Tag: planning

• Toronto housing — where we came from and where we’re probably headed

  This morning I’m working on a presentation that I’m going to be giving one evening next week to a delegation coming in from the US. The title of the presentation is the title of this blog post: Toronto housing – where we came from and where we’re probably headed.

  My plan is to start in and around the 50s and 60s and talk about Toronto’s first tower boom following the war. For this time period, I’m relying a lot on the work of Graeme Stewart of ERA Architects, who is one of, if not the, expert on post war towers in this city.

  

  I’m then going to move onto our current high-rise condo boom and compare the two.

  Because the interesting thing about the first boom is that, after it finished, we basically returned to the typical North American housing model: building single-family homes. And it wasn’t until this recent boom of the early 2000s that we once again resumed building more high-rise than low-rise housing. That is still the case today.

  But the question I want to address is really, what’s next? Where are we headed? Is history going to repeat itself or is – dare I say – this time different?

  I’ll eventually get to those questions here on Architect This City, but first I want to hear from you. So here’s what I’m proposing: leave your thoughts in the comment section below and I will feature the best ones in my presentation next week as the voices of Toronto. I’m sure many of you know that I’m a big fan of crowdsourced information.

  So here goes. Where is Toronto housing headed and how will we be living in the next 10+ years? Will we be raising families up in towers or not? Please comment by Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 6pm (ET) to make sure I have time to feature you in the presentation. 

  Thanks for participating 🙂

  2015.09.26

• Those troublemakers

  

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

  Jennifer Keesmaat is the Chief Planner of Toronto. She was hired for this job in 2012.

  She has a Masters in Environmental Studies (Politics and Planning). She is a Registered Professional Planner with the Canadian Institute of Planners. And she was also the founder of 2 (city) planning firms prior to taking the position of Chief Planner for Toronto.

  So presumably, she was hired for this job because she possesses some sort of expertise in the realm of planning. I also presume that she is expected to make her opinions known to other people so that informed planning discussions can occur and decisions can be made.

  So I find it curious that in some circles, and in the media, Jennifer Keesmaat is being branded as a “troublemaker.”

  A lot of the recent chatter stems from the fact that Keesmaat was at odds with Mayor Tory during the Gardiner Expressway East debate (quote via Toronto Life):

  Eventually Tory had enough and pulled Keesmaat into a meeting where he basically told her to zip it. “The mayor has said it is perfectly appropriate for staff to make their opinions public, as Ms. Keesmaat has done,” wrote his communications chief, Amanda Galbraith, in a statement. “It is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms.” Keesmaat counters that she never campaigned. “I stated an opinion,” she says simply.

  But the “troublemaking” didn’t just start with the Gardiner East. Pretty much since the moment she took the position of Chief Planner and launched her own blog (ownyourcity.ca), she was dubbed a shit disturber. (Those bloggers!)

  But if you ask me, these criticisms stem from an old and outdated way of thinking.

  The last thing we need from government is less transparency and more politicking. We should be working towards more, not less, information. Even if that information doesn’t butter our metaphorical bread.

  What do you think?

  I think this will make for a great discussion in the comment section below.

  2015.08.06

• The Beijing supercity

  

  A few weeks ago I wrote a post talking about megalopolises and the importance of the Great Lakes region in North America. And I suggested that high speed rail could be one way to better stitch together the region.

  To some, I’m sure this sounded like a bit of a pipe dream. But thinking at the megalopolitan scale is something that I think we are going to need to do. Other parts of the world certainly are.

  The Chinese government is in the midst of developing a supercity around Beijing that is called Jing-Jin-Ji. It will span about 82,000 square miles and will house approximately 130 million people. 

  As part of the plan, a high-speed rail network is being built that will bring the region’s major cities within an hour’s commute. The objective is to compete with the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta regions in the south.

  It’s a scale of planning and development that most people aren’t used to thinking about. But it’s happening right now.

  Image: New York Times

  2015.07.20

• Vancouver isn’t immune to the urban-suburban divide

  

  Vancouver BC City Skyline and Stanley Park by Jit Lim on 500px

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

  In the comment section of my post about Vancouver’s transit referendum, a reader suggested I take a look at an article by Peter McMartin called, The real Vancouver emerges (from the ruins of the plebiscite). 

  McMartin’s argument is basically that Vancouverism – the name given to the city’s progressive architecture and planning approach – isn’t as widespread as it might seem. The reality is that Vancouver, much like Toronto and other cities, is divided.

  “Vancouverism might be a reality for two or three neighbourhoods huddling in the downtown, and that greener, more progressive ethos might hold sway in one or two more.

  But Vancouver — and I speak of it in the metro sense — is the sum of its parts, and most of its parts are suburban in their sensibilities, and that includes not just all of the suburbs but most of the neighbourhoods in the City of Vancouver proper.

  They’re resistant to change. They abhor densification. They’re conventional in their sensibilities and they’re highly dependent on the automobile. More importantly, they’re not just dependent on the automobile, they prefer it.”

