Planned Sprawl in the GTA

[Palma]

aurora, Richmond hill, and Newmarket have current farm fields that are zoned for industrial or residential use.

thats really sad. What happens when all these farms disappear? And then people complain about food costs. Although to me food prices are cheap as a percentage of annual earnings, Cheap food = low quality

 

[TheTigerMaster]

How do you think other areas are able to build housing at lower costs then? A new suburban 3 bedroom detached house is about $400-450k in Edmonton, $300-350k in London and cheaper still in the United States, like about $120-150k in Indianapolis. Meanwhile in Toronto's suburbs such a house would cost $600k in Brampton or Durham, and $900k to $1m in York.

That is a good point. Don't really have an explanation for that. Does cost of construction vary significantly by region?

 

[innsertnamehere]

lower finishing standards, smaller houses, cheaper infrastructure (budget streetlamps and crappy parks), and lower labour costs. Places like Texas have tons of new build houses under $300,000, but a lot of them are built with illegal mexican immigrant labour that gets paid $5 an hour. Also significantly lower soft costs as the approvals process is not nearly as extensive.

If you look at a new home in Toronto that sells for $700,000, it is likely built entirely out of brick, will have granite counters, hardwood throughout, expensive roof features, etc. A house in London will be 2/3 the size, aluminum siding, basic fittings, gravel driveway, etc. Building the same new home in London as in Suburban Toronto will likely cost $600,000 instead of 700,000. When comparing apples to apples, it is often not that different.

 

[Memph]

I dunno... I think the price difference is bigger than you suggest even when comparing apples to apples. It's hard to find similar housing to suburban Toronto's with brick all around (if not stone) in areas of Ontario outside Toronto's sphere of influence, but here's one of the better comparisons I could find:

About 2 year old house in Woodstock, $450k:
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/...1056-UPPER-THAMES-DR-Woodstock-Ontario-N4T0H2
Brick all round, unfinished basement. Hardwood floors on ground floor. About 1500 sf backyard.

About 7 year old house in Brampton, $700k
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/...tario-L7A0M8-Northwest-Sandalwood-Parkway#v=d
About 10% bigger than Woodstock house, and also has finished basement with kitchen and bathroom facilities. Hardwood floors on ground floor, upstairs and basement. About 1500 sf backyard.

About 12 year old house in Aurora, $960k
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/...E-DR-Aurora-Ontario-L4G7S1-Bayview-Wellington
Brick all round, so similar to Woodstock house, but about 20% bigger, finished basement with bathroom facilities (but no kitchen and broadloom). Hardwood floors on ground floor and upstairs. About 700 sf backyard.

About 15 year old house in Vaughan, $840k
https://www.realtor.ca/Residential/...26-STONEBRIAR-DR-Vaughan-Ontario-L6A2N2-Maple
Brick all round, but 30% smaller than Woodstock house, finished basement with bathroom facilities (but no kitchen and broadloom). Hardwood floors on ground floor and upstairs. About 300 sf backyard.

I think that the Woodstock home would be worth about $600k if it was more like the Brampton home, to nicely finish the basement and have hardwood floors upstairs and downstairs in addition to the main floor and account for the 10% size difference (+$50k), so for Brampton, the location premium over Woodstock is about as you suggest.

However, the Aurora home is quite a bit more expensive, and the Vaughan home, when you consider it's not so new, significantly smaller and has virtually no backyard, has a huge premium, costing probably more than double what it would cost in Woodstock.

The location premium for close-in York Region, Mississauga and Oakville is significantly greater than for Brampton. For other suburbs the location premium is similar to Brampton's.

So then the first question is why is there a 10-15% premium for Brampton vs Woodstock, and why is there a 50%+ premium for housing in Vaughan vs Brampton? And since the GTA has an affordability problem compared to other parts of Ontario, why are new homes fancier rather than being built more modestly in order to be more affordable?

 

[W. K. Lis]

...

So then the first question is why is there a 10-15% premium for Brampton vs Woodstock, and why is there a 50%+ premium for housing in Vaughan vs Brampton? And since the GTA has an affordability problem compared to other parts of Ontario, why are new homes fancier rather than being built more modestly in order to be more affordable?

Why do people buy cars with air conditioning, bluetooth, and backup cameras?

The same reason people buy homes with air conditioning, wired for both cable & fibre, and stainless-steel appliances.

 

[Memph]

Why do people buy cars with air conditioning, bluetooth, and backup cameras?

The same reason people buy homes with air conditioning, wired for both cable & fibre, and stainless-steel appliances.

Maybe I wasn't clear. My second question was about why new homes in the GTA are more likely to have these various fancy features than new homes in other regions, especially when you consider that the higher location premium should mean less money left over for such luxuries.

You can't really say it's about incomes, since new subdivisions of London seem to have relatively similar incomes to new subdivisions of Toronto despite housing that's almost 3 times cheaper.

 

[kdoubled]

Planned sprawl in Markham, or should I say Neighbourhood Area...

And then there's the extension of the monster that is Donald Cousens Parkway...

Here's what it looks like now: (hurts every time I see it.)

Markham: The city that strives for urban, yet allows this garbage.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Donald Cousens is essentially provincial infrastructure that MTO didn't want to build so Markham built it. It serves as a bypass of Markham for Highway 48.

It's not supposed to be urban. It routes rural traffic around the city. It has designated greenfield areas on one side for christs sake.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Looks like a want-to-be-expressway. It will "feel" like one wants to drive at expressway speeds on it.

 

[kdoubled]

Donald Cousens is essentially provincial infrastructure that MTO didn't want to build so Markham built it. It serves as a bypass of Markham for Highway 48.

It's not supposed to be urban. It routes rural traffic around the city. It has designated greenfield areas on one side for christs sake.

