Gripe Over Skyscrapers Highlights City’s Need To Spread Density Into The Yellow Belt

[M II A II R II K]

And with retail at street level

[softee]

I'm all for adding more density to Toronto's outlying retail strips as long as the character of those pre-war commercial corridors is retained. This pic of St. Clair Avenue looking East with hi-rise clusters in the distance is pretty much ideal as it is, IMO.


By Jasonzed: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...6#post-1392432

[C.]

^ Wow. Beautiful.


Image from http://transit.toronto.on.ca

That's one of Toronto's subway subway stations, surrounded by complete garbage. Why not redevelop the area? Even if buildings are limited to 5 or 6 floors, that would still provide more-modestly priced homes and office space for thousands of people.

From my visits, Toronto likes to go tall and has a bunch of 2 or 3 story homes, but there does seem to be a "missing middle" with far less mid-rise buildings. It's probably a function of the fixed-costs associated with the land development regulatory requirement that make mid-rises not as attractive as high-rise buildings, thus that what gets built.

[Nite]

^^ That's what the article is recommending, but the city doesn't allow anything beside single family homes in 90% of the city.
I don't see this changing anytime soon do to nimbyism and the anti-highrises attitude throughout the city and in city government.

[Crawford]

There are plenty of midrises of recent vintage along Yonge, near the affluent neighborhoods. They all look to have been built in the last 10 years or so.

Stuff in the 4-8 floor range, I think, between say Yorkville and Yonge/Eglinton.

[C.]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are plenty of midrises of recent vintage along Yonge, near the affluent neighborhoods. They all look to have been built in the last 10 years or so.

Stuff in the 4-8 floor range, I think, between say Yorkville and Yonge/Eglinton.

True - it just feels like there more 8+ story buildings being built than the 4-8 range stuff, at least anecdotally from the areas I visited. It should be the other way around.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by CIA

True - it just feels like there more 8+ story buildings being built than the 4-8 range stuff, at least anecdotally from the areas I visited. It should be the other way around.

Maybe it's more in the 5-10 floor range or so. It seems like pretty good infill, to me.

Stuff like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6853...7i16384!8i8192

Or this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6776...7i16384!8i8192

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are plenty of midrises of recent vintage along Yonge, near the affluent neighborhoods. They all look to have been built in the last 10 years or so.

Stuff in the 4-8 floor range, I think, between say Yorkville and Yonge/Eglinton.

There is a nice stretch of midrise along Summerhil there, but it's primarily luxury condos. To build that small and in those areas requires prices well in excess of $1,000/SF. I saw $1.5 million for ~1,000 SF at a new development at Yonge/Rosehill.

I think a lot of us would like to see that kind of scale along some corridors in the East and West end. Unfortunately, assembling land even in those areas outside of the core isn't cheap anymore.

[C.]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Maybe it's more in the 5-10 floor range or so. It seems like pretty good infill, to me.

Stuff like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6853...7i16384!8i8192

Or this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6776...7i16384!8i8192

Both examples are from Yonge street. The zoning would prohibit similar structures on most other main streets though-out the city, and a rezoning process for a mid-rise building like the ones pictured above can be expensive with little value added.

Those types of buildings just need to be allowed out right, especially if along a subway or LRT line.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by CIA

Both examples are from Yonge street.

Well, yeah. If you go a block off Yonge, you're probably in the richest neighborhoods in Canada and I doubt they would allow multifamily.

They're also basically older suburban layouts, just with an in-town location. They're quite attractive and valuable, and I don't see the sense in demolishing such areas.

[C.]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Well, yeah. If you go a block off Yonge, you're basically in the richest neighborhoods in Canada and I doubt they would allow multifamily.

They're also basically older suburban layouts, just with an in-town location. They're quite attractive and valuable, and I don't see the sense in demolishing such areas.

When I visited, Yonge was my least favorite street (it really does the tourists a disservice because that's what most of them will see.) There are so many more neighborhoods outside the downtown core and away from Yonge street that are screaming for some mid-rise developments.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by Nite

^^ That's what the article is recommending, but the city doesn't allow anything beside single family homes in 90% of the city.

Completely untrue. In the low rise neighbourhood areas there's still small scale infill permitted. The Official Plan permits ground related development like triplexes and townhouses in these areas subject to a series of criteria regarding height, massing, scale, that kind of thing. Usually a rezoning is needed but that's a routine part of the development process; what's important is that the Official Plan allows for it. The neighbourhood areas take up around 70% of the city.

What's not permitted in these areas is anything that's not ground related, so most kinds of apartment type housing. Whether more neighbourhoods should be redeveloped with that kind of built form is certainly debatable.

Even small scale infill in residential areas tends to create a firestorm of opposition but that's beyond the city's control.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by CIA

Both examples are from Yonge street. The zoning would prohibit similar structures on most other main streets though-out the city, and a rezoning process for a mid-rise building like the ones pictured above can be expensive with little value added.

Those types of buildings just need to be allowed out right, especially if along a subway or LRT line.

