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Hume: Are Toronto condo towers slums in the making?

Many new downtown developments are reducing the number of available parking spots for sale. One could assume that more and more people who live and work downtown are putting aside car ownership and the associated costs.

I would agree that a vibrant street life should be always be encouraged in order to reduce car use (and to make the street a destination). That would go a way to reducing automobile dependency (a matter of necessity rather than choice). However, whether someone lives in a suburban house or suburban highrise, they are much more likely going to car dependent.
 
Yes, and if you are car dependent and the public realm isn't pedestrian friendly, whether you have amenities 2 blocks or 8 blocks away from where you live doesn't make much of a difference.
 
high density is desirable only when all those people actually walk on the streets doing stuff, instead of always drive cars to go to some mall. A car dependent high density place is worse than low density suburbs, which is at least safer and quieter.

That's assuming that density has no effect on car-dependency, which is not true at all.
 
as I have argued many times, the builders don't offer large 3 bedroom units because there is not enough demand. Most families DON'T like the idea of urban compact living. Put price aside, how many families here with 2 kids are willing to give up their backyard, living-room, basement and those empty rooms which got used once or twice a year?

builders have nothing against large condos. They are indifferent between difference size as long as they can make a profit. If families favour 3 bedroom condos as much as investors do, there will be a lot of large condos on the market. It is silly to expect developers to offer large quantities of large condos for the benefit of the city/a healthy real estate market when there is apparently not such a demand there.

kkgg7, you are being so closed minded. What has been suggested was a more family-friendly aka larger sized condo units ( perhaps with all the amenities such as daycare, playgrounds, stuff growing families will appreciate ) that no builder has yet to take advantage of. I'm aware of your holier-than-thou view towards western levels of space requirement but you're not in Kansas anymore.
 
The condo developers may choose to create the demand, as entrepreneurs tend to do. Build buildings that address concerns families might have about condos and market them to families. If there's no backyard, then have spacious courtyards where the kids can play while parents watch from their balconies fronting the courtyard. Make them smaller buildings with larger units where everyone knows the people living in the building. Build them in locations close to good schools, parks, and community centres. Build in locations where land is cheaper, allowing for bigger units. Why lose market share to suburban sprawl development? Get some celebrities to raise families in these buildings to make it trendy and to entrench it in culture.
 
One thing not mentioned is that it is not uncommon in places like NY to have buyers combine two or more adjacent smaller apartments and remodel them into one. I'm sure it's been done in Toronto too, but is probably rare today and probably not worth the hassle and cost given other options.

2011 NY Times Article about Combining Apartments

If these small units are destined to lose value (investors have a fire sale? lol) in the future but Toronto still maintains its vibrancy in the core, some enterprising families may find an opportunity here to build urban family living space on a discount.
 
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All speak of urban planning and social responsibility... where is Adam Vaughan in all this?
 
But wait... I thought the suburbs were supposed to be the future slums, what with rising gas prices, lack of walkability, poor transit, inadequate social services, and hiring bias towards those without cars. Now I'm confused!

Seriously, I suspect reality will be more complex than any of these blanket predications. Some of these new downtown condo buildings will not age well, but that will be from a combination of geographic location, future transit planning, and decisions made by owners in the building. Other condos will continue to flourish when they are well situated near jobs and amenities and are well-run by forward thinking owners who don't sacrifice the long term maintenance of the building in favour of lower short term condo fee breaks.

Predicting which condos will end up in which state is a challenge best left to fortune tellers, since we really have no way of knowing what industries and trends will take hold in the future: could anyone in the 1980's have predicated the rise of the Internet and associated creative/tech jobs?

Similar unknowns will apply to various suburban and exurban developments in the GTA, which will attract wealthy or poorer citizens based on a complex set of factors specific to each area, and the wealth of those owners will predict how well those houses and neighbourhoods are maintained. If oil and gas prices continue to rise indefinitely and no viable replacement arrives, then the suburbs will suffer disproportionately as the cost of a yard and extra square footage becomes untenable for the average person. If gas prices moderate and/or affordable electric/solar/hydrogen/magic cars hit the mainstream, then everything changes.
 
[...] then the suburbs will suffer disproportionately as the cost of a yard and extra square footage becomes untenable for the average person.

Rather than suffering, won't those areas then become posh, since only rich people will be able to afford the luxury of living so inefficiently?
 
