a good idea. I want to both move here immediately, and steal this idea and bring it back to Toronto.”

  How about you?

  Photo by DAT VO on Unsplash

  2023.12.27

• Hilltop homes along the Humber

  

  

  Camera: Fujifilm X-T3, 23mm, f/2.0

  2020.12.26

• Microsoft Canada moving to CIBC Square

  

  Today, Microsoft announced that it will be moving its Canadian headquarters from Mississauga to the new CIBC Square development that is currently under construction in downtown Toronto (and rendered above). 

  According to RENX, Microsoft will occupy 132,000 square feet across 4 floors in the first tower. Occupancy is scheduled for September 2020.

  I love this project. The design architect is WilkinsonEyre. And there’s going to be an elevated one-acre park spanning the rail corridor between the project’s two towers.

  But it’s also noteworthy because it is an example of a major suburban tenant deciding to relocate to a transit-oriented urban environment. (I have a post on this somewhere.) 

  Image: WilkinsonEyre

  2018.09.12

• More on One Delisle and the block

  

  Now that things have quieted down from last night, I would like to say that we are thrilled by the response to One Delisle and the broader ideas for the block. There was a lot of positivity last night at the open house and today the project team received countless emails and messages from people telling us that they are excited and/or looking forward to working with us over the coming years. Many were from the local community.

  

  Following yesterday’s Globe and Mail piece by Alex Bozikovic, One Delisle was also covered in Urban Toronto (read the comments), designboom (they’re allergic to capital letters), ArchDaily, Canadian Architect, Dezeen, The Architect’s Newspaper, and probably other places that I am missing. The comments have been interesting to read and there seems to be a fatigue around boring glass boxes. This project team does not want to do that.

  Though the project has been making the rounds, there are two images that I don’t think have been widely shared and so I would like to do that today (below). Both were presented at last night’s open house. And they are intended to show the relationship between One Delisle and Delisle Park, which is proposed to be revitalized and expanded by ~50% as part of the project’s block and enhanced public realm strategy. Credit to ADHOC Studio for these renderings.

  

  In fact, it is important to keep in mind that while a lot of attention is being paid to the architecture of the building, there’s a broader city building strategy that is attached and integral to it:

  • Revitalize and expand Delisle Park by 50%
  • Add residential uses to a block of office buildings
  • Reduce the number of vehicular access points across the block from 5 to 3 in order to improve traffic flows in the area
  • Create below-grade vehicular connections across the block to consolidate and legitimize access/loading and once again improve traffic flows in the area 
  • Significantly widen the sidewalk along Yonge Street to eliminate existing pedestrian pinch point
  • Significantly widen the sidewalk along Delisle Avenue to strengthen connection to Delisle Park
  • Introduce pedestrian laneway with art canopy to connect St. Clair Avenue West back to Delisle Park
  • Create a unified and consistent public realm across the block and provide retail animation along its edges
  • Retain Art Deco facade along Yonge Street
  • Target the 2nd tier of the Toronto Green Standard (voluntary sustainability target)
  • Continue to explore the feasibility of district energy solutions across the block to take advantage of the different energy demand curves for office, retail, and residential uses

  Once again, a big thanks to the ~300 people who came out last night – in the rain – to engage with the project team. And a big thanks to the full project team who worked tirelessly to prepare for this week’s community open house. But as was said on Thursday night, in many ways this is really just the beginning. To stay informed about the project and to provide your feedback to the team, stay tuned to yongedelisle.ca.

  Photos: Khristel Studios

  2018.07.07

• Should you buy a car or just take Uber?

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  My friend Evgeny published a great blog post today called, On Car Ownership And The Future Of Transportation. 

  And in it he made the argument that instead of buying a car and an expensive downtown Toronto parking spot (average price: $40,000 – 60,000), most of us urbanites would be better of just taking a taxi or Uber.

  This got me thinking: At what point does it really make sense to completely forgo owning a car? (Full disclosure: I own both a car and a downtown parking spot.) So I decided to dig into the numbers a bit more and compare 4 mobility options:

  • Owning a car ($25,000 upfront) + downtown parking spot ($40,000 upfront) and driving yourself everywhere
  • Taking a regular taxi exclusively ($3.25 base + $1.75 per km)
  • Taking an UberX exclusively ($2.50 base + $1 per km)
  • Or, taking a futuristic driverless car everywhere (here I assumed $1.50 base + $0.25 per km)

  With the above numbers, I then assumed 15,000 km traveled per year and an average trip length of 15 km (so 1,000 trips per year). The trip length and number of trips per year matter because of the “base fare” that is charged when you take a taxi or Uber.

