Tag: toronto

• Introducing the Meta City

  During the pandemic, there was a lot of erroneous talk about the death of cities. Much like when the consumer internet first came around, the thinking was that technology would make geography irrelevant. I was and am vehemently against this idea, but it’s hard to not feel like technology is doing something. But what exactly? According to Richard Florida, Vladislav Boutenko, Antoine Vetrano, and Sara Saloo, it is creating something called the Meta City:

  The various communities that make up the Meta City may be in different time zones and noncontiguous locations, but they function together as a coherent network with a distinct structure and logic. The Meta City combines physical and virtual agglomeration, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics, making it possible to occupy more than one space at the same time. As a result, urban areas within the Meta City network can share economic and social functions.

  The narrative is compelling. Cities have always responded to and been a product of new mobility technologies. Streetcars, subways, and the car have all reshaped the geography of our cities. Some would argue for the worse. What the Meta City proposes is that technology today is not a disruptor of cities, it is simply another mobility shift. Rather than make cities irrelevant, it actually makes them more important by expanding their reach:

  The pandemic-era shift to remote work is yet another technology stretching the boundaries of the city into a new and larger geographic unit. But instead of doing so physically, it does so by enabling virtual expansion. The share of American workers engaged in remote work tripled from roughly 6% in 2019 to almost 18% in 2021. Remote workers can access significant quality of life at far more affordable prices in smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

  Some specific examples:

  Many of these rising places are critically connected to established cities. As we will see, Austin’s rise is best understood as a satellite of San Francisco’s long-established tech hub. Miami is enmeshed in New York City’s finance and real estate complex. The rise of the Meta City informs a counterintuitive logic: Leading superstar cities are seeing their role as economic hub expand, even as some talent and some industry disperse to satellite centers.

  Finally, here’s their ranking:

  

  If you believe this to be true, then it should be good news for the real estate located in the cities listed above. But it also means that we are now facing a new kind of hub-and-spoke model of urbanism. London and New York remain at the center, but tech is only strengthening their reach and influence. This is a new way of thinking about the flow of human capital around the world, and I’m sure it will have impacts on how we plan and build our cities.

  Image: Harvard Business Review

  2023.11.29

• Port Lands flood protection project is one of the most important in Toronto

  

  This morning I did a hard hat tour of the Port Lands area of Toronto. And once again, I was reminded that this is one of the most important projects taking place in the city right now.

  When completed at the end of 2024, the $1.25 billion flood protection project is going to create over 60 acres of new greenspace and parkland, and unlock a significant amount of land for development. Already, it’s hard to imagine this part of the city not becoming a desirable new neighborhood and a magnet for recreation.

  I was asked not to share any images from within the site (i.e. the non-public areas), so I’m only sharing the above photo taken from Cherry Street. But we did get a chance to stand on the bed of the new river valley that will eventually take flow from the Don River. And I have photos on my phone to prove it. That was almost certainly a once in a lifetime thing.

  For the latest on construction progress, check out this video from Waterfront Toronto.

  2023.11.27

• First tower crane erected at One Delisle

  This was a big week for construction progress at One Delisle. On Friday, we poured the first bit of our raft slab foundation on the west side of the site. Big concrete pours like this usually take all day and this case was no different. The team was there late into the evening. And then today, the first of our two tower cranes was erected:

  

  

  
  The crane going up is always a big milestone because, in my mind, it signals the start of “real” construction. What I mean by this is that all of the stuff that comes before — demolition, shoring, and excavation — is really just to get the site ready for building. Well, now we’re ready, and that means we’re about to go vertical.

  A big thanks to the team for working around the clock over the last few days.

  2023.11.25

• Thank you for your service, Gregg

  It was bittersweet to learn last week that Toronto’s chief planner — Gregg Lintern — will be retiring at the end of this year.

  He accomplished a lot during his six-year tenure. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article by Alex Bozikovic:

  “…he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city.“

  All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.

  I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.

  Thank you for your service, Gregg.