  Here in Toronto, we know our city is divided. And many people see it as evidence that amalgamating the city in 1998 was a big mistake. The inner suburbs are holding back old Toronto and elitist old Toronto just doesn’t understand the priorities of the inner suburbs.

  But I’m not convinced that amalgamation is to blame.

  Most cities have long histories of amalgamating adjacent towns, villages, and cities, and I suspect that there was opposition all along the way. At what point is amalgamation acceptable and and what point is it problematic?

  The anti-amalgamation camp here in Toronto seems to believe that it would have allowed old Toronto to continue doing what it wants to do and allowed the inner suburbs to do what they want to do.

  But this to me feels parochial.

  Our cities need to think bigger than that. We need to think as cohesive urban regions. And as Vancouver demonstrated this past week, that’s not always easy. But I don’t think the answer is to just think smaller and ignore the people whose views don’t match our own.

  Interestingly enough, what a lot of this comes down to, I think, is built form. 

  Because different kinds of built form will encourage and often mandate different kinds of transportation choices. And how you get around a city will inform a big part of what you value and what you vote for.

  Over time though, I believe that we will see built form start to level out across our city regions through continued intensification. Many people won’t be happy about this change. But it is likely that it will end up creating more cohesive cities. 

  Built form is no small thing.

  2015.07.05

• Why I write something every single day, even if it’s garbage

  I was out for brunch last weekend with a few close friends from high school. It’s a “monthly reunion” that happens nowhere close to every month. But the hope is certainly there.

  During brunch the topic of my blog came up. And one of my friends asked me how I got started and how the hell I keep up with one blog post every single day. (I get that second question all the time.)

  I’ve written about this before, but I think it’s worth revisiting.

  Earlier this week venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote a post on his blog called The Blank Screen. And I really liked how he described the experience of writing a daily blog post:

  Sometimes this process produces great insights for me and possibly others. Sometimes it produces garbage. But I’ve come to realize that the daily post, and its quality or lack thereof, is not really the thing. It is the ritual, the practice, the frequency, the habit, and the discipline that matters most to me. And, I would suspect, the same is true of the readers and commenters who frequent this blog.

  Fred’s blog was a major source of inspiration for me. I saw him doing it. I saw the value he was getting out of it. And I wanted to do it too. So I did, almost 2 years ago. 

  But he also inspired me in another way.

  Venture capital and real estate development share many similarities in my mind, even down to the way that deals are often structured with preferred returns and promotes.

  But the interesting thing about venture capital is that it went from a largely closed and “ivory tower” kind of industry to now one where almost every venture capitalist blogs, tweets, and strives for greater transparency (when possible).

  I thought this was a fascinating shift and it made me think that the exact same thing was bound to happen in real estate development. So I am trying to make that happen. Hopefully this blog is helping.

  2015.06.20

• 14 CityBuilders come together in support of removing the Gardiner East

  This will probably be my last Gardiner East post before the decision goes to City Council next week on June 10th. But I have such good news that I need to share it with you all.

  This morning 14 “CityBuilders” came together for the first time in support of removing the elevated Gardiner East and replacing it with a surface boulevard. They are real estate developers, investors, and other prominent business leaders in the city. And they sent a letter this morning to every single Toronto City Councillor outlining their position. 

  I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see this happen, so I’d like to call out each and every member of the CityBuilders. They are (in alphabetical order):

  1. Castlepoint Numa
  2. Cityzen Development Corporation
  3. Context Development
  4. Continental Ventures
  5. Daniels Corporation
  6. Distillery Historical District
  7. Dream Unlimited Corporation
  8. Greybrook Capital and Greybrook Realty Partners
  9. Kerbel Group Inc.
  10. Manulife Real Estate
  11. QQE 162
  12. Streetcar Developments
  13. TAS
  14. Tridel Group of Corporations

  These are some of Toronto’s most important city builders and I am sure this will get the attention of both Mayor John Tory and the rest of City Council.

  If you haven’t yet signed the Gardiner East petition that Stephen and I started, please do so by clicking here.

  Happy Friday 🙂

  2015.06.05

• The perfect high street

  How do you create and maintain a thriving high street in this era of increasing online shopping? This was one of the questions that Monocle asked at its recent Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon and here’s a video with its recommendations. Click here if you can’t see the video below.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox2WJwDbuIo?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  2015.05.16

• Segregation and income inequality in cities

  

  Baltimore Harbor by Wes Bunton on 500px

  Given what is going on in Baltimore and other cities in the US right now, I thought it would be worthwhile to share an interesting article from City Observatory talking about income disparity and racial segregation in cities.

  There are significant racial income gaps in the United States (as well as in Canada). According to City Observatory, the average black household earns 42% less than the average white household in America. There is, of course, lots of regional variation, but this is what it looks like nationwide.

  The interesting thing about this racial income gap though, is that there’s one factor that seems to account for the bulk (up to 60%) of the variation: residential segregation. In other words, the more segregated a city becomes, the more this black/white income disparity increases.