  I also assumed that the cost of owning a car is $0.60 per km (estimated from this Globe and Mail article) and that there is an opportunity cost to NOT renting out your downtown parking spot ($200/month). That is, every month that you spend driving yourself around and parking your car, you are forfeiting parking revenue.

  Finally, I looked at a 10 year time horizon and then “discounted” all the costs back to today’s dollars so that I could compare each mobility option.

  So what did I find?

  

  What this says is that if you’re driving 15,000 km per year (average trip length 15km), then you’re better off taking UberX everywhere, as opposed to going out, buying a car and parking spot, and driving yourself around.

  But does this hold true at different travel distances?

  Based on my model, once you hit around 18,000 km per year, then you’re better of with option 1 (owning a car). That’s because the per km savings associated with driving yourself around are enough to offset the upfront costs of the car and parking spot.

  On the flip side, when you drop below 7,500 km traveled per year, even a regular taxi starts to make sense. That’s because you’re simply not traveling enough to reap the benefits of owning a car/parking spot. Again, high upfront costs; lower per km operating costs.

  Of course, there are a number of things I didn’t consider in my model. For one, most people finance their car and parking spot (it is bundled into their home mortgage). So I’m sure there are ways that you could change the above outcomes using leverage.

  At the same time, I didn’t account for the fact that when you’re being driven around (as opposed to driving around) you have the flexibility of doing work, responding to emails, and so on. If you want to attach a value to your time, then the scale would tip back in favor of taxis and Uber.

  But all of this was really just to make one point: look how cheap it could be to ride around in a driverless car. When that becomes the reality in our cities, which it will, it’s going to completely transform our current beliefs around cars, parking, and many other things.

  I guess that’s why General Motors just invested $500 million in the peer-to-peer ridesharing company, Lyft. They know the shit is coming.

  2016.01.05

• What the largest real estate development project in the United States looks like

  

  Urban Land Magazine recently published an interesting article on the Hudson Yards project in New York, which is the largest private real estate development project ever undertaken in the United States. Click here for the article. Thanks to my friend Evan Schlecker for passing it along. It’s a good read.

  The project is being co-developed by Related out of New York and Oxford Properties out of Toronto, and when it’s all said and done, it’ll be over 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space. It’s a $20 billion development project. 

  

  But beyond just being massive and epic, there are a bunch of other things that make this project unique. You can read about them all in Urban Land, but I’d like to share a few snippets with you all here:

  The first is about the project’s placement on top of a rail yard:

  In order to make use of a site already occupied by a working rail yard—including more than 30 tracks for the Long Island Rail Road and three train tunnels, with a fourth under construction—most of the development will be built atop two steel-and-concrete platforms. That base, and the buildings on it, will be supported by hundreds of concrete-filled caissons, which will be drilled between the rail lines into the bedrock.

  Because the location of the tracks and tunnels limits the placement of caissons, only 38 percent of the site can be used to support buildings.

  The second is about the project’s use of technology:

  Beyond that, a vast number of sensors embedded in the site’s infrastructure will collect mountains of data on everything from temperature and air quality to pedestrian and vehicle traffic. That information, which will be scrutinized in real time by managers in an effort to fine-tune Hudson Yards’ operation, will also be shared with New York University (NYU) researchers, who will turn Hudson Yards into a laboratory for studying urban life and finding ways to improve its quality.

  And the last one is about how it interfaces with the High Line (click here if you don’t know what that is):

  Pedersen [of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates] found an intriguing way to address the building’s surroundings. He allowed the High Line—a public park built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the West Side—to penetrate underneath the tower through a 60-foot-long (18.3 m) public passageway, so that the building will interact with the park and its visitors. Inside the building, a dramatic atrium “becomes the terminus of the High Line as it moves from south to north,” he says.

  So there are a lot of interesting and exciting things going on with this project. What’s amazing though is how “vertical” this community will be. You have rail lines below grade. Platforms on top. Retail at grade and across multiple levels. And an elevated linear park cutting through the buildings. Not every city can make this work. New York can.

  Images: Hudson Yards New York

  2014.10.09