  2023.11.19

• Ft. Toronto

  As a broad rule, I like videos and movies that feature Toronto. I think it should happen a lot more often. So here’s Drake’s latest music video, which does exactly that. If you can’t see it below, click here.

  2023.11.17

• Multiple expression and our bias toward old architecture

  You may not have ever used this exact term before, but I’m sure that most of you know what it is. On his blog over the weekend, Witold Rybczynski wrote about a new architectural term he just learned called: “multiple expression.” What it refers to is the use of different architectural styles on a long facade in order for the building to appear as if it’s multiple smaller ones.

  And today, I would say that this is largely viewed as a positive thing. Typically it is done to “break up a massing” or create a “fine-grained retail experience.” In fact, you’ll find things like this in some design guidelines. Here’s one from Toronto’s mid-rise performance standards:

  

  This doesn’t explicitly stipulate that architects should use “multiple expressions”, but it does suggest that long repetitive facades are suboptimal, and that they should be broken up. But Witold’s view is the opposite. He argues that this “bespeaks a lack of confidence, a poverty of the imagination.” And he gives the example of Park Crescent in London, designed by architect John Nash.

  It’s long (well over 60m) and it’s repetitive:

  

  Perhaps a good counter example to this would be Mirvish Village in Toronto, which was designed by Henriquez Partners and which has been largely celebrated as a way of creating the feeling of fine-grained urbanism in a larger master-planned development. Here it is on Google, still under construction:

  

  So what is it that makes Mirvish Village a generally desirable outcome in today’s planning environment, even though I suspect that most people would still appreciate what John Nash did on Park Crescent back in the early 1800s? Are we saying — with our guidelines — that we like Park Crescent, but that we shouldn’t do that ever again today?

  And to what extent do age and architectural style play into these opinions? Are long repetitive facades over 60m acceptable as long as the architectural style is “Regency” and the buildings aren’t too tall? Is modernism the problem? Because here’s another example from London: The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate.

  Built in the 1970s, it is a Brutalist housing estate with a largely repetitive design, and even a slight curve reminiscent of Park Crescent:

  

  Does this have confidence and imagination? Witold would probably say no.

  In the end, I guess the answer is that it all depends. Guidelines are just that — guides. They are not set in stone rules that must never be broken under any circumstances. That would be to reduce architecture to a strict science, and there’s clearly also an art component to building great cities.

  “Multiple expression” is usually done to create the feeling of finer-grained urbanism. But sometimes — if you’re old and regal-looking enough — the opposite can be okay too.

  2023.11.05

• More food trucks, please

  

  

  

  There’s no real secret to having a vibrant food truck and street vendor ecosystem. You basically just need to allow it, and then get out of the way and let entrepreneurs do what they do best.

  When I went to grad school in Philly, I used to eat from food trucks all the time. I could get a breakfast sandwich and coffee in the morning. I could get a burrito for lunch. And I could get a vegetarian lasagna for dinner. There was no shortage of options.

  This same kind of ecosystem does not exist in Toronto, but it’s only because we’ve decided we don’t want it to.

  Images: New York City

  2023.10.26

• Paris on top of Toronto

  There are about 2.1 million people who live in Paris (2023 figure).

  The metro area is, of course, much larger with over 13 million people. But if you look at Paris proper — that being the 20 arrondissements within the Boulevard Périphérique — it’s the 2.1 million number.

  The footprint of this area is 105 km2, and so that means that Paris has an average population density within its administrative boundaries of just over 20,000 people per km2.

  This is about 4.5x more dense than the City of Toronto as a whole. Which is why if you overlay the outline of Paris on top of Toronto, as Gil Meslin has done over here, you get this:

  Ok, just for fun, three maps:
  
  1) The outline of Paris, within the Périphérique, overlaid on central Toronto.
  2) Toronto subway lines and stations within that area (including Crosstown).
  3) Paris Métro lines (1-14) and stations within that same area. pic.twitter.com/i2xxHWoZGv

  — Four-Storey Tower (@g_meslin) October 20, 2023

  To be fair, there are pockets of Toronto that are very dense, even by Paris standards. North St. James Town, for example, was estimated at over 44,000 people per km2 back in 2016. But generally speaking, Toronto is not that.