There have been a lot more mid-rises built throughout the city in recent years, with hundreds more in the pipeline. Eg:

https://goo.gl/maps/BmtJ2XmzjL82
https://goo.gl/maps/63kDBYxGzRS2
https://goo.gl/maps/G9oCK1SqMXJ2
https://goo.gl/maps/WKxJyBU5s8q
https://goo.gl/maps/rBhaUwDeuNp


They're not not allowed - in fact, the city's Official Plan even encourages this type of development along major streets across the city. And the provincial building code was also recently amended to allow for wood-frame construction up to 6 stories. The problem is that the city's zoning by-laws have not been updated to reflect this (and which themselves are often a conflicting mess of layers of no-longer-existant-municipal bylaws), meaning that just about every one of these still needs to go through a lengthy site-specifc re-zoning process - the same thing that a high-rise development would require.

Originally Posted by Mister F

Completely untrue. In the low rise neighbourhood areas there's still small scale infill permitted. The Official Plan permits ground related development like triplexes and townhouses in these areas subject to a series of criteria regarding height, massing, scale, that kind of thing. Usually a rezoning is needed but that's a routine part of the development process; what's important is that the Official Plan allows for it. The neighbourhood areas take up around 70% of the city.

There's a few problems with that though: the zoning in most of North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough allows for SFH only, and even if the OP permits higher-density housing, the rezoning is ultimately dependent on a Committee of Adjustment hearing which tends to favour the preferences of incumbent neighbours and precedence established by the surrounding built form. And otherwise, that set of criteria tends to be too strict, with fairly low limits for FSI and height, and generous setbacks and greenspace requirements. As such, given the cost of land it's not really profitable for homeowners to replace a SFH with a 2 or 3-unit duplex.

Planning policies would need to be a little more uniform, a little more clear on what's allowable, and a little more lenient on density for this to result in any effective change.

Originally Posted by softee

I'm all for adding more density to Toronto's outlying retail strips as long as the character of those pre-war commercial corridors is retained. This pic of St. Clair Avenue looking East with hi-rise clusters in the distance is pretty much ideal as it is, IMO.

I completely agree - unlike some earlier posters I certainly would not agree with rezoning the entire inner-city for mid/high-rise development - however, preserving the character of these areas are more an issue of heritage preservation than zoning. Ideally, we would both strengthen our heritage inventory & protections and also loosen zoning requirements.

[softee]

Originally Posted by Nite

^^ That's what the article is recommending, but the city doesn't allow anything beside single family homes in 90% of the city.
I don't see this changing anytime soon do to nimbyism and the anti-highrises attitude throughout the city and in city government.

How can Toronto have an anti-highrise attitude if it already has and is currently building more highrises than anyplace in North America other than NYC? It seems to me that Toronto is actually the most highrise friendly city in North America. Sure, there are large swaths of the city where highrises are not permitted, but you don't have to go very far from those areas to find plenty of other areas where highrises stand, or where new ones are springing up throughout the city.

[niwell]

Even within the "Old City" I'd argue that there needs to be considerable loosening of what is constituted as maintaining the "prevailing building type". For instance, today we wouldn't be able to build many of the small 3-4 storey apartment buildings on narrow lots within existing residential neighbourhoods because the prevailing building type is considered to be single family or semi-detached homes. Which is somewhat ironic as many of these buildings were built to originally mimic the form of those! Stuff like this:


https://goo.gl/maps/MHMFuKr9zoG2
https://goo.gl/maps/T6LGz15ZBny
https://goo.gl/maps/pvtdMNcwf952
https://goo.gl/maps/2zbrSNN86BN2
https://goo.gl/maps/qavmamSMr852


There's tons of opportunity for similar developments that still maintain neighbourhood character and add additional density. Part of the issue is there is no silver bullet - we need a combination of highrise, midrise on avenues and local intensification to achieve anything meaningful without becoming overbearing. A combination of expanded historic designation and expedited development of smaller multi-family buildings on certain sites (e.g. district zoning) could yield interesting results.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by softee

How can Toronto have an anti-highrise attitude if it already has and is currently building more highrises than anyplace in North America other than NYC? It seems to me that Toronto is actually the most highrise friendly city in North America. Sure, there are large swaths of the city where highrises are not permitted, but you don't have to go very far from those areas to find plenty of other areas where highrises stand, or where new ones are springing up throughout the city.

Toronto, or more specificly city administration is anti-highrises because every tower regardly of design merit gets cut down in order to get approved, we lost 2 super tall proposal this year for no real reason than they were to tall.
There is very few places in Toronto you can build anything abover 10 floors. the few places you are allowed are building like crazy though.

Toronto only builds as much skyscrapers as it does because the province overrides the city and approves projects that the city already rejected and because of the demand for more affordable housing compared to single family detach housing.

[Mister F]

^Come on, that's just not true. Toronto is one of the most high rise friendly cities in the Western world. Two proposed supertalls getting shortened means nothing. People who actually work in planning don't give a crap about meaningless height categories like "supertall".