While there are designated greenway east of Ninth Line, the extension will plow through unprotected areas, which will no doubt encourage sprawl up in those areas. I understand that it is not meant to be urban, but 2-3 lanes in each direction with median? Bordering Cornell, a new-urbanist community? They are actually homes facing the road. It is an expressway and extending it will do more harm than good.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Zoning can be the main cause that supports sprawl.

From The Star, at this link:

Toronto’s grudge against apartments: Micallef

Toronto’s 40-year-old Official Plan has vast parts of Toronto where only single detached homes are permitted.

Toronto has a grudge against apartments, a sentiment expressed in various ways.

A few weeks ago, a group in Parkdale held a public meeting on development in their community and invited speakers from other neighbourhoods to share knowledge on how to influence good development. The byzantine planning process is difficult to negotiate, so sharing knowledge is critical to being effective. Good design, affordability, and community amenities are all part of what people want.

The problem is the way this well-meaning group and countless other local campaigns are positioned. This particular one focused on the “900 luxury units” coming to the area. That’s an incredible way to refer to the tiny units that are most condos built in Toronto today, hardly “luxury.” Making it even more remarkable is some of the invited speakers were single-family homeowners.

So warped are perceptions in Toronto that even progressive folks consider tiny condo apartments, the first rung of the property ladder that people claw their way into, as “luxury,” but homes in the million dollar range or more are somehow not. There’s also a perception that those homeowners “contribute” to the neighbourhood and, in this case, the 900 apartment dwellers somehow wouldn’t.

To be sure, owning a house in Toronto is also a feat of economic gymnastics for many people. “The bank owns my house” is a frequently heard phrase, and the state of being “house poor” is common. It isn’t easy. But this damaging way of looking at how we live, when the single family home is valourized so passionately, ultimately means much of the city is nearly impossible to get into unless you can afford a house.

Sean Galbraith, an urban planner, shared a revealing map on social media last week that he created by pulling information from Toronto’s open data sets. Though the phrase “ugh, more condos” is a pan-Toronto rallying cry, the map shows that such things are actually allowed in relatively few parts of the city.

“I think that it reveals the problem with essentially using a 40-year-old zoning bylaw, albeit updated,” he says. “It is still a product of outmoded, decades-old ideas about separation of uses, and it rigidly enforces Official Plan policies that strongly discourage doing something different, even if compatible, in neighbourhoods.”

The map highlights the vast parts of Toronto where only single detached homes are permitted, and a smaller area where semi-detached are allowed. “I have residential clients who would like to do duplexes and triplexes, but are stymied because of zoning or development and parkland charges, making them unaffordable,” says Galbraith. “As a result, neighbourhoods with declining populations are robbed of the opportunity to have new neighbours, people who will spend money in local shops.”

Couple this with ratepayer and historic preservation groups in places where mixed-use infill is allowed but who loudly oppose not just six, eight, or 10 storey mid-rises on main streets, but nearly every attempt at gentle density inside neighbourhods. In the old City of Toronto such groups have opposed townhouses, basement apartments, lot splitting, and duplex creation. This tactic may appeal to those already in, but it alienates everybody else, especially younger people.

Is kicking the ladder out once you’re in really the Toronto way?

The anti-apartment sentiment has sadly been strong in Toronto for a long time. The old City of Toronto long-resisted apartments, and today lacks the wealth of 1920s’ “walk ups” other cities enjoy. Streets that do have them were often in former municipalities, like Vaughan Rd. north of St. Clair Ave., in what was the old City of York, and on nearby Lonsdale Rd. that was located in the Village of Forest Hill until a 1967 amalgamation with Toronto. These are both good apartment streets, but they’re rare.

Today, amalgamated Toronto needs hundreds more of these kinds of apartment buildings, especially rental and affordable units, but the restrictions, both official and community led, result in tremendous pressure placed on the places that do permit apartment growth, like Liberty Village, where they tend to sprout up quite high.

Liberty Village is often vilified by people in single-family homes as being a “slum in the making” but it’s one of Toronto’s hero neighbourhoods, helping the city live up to its self-congratulatory “You Belong Here” motto while it whispers, “stay out.”

The stakes are high. Old Toronto missed out on building apartments when it could, now we’ve conspired to make apartment living a bad thing in much of the city. Don’t like tall buildings? Then fight for density to be spread across the city. Inclusive ratepayer and historic preservation groups that do this will be the new civic heroes.

“Everyone complains about tall towers downtown, and everyone wants mid-rise, but part of the problem is an inability to unlock additional small-scale intensification in existing neighbourhoods,” says Galbraith. “Affordable housing is always a hot-button issue, and combined with both the inability to create and resistance to infill, I think the answer is obvious: we should provide more smaller scale housing options everywhere in the city.”

 

[Memph]

What's the most you can build in the "other residential" zone? Those areas cover most of Old Toronto which has the strongest demand, but still experience relatively little development these days.

Also the "non-residential" zone in grey is a bit misleading. It seems to consist of areas that allow non-residential uses, but doesn't distinguish between the mix used zones, which usually allow high density (midrise to highrise) residential along with commercial and sometimes industrial uses, and the employment zones (and parks, schools, etc) that do not allow any residential and probably make up the majority of that land. It would be interesting to see the mix used zones in a different colour.

 

[James]

I actually wonder how long before advocates start pushing for the "detached only" zones to be opened up for high-rise development.

 

[Johnny Au]

The Toronto Star article mentions Vaughan Road. It's ironic that the former City of York is the only one with a declining population, despite its numerous apartments (though the decline is primarily due to loss of manufacturing jobs).

 

[Memph]

How many apartments have been built during the time period it lost population though? The ones on Vaughan Rd would have been built mainly in the 50s-60s (or earlier) and helped get it to reach its peak.