  Here’s a snippet from Joe Cortright of City Observatory:

  …there are good reasons to believe that high levels of segregation impair the relative economic opportunities available to black Americans. Segregation may have the effect of limiting an individual’s social networks, lowering the quality of public services, decreasing access to good schools, and increasing risk of exposure to crime, all of which may limit or reduce economic success. This is especially true in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, which tend to be disproportionately neighborhoods of color.

  We also know that there are all kinds of negative externalities associated with income inequality. Therefore, there’s a strong case to be made for addressing segregation and the spatial organization of our cities. 

  I recommend you read the City Observatory article for a more nuanced explanation of the above relationship.

  2015.04.30

• What will driverless electric cars mean for cities?

  

  T E S L A by Thomas Juel on 500px

  Yesterday I posted a video about the career of Elon Musk. And it reminded me of something that’s been on my mind as I think about transportation, cities, and the future.

  Elon’s story for why he founded SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX is incredibly compelling. He chose problems and industries that he felt would move humanity forward. He felt that we needed sustainable forms of energy production (SolarCity), sustainable forms of transport (Tesla), and a way for humans to occupy other planets (SpaceX). That’s incredible ambition.

  Today though, I just want to focus on the transportation piece.

  Electric and driverless vehicles, I believe, are a step in the right direction. I honestly believe that at some point in the not too distant future we’re going to look back at that time when people used to drive their own cars and wonder how we ever allowed that to happen.

  But fundamentally, I think there still remains a question of how best to plan our cities. 

  There’s lots of talk today about peak car and the death of the automobile. Certainly within planning and urbanist circles, there’s an almost universal belief that planning (most of) our cities around the car, as opposed to people, was a huge mistake. Multimodal solutions with a public transit backbone are now the way forward.

  But will that always be the case as the notion of the “car” evolves?

  Intuitively, driverless vehicles feels like a massive opportunity to leverage data and better optimize our private transport assets. We know that the utilization rate for most private cars is incredibly low and so there’s lots of room to improve how we use and share private vehicles and how we move people around cities.

  But how big is that opportunity? Does a city filled with driverless electric vehicles and with networks like Uber mean that public transportation now becomes less important? And if so, how much less important?

  I can’t help but feel like private and public transport are on a collision course right now. I suppose that isn’t anything new. But this time around I wonder if private transport won’t figure out a way to achieve similar efficiencies to large scale public transport.

  2015.04.28

• The high cost of poor land use

  

  London street of early 20th century Edwardian terraced houses by Bombaert Patrick on 500px

  Over the weekend The Economist published an interesting article called, Space and the city: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost. The argument is that land isn’t scarce. It’s the land use policies we have created that are artificially limiting supply and driving up real estate values.

  In fact, land is not really scarce: the entire population of America could fit into Texas with more than an acre for each household to enjoy. What drives prices skyward is a collision between rampant demand and limited supply in the great metropolises like London, Mumbai and New York. In the past ten years real prices in Hong Kong have risen by 150%. Residential property in Mayfair, in central London, can go for as much as £55,000 ($82,000) per square metre. A square mile of Manhattan residential property costs $16.5 billion.

  And part of the reason this has become so prevalent is because of the shifts we’ve seen in our economy and the great return back to cities.

  In the 20th century, tumbling transport costs weakened the gravitational pull of the city; in the 21st, the digital revolution has restored it. Knowledge-intensive industries such as technology and finance thrive on the clustering of workers who share ideas and expertise. The economies and populations of metropolises like London, New York and San Francisco have rebounded as a result.

  So how do we get better at meeting real estate demand in our cities? The Economist has two suggestions.

  One:

  First, they should ensure that city-planning decisions are made from the top down. When decisions are taken at local level, land-use rules tend to be stricter. Individual districts receive fewer of the benefits of a larger metropolitan population (jobs and taxes) than their costs (blocked views and congested streets). Moving housing-supply decisions to city level should mean that due weight is put on the benefits of growth. Any restrictions on building won by one district should be offset by increases elsewhere, so the city as a whole keeps to its development budget.

  Two:

  Second, governments should impose higher taxes on the value of land. In most rich countries, land-value taxes account for a small share of total revenues. Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvements.

  These recommendations will probably be unsettling for a number of people. 

  I would imagine that many communities would prefer to have planning and growth decisions happen bottom up, as opposed to top down. But I think there’s some truth to this recommendation and I don’t think it has to mean completely excluding bottom up feedback. Communities and individuals are naturally going to look out for their own self-interests. And so I think many would agree that there’s value in having a holistic urban strategy in place.

  Recommendation number two pertaining to land value taxes is a loaded one. So I’m going to save my specific comments for a dedicated post on LVTs. 

  But I will say that I don’t think trying to squeeze landowners into development via taxes is the most efficient and immediate way to address supply shortages. In advance of this, we should be examining the current barriers to development. Because we’re talking about hyper competitive global cities with perpetual supply deficits. And I don’t believe the problem is incentive-based. The problem is finding sites. The problem is finding ways to build.

  What do you all think? This is an interesting topic of discussion.

  2015.04.07