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

There have been a lot more mid-rises built throughout the city in recent years, with hundreds more in the pipeline. Eg:

https://goo.gl/maps/BmtJ2XmzjL82
https://goo.gl/maps/63kDBYxGzRS2
https://goo.gl/maps/G9oCK1SqMXJ2
https://goo.gl/maps/WKxJyBU5s8q
https://goo.gl/maps/rBhaUwDeuNp

They're not not allowed - in fact, the city's Official Plan even encourages this type of development along major streets across the city. And the provincial building code was also recently amended to allow for wood-frame construction up to 6 stories. The problem is that the city's zoning by-laws have not been updated to reflect this (and which themselves are often a conflicting mess of layers of no-longer-existant-municipal bylaws), meaning that just about every one of these still needs to go through a lengthy site-specifc re-zoning process - the same thing that a high-rise development would require.

There's a few problems with that though: the zoning in most of North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough allows for SFH only, and even if the OP permits higher-density housing, the rezoning is ultimately dependent on a Committee of Adjustment hearing which tends to favour the preferences of incumbent neighbours and precedence established by the surrounding built form. And otherwise, that set of criteria tends to be too strict, with fairly low limits for FSI and height, and generous setbacks and greenspace requirements. As such, given the cost of land it's not really profitable for homeowners to replace a SFH with a 2 or 3-unit duplex.

Planning policies would need to be a little more uniform, a little more clear on what's allowable, and a little more lenient on density for this to result in any effective change.

I completely agree - unlike some earlier posters I certainly would not agree with rezoning the entire inner-city for mid/high-rise development - however, preserving the character of these areas are more an issue of heritage preservation than zoning. Ideally, we would both strengthen our heritage inventory & protections and also loosen zoning requirements.

The rezoning and minor variance processes are pretty routine for development applications. While some cities have pre-zoned areas to get the kind of development they're looking for, there's no evidence that pre-zoning actually makes development happen faster. Zoning deals with such minute details that even if you actively zone land for a specific type of development, nobody knows what the eventual development application will actually look like. So a rezoning application is often needed anyway. Rezonings are such a routine part of the system that for any development application of more than a few units, they're almost assumed. Zoning is just an implementation tool.

Whether there should be clearer policy to encourage more infill in these kinds of neighbourhoods is very much an issue in the planning world, as it's generally accepted that the "missing middle" is a real problem. But it's not really a zoning issue as much as a policy one.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by niwell

Even within the "Old City" I'd argue that there needs to be considerable loosening of what is constituted as maintaining the "prevailing building type". For instance, today we wouldn't be able to build many of the small 3-4 storey apartment buildings on narrow lots within existing residential neighbourhoods because the prevailing building type is considered to be single family or semi-detached homes. Which is somewhat ironic as many of these buildings were built to originally mimic the form of those! Stuff like this:

Nevermind those, even almost all of the existing housing stock contravenes current bylaws. I work doing small-scale residential architecture & interiors, and have to deal with this stuff on a regular basis - and literally every old house exceeds the modern requirements on setbacks, square footage, lot size, or some other byzantine regulation. So much as putting a small rear addition onto an existing house requires a minor variance. Meanwhile, any new construction that would adhere to the bylaw allowances would either be comparatively diminutive & suburban in form, if not outright impossible (given that many of the lots are themselves non-conforming).

Now, it's easy enough to get the necessary variances to do anything reasonable and keeping with the context of its surroundings, it just takes a few months and a couple thousand dollars. Which begs the question: what's the point then? Why have zoning bylaws in place that don't actually reflect what exists or what you want to exist? Why have bylaws in place that complicate development when you want to encourage it?

I have to at least commend the city on the new laneway housing regulations though; having avoided the allure of needlessly complicating and bureaucratizing the process in favour of something that is (seemingly) quite streamlined for most purposes.

[jd3189]

Those pictures of Toronto in the last page reminds me of Miami. Highrise islands among lowrise seas. Suburban but on a grid that can increase in density, similar to LA as well.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Nite

^^ That's what the article is recommending, but the city doesn't allow anything beside single family homes in 90% of the city.
I don't see this changing anytime soon do to nimbyism and the anti-highrises attitude throughout the city and in city government.

More hysterics. Residential land doesn't even take up 90% of the city, let alone SFHs. Even just considering just the houses, only two-thirds of them are single-family (269,675 detached houses in 2016). One-thirds of houses in Toronto are multi-family (71,230 semi-detached houses and 61,630 rowhouses).

Manhattan has twice the number of high-rises as Toronto, and it has less than 10% of the land area of Toronto. For Toronto to zone another 10% of its land for high-rises would mean adding another 5000 high-rises and another 1.7 million people to the city. The amount of high-rises in Toronto would triple, and the population would increase 70%. Toronto would have more high-rises than all of NYC but half the population. This is what 10% represents and this is what you are characterizing as "NIMBYism" and the "anti-high-rises attitude".