Height Restrictions in Toronto

[dt_toronto_geek]

Looking of whats happening around the world, i doubt this is the right time to slam the brakes on investment..
And Yeah, if your sending the wrong message to developers......, dont tell me that the City of Toronto will still keep on building at the same pace,
Im hoping council talks it over and puts these GUIDLINES to rest for the next decade or two.

It's my opinion that we are building a house of cards here in Toronto anyway at this point, if it slows down development for a few years I don't think that's a bad thing. Far too much damage will be done to the city in the next decade or two - let alone in just the next few years if the Downtown Tall Buildings project isn't adapted.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I'm fairly agnostic on this issue. I enjoy the odd tall tower but I don't actually see anything intrinsically good about them. The idea that height restrictions are some kind of draconian cap on development is absurd. What we are experiencing currently is a hubris of a supply side push. It is suppliers trying to push demand, rather than a market dictating the form of supply.

I feel many people are buying the propoganda. The sustained campaign by the real estate and development industry to paint a picture of dwindling land scarcity is designed to optimize profits by squeezing as many tiny one-bedroom units as possible per sqft of land. I have no problem with optimizing profits, I encourage them. But there is a distinction between the interest of profit optimization and the form of city building that creates high-quality sustainable communities. The projections for need for height are wildly out of whack with the reality of population growth and densities required to achieve this growth. They are also wildly out of whack with the reality of the vast geographic area consumed by urbanization in the GTA. Toronto could add millions of people without ever building a building over 10 storeys tall again. I think I calculated once that the population of Toronto could be around 7 million if we just had densities achieved by 2-3 storey low-rise communities in the old city of Toronto covering 50% of Toronto's land-mass. That is a hypothetical only of course, it's not like we can bulldoze existing subdivisions and put semi's on them but it shows you how ridiculous the notion is that we "need" tall buildings to develop and densify.