New plan for Brampton aims to build Canada's 1st modern, suburban city

[memph]

Originally Posted by isaidso

The reason we have so much congestion is that all these people in Brampton have to drive to jobs in Toronto. They can't take transit because the population density is too low to make it viable.

More like jobs in Mississauga/Vaughan. Or at least suburban Toronto. Out of the 250,000 or so Brampton residents who drive to work, only about 2500 are driving to jobs in Downtown Toronto.

Also Brampton may have started growing later than Mississauga and might be about 15 years behind Mississauga on the growth curve/build out timeline, but the stuff Brampton is building now is barely different than what Mississauga was building in 2002 so I'm not sure it makes a difference. In 2002 Mississauga already had all its downtown civic buildings and many apartment towers and was beginning to build condos en-masse around Square One.

Highrises in Mississauga

1968: 17
1978: 110
1988: 162
1998: 232
2008: 269
2018: 306

Brampton 2018: 87

And I don't see how Brampton's lowrise development is so much better than Mississauga's. The SFH tracts might have somewhat higher Floor Space Indices but that's pretty much it.

[memph]

I wouldn't be surprised is the landmass that can be accessed within 30 minutes by transit was comparable for a suburb like Brampton or Mississauga vs central Toronto.

The difference of course, is that within those 20 square miles or so, the density in central Toronto is 2-3 times higher so there's a lot more stuff. The trade-off being that you're not going to get as far by car if you live in central Toronto. Hence why people there take transit while in the suburbs they drive.

[llamaorama]

I like it.

Haters gonna hate. It will create more urban living options and more civ spaces than normal suburbs, and, gasp, maybe help with the housing shortage...

[WhipperSnapper]

Building concrete point towers is not going to address the housing shortage (a.k.a. affordability)

[Doady]

Housing in low-rise suburbs are a lot cheaper than in high-rise suburbs. E.g. average price in Schaumburg is over $200,000, Mississauga over $600,000.

Build high-rises in a suburb, it will have all the bad of suburbia plus all the bad of cities, with none of the good aspects of either. Worst of both worlds. No walkability, no transit, no space, no affordability.

As memph pointed out, Mississauga has been building high-rises non-stop since the 60s, but it still ended up being another Schaumburg, except three times more expensive.

[Doug]

Wouldn't be the first utopian vision for Brampton :

Bramalea (Bram-uh-lee) is a neighbourhood in the City of Brampton, Ontario, Canada. Bramalea was created as an innovative "new town", and developed as a separate community from the city. Located in the former Chinguacousy Township, it was Canada's first satellite community developed by one of the country's largest real estate developers, Bramalea Consolidated Developments (later Bramalea Limited), formerly known as Brampton Leasing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramalea,_Ontario

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

New plan for Brampton aims to build Canada's 1st modern, suburban city


May 07, 2018

By Nick Boisvert

Read More: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...sion-1.4651520











The vision plan calls for more than a million trees to be planted by 2040. (City of Brampton)

Picture A sucks. Picture B rocks.

[llamaorama]

Originally Posted by Doady

Build high-rises in a suburb, it will have all the bad of suburbia plus all the bad of cities, with none of the good aspects of either. Worst of both worlds. No walkability, no transit, no space, no affordability

Why not build sidewalks and bus lines then? Why cant the towers cluster around walkable neighborhoods?

If high rises are so terrible why do people choose to buy condos in them instead of houses?

[memph]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Why not build sidewalks and bus lines then? Why cant the towers cluster around walkable neighborhoods?

If high rises are so terrible why do people choose to buy condos in them instead of houses?

Yeah, they do have transit and the quality of the transit is either decent already, or getting decent transit is within reach. It's just that the 20 square miles that can be reached within 30 minutes by transit in central Toronto will have 800,000 jobs, 800,000 residents, and loads of retail and amenities while in Mississauga those same 20 square miles could be reached within 30 minutes too but will contain only 1/4 of the jobs and 1/2 the population.

I think a heavily centralized high density node makes sense in Downtown Toronto where things are set up to support that, but in the suburbs a more decentralized system of smaller nodes makes more sense.

With Brampton, there aren't ever going to be any huge transit nodes. There will be moderate nodes like Downtown Brampton, Bramalea Mall, Shoppers World Mall, and you can build a few highrises there, as is the plan. Maybe a small number of highrises alongside lowrise apartments and townhouses at other intersections of bus routes.

The job situation is definitely an issue. Brampton is one of the most blue collar communities in North America, I think it has 2-3 times higher proportion of its population employed in manufacturing industries than Metro Detroit. Obviously that is not a source of job growth that has the potential to keep up with 15,000 new residents per year. They will probably try to attract some warehouse development and may well succeed but that won't employ very many people. Brampton has always struggled to attract office development, which has gone to either downtown or suburbs with better access to white collar workers like Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington and Markham. That means the residential growth will probably mostly be service sector workers or people commuting to the office employment in those other communities that can't afford to live closer to work.

That's why while infill in Brampton is I guess better than sprawl in Brampton (or sprawl in Milton which is headed towards being Brampton 2.0), it would still be better to have that extra infill in Toronto and in those more accessible suburbs.