A future midrise Toronto/urban renewal in the future?

[Hipster Duck]

There is still a fair amount of development to go before we are at a point where the tight availability of land accelerates the process of conversion from low to mid-rise. If anything residential neighbourhoods in the central city are going the opposite way at the moment Hipster Duck. These neighbourhoods are de-populating and re-converting into large single-family homes. It is really a process of un-slumming, it's just that the slums are middle-class slums.

I would describe the current environment in much of the central city outside the downtown core (where you would expect to find mid-rise districts) as transitional. Land valuations at present make current usages unsustainable, while costs and the regulatory environment make densification difficult to work physically and financially.

The reason that lowrise central city neighbourhoods are depopulating is because they're, ironically, very desirable and popular. That is, prices are driven up by their increasing desirability to a lot of people, but only the rich (who tend to be childless, because children cost a lot of money) can afford to live in them. It's a paradox.

But, of course, this paradox belies the fact that a lot of people want to move downtown, they are driving up prices, and one day they may drive up the value of land in a desirable central city area up to the point that a developer can justify buying a few lots, tearing the semis down, and building something at a very high density. We may not be at that point yet, but I think we will be soon. It's not unprecedented: the Upper East Side of New York went from a genteel area of mansions to a genteel area of apartment towers without ever losing its desirability.

I also think that regulatory constraints will become relaxed. As rich and powerful as current lowrise homeowners are, they won't have strength in numbers (especially if those areas continue to depopulate, while neighboring condo areas gain in population), and developers - who are often more powerful than even the most powerful ratepayers associations - will be salivating over the land those homes sit on.

 

[diminutive]

short and to the point

Slate: Preserving Single Family Homes Makes Neighborhoods Less Affordable
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox...als_affordability_or_single_family_homes.html

Toronto's really not that different from the City planners Yglesias mentions. For instance...

"Laneway housing is not a key component in the City's plans for growth," says David Oikawa, Manager of Community Planning for Toronto and East York. "Laneway housing has potential adverse impacts such as over-intensification of lots, servicing issues, health and safety issues and overlook into adjacent properties. Laneway housing may be acceptable in a neighbourhood where there is a history of it in the neighbourhood and it forms part of the character of an area, but laneway housing needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine if fits within a neighbourhood."

The last sentence which I bolded suggests just how incompatible the City views intensification to the single-family-home neighbourhood.

The entire Official Plan's emphasis on "stable neighbourhoods" gives off basically the same vibe; low rise neighbourhoods are off limits, period. We're seeing a huge drop in affordability outside of the small condo segment and the City's policy response is to basically cordon off ~90% of the City to even modest densification.

 

[diminutive]

I also think that regulatory constraints will become relaxed. As rich and powerful as current lowrise homeowners are, they won't have strength in numbers (especially if those areas continue to depopulate, while neighboring condo areas gain in population), and developers - who are often more powerful than even the most powerful ratepayers associations - will be salivating over the land those homes sit on.

First, I'm enthusiastic that the main limit to more creative development does seem to be regulatory rather than economic. It's way easier to change regulations than economics!

That said, I'm skeptical we will in fact see a policy change. Just look at how the City's reacted to lane-way housing. Big chunks of the Cities urban, political-bureacratic-ideational brain trust seems highly conservative when it comes to development. Look at Gord Perks and the weird ban on bars in Parkdale. A few hardware stores get replaced with bars and all of a sudden it's time for a moratorium!

I don't think the kind of small scale, iterative, development we're all hoping for here would fly in this City. Planning and City Council would basically have to move out of the way entirely, and that would never happen!

 

[BobBob]

This is why Toronto looks like Hong Kong, in spite of our abundant land and flat geography.

They've had physical mountains squeezing all development into narrow pockets, and we have regulatory ones. The effect is the same!

 

[Hipster Duck]

First, I'm enthusiastic that the main limit to more creative development does seem to be regulatory rather than economic. It's way easier to change regulations than economics!

That said, I'm skeptical we will in fact see a policy change. Just look at how the City's reacted to lane-way housing. Big chunks of the Cities urban, political-bureacratic-ideational brain trust seems highly conservative when it comes to development. Look at Gord Perks and the weird ban on bars in Parkdale. A few hardware stores get replaced with bars and all of a sudden it's time for a moratorium!

I don't think the kind of small scale, iterative, development we're all hoping for here would fly in this City. Planning and City Council would basically have to move out of the way entirely, and that would never happen!

Never say never! Belief systems have a habit of moving so far to one extreme that a new generation reacts against it and pushes it back to another extreme. When Jane Jacobs wrote the Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, she was living in one extreme: governments using eminent domain to force people out of neighborhoods to build megaprojects with no prior consultation. Nowadays, we live on the other extreme: we are forced to engage with the public through extensive consultation processes that are then hijacked by NIMBYs (aka: the loudest, wealthiest minority) that lead to almost nothing getting done.

Vancouver has even greater housing affordability problems and development pressures than Toronto so I consider it to be our "canary in the coal mine". In Vancouver, the idea that single family homes in the central city are increasingly owned by wealthy aging empty nesters, while young families of even the professional classes are forced to raise kids in condo dens or in outer suburbia, is stirring some noticeable feelings of intergenerational resentment. Right now it's still a murmur, but I feel like it's building up to a roar. The single family home NIMBYs still have the upper hand, and they seem louder and more shrill than ever before, but perhaps that's because they need to defend themselves more; people who wish to intensify and densify feel that it's a fight worth starting whereas they didn't in the past.

