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Jennifer Keesmaat's Mid-Rises

Midrises are good, however, to have some midrises among a sea of lowrise homes doesn't really add much density.
Midrises work best if the entire city is mostly midrises (5-10s).
 
WislaHD said:
As fond as I am of these midrises, they won't create a livable, human-scale neighborhood ever. Sheppard is too wide of a street to allow that to happen.
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I agree, there aren't many people walking on the sidewalks there. The wide street with fast cars is likely one reason.
 
ksun said:
Midrises are good, however, to have some midrises among a sea of lowrise homes doesn't really add much density.
Midrises work best if the entire city is mostly midrises (5-10s).
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Take a look at countless European cities, including Paris. They are built almost entirely out of midrises and tight street networks, and have densities which rival those of Manhattan!
 
Electrify said:
Take a look at countless European cities, including Paris. They are built almost entirely out of midrises and tight street networks, and have densities which rival those of Manhattan!
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Please don't get him started...

He'll obviously reply that Toronto is filled with low-rise homes, unlike Paris which is mid-rise throughout.
 
Electrify said:
Take a look at countless European cities, including Paris. They are built almost entirely out of midrises and tight street networks, and have densities which rival those of Manhattan!
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that's exactly what I meant.

All tight midrise = high density (Paris, Barcelona)
midrise + highrise = high density (Tokyo)
midrise, highrise and skyscrapers = high density (Manhattan)
5% midrise + 90% lowrise +5% skyscraper = low density (Toronto, or Brooklyn)

If a city is already 90% lowrises, adding a few midrise avenues won't change a thing.
 
ksun said:
that's exactly what I meant.

All tight midrise = high density (Paris, Barcelona)
midrise + highrise = high density (Tokyo)
midrise, highrise and skyscrapers = high density (Manhattan)
5% midrise + 90% lowrise +5% skyscraper = low density (Toronto, or Brooklyn)

If a city is already 90% lowrises, adding a few midrise avenues won't change a thing.
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It's not trying to "change a thing", as you put it. The official plans or midrise don't have a goal of becoming like Paris. In fact, they restrict changes to low-rise neighbourhoods in Toronto.
 
If by "change a thing" you mean "achieve anything of value" then I'd like to disagree.

The mid-rises are meant to increase density along commercial arterials, protecting the pleasant pace and character of low-rise areas and creating human-scaled urban commercial streets. One could argue it's the best approach for a city with the built form of Toronto, and the best way to realize that is to compare "before" and "after" shots of the streets on which this has been implemented.

In my humble opinion, the dramatic drop-off in height and density between downtown Toronto and it's immediate surroundings gives this place a "houses-and-skyscrapers" flavor of a third-world boom-town. Midrises would provide a finer gradient to this density transition, going from the high-rise downtown to the mid-rise avenues and finally into the intimately scaled low-rise neighbourhoods.
 
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adma said:
Let's remember, though, that this policy isn't new or specific to Keesmaat; indeed, a decade or so ago we might have been speaking of "Paul Bedford's Mid-Rises". (And heck: let's even go back to the Crombie era, St Lawrence Neighbourhood et al)
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You would. ;)


St Clair West has things going on. On my drive to a site earlier today I noticed yet another new development happening just east of Russel Hill. The Zigg or summat. St Clair from Yonge to well past Bathurst is going the way of the Avenues plan quite well, I'd say.
 
M.R.Victor said:
In my humble opinion, the dramatic drop-off in height and density between downtown Toronto and it's immediate surroundings gives this place a "houses-and-skyscrapers" flavor of a third-world boom-town. Midrises would provide a finer gradient to this density transition, going from the high-rise downtown to the mid-rise avenues and finally into the intimately scaled low-rise neighbourhoods.
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You seem to imply downtown is mostly highrises, which is far from the truth. Downtown itself probably has more low rise buildings than highrises if you look closely, doesn't it? Downtown itself is already a houses and skyscrapers land you described.

It will be interesting to know, despite the hype of vertical Toronto, how many lowrise buildings (1-4s) vs. highrises (12s+) are currently located in downtown between DVP and Bathurst.
 
I get the gist of your argument, though you'd run into trouble if you attempted to find a quantifiable rationale to support you reading of the feel of this city. Simply counting numbers of buildings would be misleading because high-rises generally have much larger footprints. 30 houses might take up the same amount of space as the base of a single office tower.
 
M.R.Victor said:
I get the gist of your argument, though you'd run into trouble if you attempted to find a quantifiable rationale to support you reading of the feel of this city. Simply counting numbers of buildings would be misleading because high-rises generally have much larger footprints. 30 houses might take up the same amount of space as the base of a single office tower.
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fully aware of that.
I am just saying to claim downtown is primarily highrises is wrong. At least half of downtown Toronto is dominated by lowrise buildings. So to say by building midrise avenues we provide a transition from skyscrapers to houses makes little sense because downtown itself is a mixture of skyscrapers and houses. often in dramatic contrast.
 
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