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Planned Sprawl in the GTA

Yup, a bit of irony if this causes further leapfrogging of the Greenbelt- however, if development in those towns are concentrated within their city limits (as the Growth Plan seems to indicate), it could also act as another relief valve for real estate development.
 
High Speed Rail as a tool for "ride till you qualify" seems pretty ridiculous to me. The stop spacing would have to be significantly greater than for GO to avoid wasting the speed gains on boarding/unboarding and accelerating/decelerating but if it's supposed to encourage suburban style development that means driving to the stations. So significantly larger parking lots than the already massive 2000-3000 car GO parking lots? I suppose it could be the older neighbourhoods closer to the train station that will become more DTTO commuter oriented and displacing the locals to the new sprawl. But still I don't see this as being a cheap commute unless fares are massively subsidized and it still will be quite long.

What have studies said about usage of HSR in Europe and Asia? Like what's the breakdown between daily commuting, 1-2 day a week commuting, business trips, family visits, tourists?
 
Interesting finding- perhaps it's time for a campaign to remove the stigma of multi-generational housing, townhouses, renting etc., alongside efforts to rework the way suburbs work- loosening renting and development restrictions in suburban zones (i.e. allowing the subdivision of existing residential structures into apartments more easily, making it easier to develop missing middle infill in existing residential areas).

Obsession with home ownership driving Toronto affordability crisis, report finds
The Toronto area will need up to $150 billion in new home construction in the coming decade and most of that should be rental units, says a report from the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis.

The Toronto region’s shockingly high house prices haven’t stopped the city from achieving one of the highest home ownership rates in the developed world, up 23 per cent over the past 35 years.

Toronto’s ownership rate, at 68 per cent, is behind only Oslo, Norway (69 per cent), and Calgary (74 per cent) among 38 western cities.
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It suggests the Toronto area will need up to $150 billion in new home construction in the coming decade and most of that should be rental units to make housing more affordable.
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The report by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, a research firm, paints a picture of two cities in one. It shows that half of Toronto-area residents are overhoused, with 2.2 million empty bedrooms. (There are 400,000 homes in Ontario that have three or more empty bedrooms, according to the report.)

But it would take only about 350,000 bedrooms to appropriately house the 20 per cent of Toronto residents, most of them families, who are shelter-poor.
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House prices are half the problem. But our obsession with home ownership is a big contributor, too, he said.

Toronto has restricted vast swaths of the city to single-family detached homes. That has led to a shortage of appropriate housing.
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Smaller households are the most overhoused, as they are in neighbourhoods where the population is shrinking and aging. Meanwhile, larger families — with five or more people — are most likely to be underhoused in high-density apartments without enough bedrooms.

There’s also a shortage of ground-level homes known as the “missing middle” — townhomes, row houses, duplexes and small apartments — that would appeal to families.
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Data shows that rental housing acts as oil in the engine of housing markets, Smetanin said. It also illustrates the stigma attached to renting.

“If you reduce oil in an engine, you get heat and the heat starts to transpire as high housing prices, difficulty in moving and uncertainty. While your engine’s getting hotter, you’re not getting any faster or going somewhere quicker,” he said.
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Most underhousing occurs in rentals.

“When you look at the data and the demographics of rental, it almost looks like that’s where we’ve parked all our luggage as a society — if you don’t own your own home, you’re a loser,” he said.
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Rather than band-aids such as Ontario’s recently announced foreign buyer tax and expanded rent controls, he said, governments need to look at new concepts for Canadian housing.

In Europe governments, not-for-profit agencies and private industry collaborate on rental housing that is “architecturally relevant and desirable.”
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https://www.thestar.com/business/20...oronto-affordability-crisis-report-finds.html
 
It’s Official: Mexico City Eliminates Mandatory Parking Minimums

See this link.

The largest city in North America has done away with one of the biggest hidden subsidies for driving: minimum parking requirements.

Mexico City eliminated requirements that force developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces in each project. The city will instead cap the number of parking spaces allowed in new development, depending on the type and size of the building. Existing parking spaces can also be converted to other uses...

The new rules do require one type of parking: New buildings will have to include space for bicycles...
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mexico-city-parking.jpg


Can't see the suburban Councillors in Toronto going along with this.
 
jje1000 said:
It will soon be tougher to build on vacant land, as Ontario toughens anti-sprawl policies
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We'll have to see how much of this survives the election....the tories are very developer friendly. But I also wonder if they are running up against limits with more people getting fed up in rural areas with sprawl and more suburbanites hating the long commutes.
 
I hope you are right. Toronto and GTA will soon be more sprawling than LA at the pace we are going. The new rules should be kept akd hopefully they are popular enough that Tories will keep them and not cancel them.
 
Issue is dumb development.

They build monster huge homes in brampton and they could easily built a townhouse development or 5-6 story apartment in the corners of intersections.

Really wasted a lot of land .
 
And they get into their car for everything.

Got to get milk? Get into the car.

Got to get cash from the bank? Get into the car.

Got to see the doctor about my health? Get into the car.

Got to see the neighbour in the next block? Get into the car.
 
The problem isn't so much sprawl as it is demand in one small geographic area. If this kind of development was spread out across all of Ontario, it wouldn't really be an issue. I like what Ontario is doing with the anti-sprawl policy, but from my understanding, it applies to all of Southern Ontario. I think it should be limited to the GTA/GTHA.
 
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