 

[Dan416]

Yep,

Building housing like this would increase the built density by about 1.7x-5x and could be built on just 1-2 typical Old Toronto residential lots and not be out of scale.
http://goo.gl/maps/HpzdZ
http://goo.gl/maps/Oqj3n
http://goo.gl/maps/Nu7Cf
http://goo.gl/maps/5oDph (Greenpoint/Williamsburg seem to be getting a lot of incremental intensification like this)
http://goo.gl/maps/HxEo0

I just want to bring these pictures back into the mix, because I really like this kind of built form and it would be great for a lot of streets, especially streets with LRT or subway on them. I know they're not exactly welcomed with the planning regime we have right now, but it's part of what makes Toronto seem so...provincial, even compared to a smaller city like Montreal.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

dimunitive:

Don't just blame the politicians or bureaucrats though -the fact of the matter is that single detached housing (and the owners therein) is considered sacrosanct - there is a reason why a good chunk of the city is labelled as "stable neighbourhoods" and more or less isolated from redevelopment pressures. You can see the same patterns in the burbs as well - the last thing any politician would touch is any policy that rocks the boat for this sacred segment of the electorate.

AoD

 

[diminutive]

^AoD

Yes, in fairness to politicians/bureaucrats, they may well be responding to genuine public opposition to any change to the status quo vis a vis SFDs.

I think it's difficult to treat public opinion as totally exogenous to elite opinion here, though. The zoning-planning decisions reinforce and legitimize status quo nimbyism. If someone today opposed a ~30 storey condo at Yonge n Eg or somewhere downtown, they'd be discredited as baseless NIMBYs who are out of touch with the official plan.

Surely there would be opposition redeveloping 'stable' neighbourhoods, but there was (strong) opposition to building condos at Yonge-Eg, too. The City doesn't have to codify and legitimize every single NIMBY movement it comes across.

I think the bigger issue is that most of the urban planning elites themselves view residential area stability in romantic terms. As a counter movement to earlier perceived disregard for preexisting character, there's been an acceptance of stability and character preservation as a paramount objective.

 

[jaycola]

Looking at the corner of Yonge and Steeles on the Markham side above. It is financially viable to convert the singles just inside the development zone to midrise? I count about 26 lots. In that area, probably $25,000,000 at market value. In order to get an assembly have to pay $40M. How many units could you build in midrise?

 

[Memph]

Looking at the corner of Yonge and Steeles on the Markham side above. It is financially viable to convert the singles just inside the development zone to midrise? I count about 26 lots. In that area, probably $25,000,000 at market value. In order to get an assembly have to pay $40M. How many units could you build in midrise?

Maybe something like seven hundred 750sf units? I'm assuming an FSI of about 3.

 

[jaycola]

Maybe something like seven hundred 750sf units? I'm assuming an FSI of about 3.

If you could buy the land for $40m, and build the 700 units that would be about $57,000 for land value. If you could build at $200 sq ft for midrise, that would be $207,000, add in $42,000 (wow) in development fees and we are under $250,000.

Room for profit there too. I guess the numbers work pretty good.

 

[innsertnamehere]

$180 is the standard for construction costs IIRC.

 

[waterloowarrior]

here is the 2012 Altus construction cost guide http://www.altusgroup.com/media/43669/CostGuide_2012_web.pdf. Don't forget soft costs like marketing, consultant fees etc and interest.

 

[monkeyronin]

The reason that lowrise central city neighbourhoods are depopulating is because they're, ironically, very desirable and popular. That is, prices are driven up by their increasing desirability to a lot of people, but only the rich (who tend to be childless, because children cost a lot of money) can afford to live in them. It's a paradox.

This isn't tenable in the long term however. Eventually prices will reach the point where buying an entire house will be out of reach to all but the ultra-wealthy and so they'll once again be subdivided into units small enough to be sold at a cost that the market can absorb. Likewise, existing homeowners will be motivated (either by rising property tax costs or just the income potential) to sell or rent off parts of their homes. Not unlike in London right now, where homeowners have gone so far as to turn <100 sqft. broom closets into apartments that they can sell for a few hundred thousand pounds. They've retained their largely 2-3 floor Georgian & Victorian housing stock but home sizes have become the smallest in the western world.


We might reach that point, but I doubt we'll ever have the need to wholesale demolish our traditional housing stock to meet population demands. Between laneway housing (anyone know how many houses exist within inner Toronto? Because that'd be about the number of possible sites to build new homes. And that's a whole lot), creative infill, high-rise development at key locations, and thoughtful mid-rise redevelopment throughout the city there should be enough space to accommodate a few million more people. There are enough expendable buildings like this downtown and in the inner city that could be replaced with higher-density structures so as to not need to erase any of our quality historic vernacular.

And it's not as if these areas lack density as is - fully low-rise, Victorian neighbourhoods such as those surrounding Trinity Bellwoods already have densities in excess of 10,000 people/sqkm.

 

[diminutive]

We might reach that point, but I doubt we'll ever have the need to wholesale demolish our traditional housing stock to meet population demands. Between laneway housing (anyone know how many houses exist within inner Toronto? Because that'd be about the number of possible sites to build new homes. And that's a whole lot), creative infill, high-rise development at key locations, and thoughtful mid-rise redevelopment throughout the city there should be enough space to accommodate a few million more people. There are enough expendable buildings like this downtown and in the inner city that could be replaced with higher-density structures so as to not need to erase any of our quality historic vernacular.

I agree with you in that would be the ideal situation. There are more than enough forgettable buildings, laneway houses and parking lots which could be intensified. In many ways, once you get outside the old City, there are tons more bungalows which could be intensified and options for backyard cottages and such. Basically the City has enough land to handle population growth for decades without seeing any huge drop in affordability.

More likely though, I think, the City will try to keep it's stable-growth area divisions. The end result will be more or less sufficient development in terms of smaller condo units where you can squeeze units down to a couple hundred square feet, but larger family housing will be ignored.