  And Gil’s maps do an excellent job of demonstrating it.

  2023.10.20

• Sunday morning is for riding

  This is a fun circuit.

  Go west to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge.

  

  Shoot up the Humber River and pass under various bridges and subway tracks.

  

  

  Arrive in Weston (which, by the way, was established in 1796). Go west on Lawrence to Royal York (there are a couple of hills here that will get your bum up).

  

  Then bomb down Royal York as fast as you can until you arrive at San Remo Bakery for coffee, donuts, cured meats, and other wonderful things that I don’t normally order.

  

  The circuit:

  

  2023.10.15

• The case for bottom-up planning

  

  Many of you probably didn’t click through on this link in yesterday’s post, but it was a link to a book called Emergent Tokyo — Designing the Spontaneous City. What this book is largely about is the idea that Tokyo — usually considered to be the largest urban region in the world — is more the result of bottom-up actions than top-down actions. In other words, it is a kind of complex and self-organizing system.

  Some of you may be reading this and thinking that the result would be chaos. But the opposite is, in fact, true. Despite being the largest urban agglomeration in the world, Tokyo is consistently viewed as one of the most livable big cities in the world. How is that possible?

  One topic that we’ve been talking about on this blog recently is the planning approach of mandating ground-floor retail in new developments. While certainly good intentioned, this is one example of top-down planning. We are saying, “retail needs to go here because.”

  The problem, as we have talked about, is that the market may not want it. It may not actually be viable or desirable. Of course, it is a delicate situation. Because if you don’t provision for it, then you might block it from ever being possible on sites where it clearly makes sense. (We spoke specifically about this, here.)

  There is also the opposite question of: where are we not allowing retail?

  Maybe there are places where retail activity would be viable today, except it’s currently not permitted. One concrete example of this is Toronto’s laneways. Right now, we only allow residential (throughout our “Neighbourhoods”). But there many people, including myself and planner Blair Scorgie, who have been arguing that they should be mixed-use:

  

  Would office and retail uses actually work in Toronto’s residential laneways? I frankly don’t know. Because they’re not allowed today, it’s largely impossible to know. If we allowed these uses and nothing happened, then we’d have a better idea that there’s little demand for it. (I say a better idea because there still could be other obstacles in the way.)

  On the other hand if we decided to mandate non-residential uses in our laneways and nobody did anything, two things might then happen. One, we’d be similarly led to believe that there’s little to no demand. And two, we’d probably be sacrificing the residential use, for which we can say today there is clear demand.

  There are also the considerations that demand will almost certainly change over time and be inconsistent across different locations. For instance, maybe retail doesn’t work in this laneway, but it will work in that laneway. Can we actually plan for this?

  Top-down approaches generally assume that we know all or many of the answers. It presumes that we know that this street should have ground-floor retail and this street should not. It’s also about control. More bottom-up approaches admit that it’s impossible to plan for everything and that there could be latent potential that we’re not even thinking about.

  Of course, there is something naturally unsettling about this approach because it is, by definition, unknowable. And it relinquishes a certain amount of control. Maybe a restaurant will appear here or maybe it won’t. Maybe someone will open a small office in this laneway or maybe they won’t. Either way, the potential for change exists.

  But I think this should be seen as empowering, transparent, and highly efficient. It is a way of reducing the barriers to entry and allowing more urban creativity and ambition to shrine through. I believe, for example, that if we made it easier, cheaper, and possible to open a small restaurant (perhaps in a laneway), we would have more and overall better restaurants in the city.

  And as we have seen in the case of Tokyo, the result of more flexibility is not necessarily chaos. It can be a highly livable city that has people wondering, “how did they manage to plan such a large city so well?”

  Photo by Kentaro Toma on Unsplash

  2023.10.14