There will be a period when those living in suburbs can barely afford their lifestyle and struggle to meet their needs. They'll need to sell their house to sustain themselves, but others doing the same will lower the price they can get for it. Some suburbs will indeed become posh, others will become dead zones where housing will be affordable but public transit commutes close to unbearable and lifestyle costs too high for an alternative.

That's how that particular scenario pans out at least.

Personally I doubt the value of land in suburbs will ever appreciate that much, but I fully expect more and more people to prefer living closer to the core - thus leaving inconvenient suburbs poorly served by transportation infrastructure to the poor. That's how cities like Santiago de Chile are structured, for example.
 
Rather than suffering, won't those areas then become posh, since only rich people will be able to afford the luxury of living so inefficiently?

I was just paraphrasing in a tongue-in-cheek manner the whole "suburbia as future ghetto" meme I've read elsewhere, to be clear, I do not personally believe that is the future of all suburbia. My point is that nobody can really predict where things are going.

However to address your specific point, I believe the prevailing logic for those who subscribe to the theory is that as fewer people can afford to live in the suburbs, demand for houses in areas that are only accessible by car would drop, causing home values to plummet, mortgages to go underwater, homes to be abandoned or converted to multi-family dwellings (aka flophouses) to share costs, lack of house and property maintenance, lack of municipal taxpayer dollars to maintain surrounding streets and parks, and so on in the typical fun cycle of decline much as we saw in the US post housing crash. Rich people would always live in spacious homes with green space, but there just wouldn't be enough super wealthy to populate all the existing suburbs.
 
Maybe this is disgustingly optimistic, but what if, in the future, our metropolis became less centralised, with less of a concentration of desirable services and prestige employment? What if, instead of becoming even bigger wastelands than they already are, the suburbs started to bring in the same services, amenities, and employment opportunities that right now make "closer to the core" so desirable?
Just sayin. I personally think our society has its head too far up its ass for this to play out, but I had to say it.
 
All speak of urban planning and social responsibility... where is Adam Vaughan in all this?

Adam Vaughan has indeed tried to address the issue. In the downtown core of Ward 20, 10% of the units in a development has to be 3 bdrm units. This can be a single unit or units with knock down panels that can easily be turned into 3 bdrm. He has had this in place for a couple of years.

Unfortunately, market reaction has been less than positive. The slowest moving units in any development have turned out, invariably, to be these larger units.

Someone mentioned earlier about building something that is more attuned to the needs of families with children. Good idea. And hopefully it will happen in the future. But right now, developers are racing to achieve the magical 70% sales so they can get the financing and start building. And that means small units because that is where the demand is.

It will take a developer with very deep pockets and cheaper land prices to pioneer a market, so far unproven, geared to families.
 
Its not a terrible article. It just misses the wider point about location. I mean, if there are any slums in the making, ultimately, it will have more to do with location than it does about unit size or any other metric. The problem with alot of these real estate commentaries is that they over-think it and tend to ignore the fundamentals. These towers keep going up because there is ultimately a demand, after all. Obvioulsy, renters and investors are still buying due to location and the price is low enough that they see an investment. You cant underestimate people's demand. I mean, people will pay a premium for shoeboxes in SOHO vs. Lower East Side in Manhattan due to location. Thats not Toronto but city-living is still considered more desirable to most. In Manhattan, they want to be in SOHO because that's the place to be. In Toronto, maybe its Yorkville and King West these days or close to Bay St. The better question is: Is that interest going to change? Becuase if it doesnt change, prices in that neighborhood will continue to rise. People will pay high prices for awkwardly designed condos because of location/demand.

Cityplace is kind of used as the example in the article (per usual) but despite all the negative press, Cityplace is located close to King West, the waterfront and major Toronto landmarks like CN Tower and Rogers Centre. I mean, In most cities, being next to those major landmarks, being on the skyline, next to vibrant neighborhoods, a few blocks from Ritz Carlton and next to the waterfront is not really a predictor of slum property.

And there is also a relevant point being made here, that there, perhaps, isnt a high demand for large condos in the city. Not everyone is having families these days. There is a lot more single people in this generation vs. the baby-boomers. Plus from what Ive read, the movement for wealthy successful folks seems to lean towards city rather than suburban areas.

It will interesting to see what will be happen. But like a lot of these article, I just have trouble believing their predictions based on common-sense of understanding how cities Ive lived in tend to value real estate. Toronto is a great safe city. "Real" American-style slums anywhere in Toronto seems unlikely.
 

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