sixrings
Senior Member
I thought the seminary land Tyndale was sitting on at the south east corner of baview and steeles was destined for single family homes.
Toronto 3000 Kennedy | 12.6m | 3s | Kingspound Development | TAES
- Thread starter interchange42
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maestro
Senior Member
Sorry, I haven't made note of these small infill developments as I have driven past them. Scarborough has seen vast amounts of land freed up since the turn of the millennium through de-industrialization that has created opportunities for lowrise residential developments. The farther north you get, the more like townhouse become singles and semis. This is north Finch; far away from any subway.
All singles is rare and I doubt this will stay that way. You can even say there's some back lotting going on.
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Fair enough. There are 30 of them there, although they're not on the southeast corner, so much as they are buried several hundred metres in and away from either arterial road, and totally surrounded by other single family homes.
Far from a subway, but still with a direct bus to the subway.
So, yes, I wonder if planners will ask for greater density here, or if they'll give this a go ahead. We don't exactly have minimums that we're forcing developers to build beyond (and not something we run into often anyway!)
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maestro
Senior Member
A lot of the city is connected through direct routes to the subway. I believe the University Line extension was already funded when the community by York University was built. I believe it's primarily made up of singles and semis with a few townhouses much like the Stockyard and Beaches developments developed around the same time. The urban form is much more pleasing and the lots are roughly half the size of this one. Now that I think of it, I can't think of another large subdivision like those that has started in the past 10 years that isn't mostly townhouses. You might be right. There is still small infill (under 20 units) of single s and semis around.
PMT
Senior Member
I can't believe they want to scrawl "Valleyview Garden" over every bloody two-car garage, as if to cudgel the residents into bleating "I can see a valley, I can see a valley…" All they'll see here will be scraps of lawn between wide driveways dominated by a sea of cars.
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bilked
Senior Member
Looks like quite an innovative landscape design based on the first render, with homeowners driving over their front lawns to get to their garage.
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Avenue
Active Member
These are the ugliest houses I've ever seen in my life and how they treated Kennedy Road is absolutely horrible. That said, this location is an absolute car suburb; easily one and a half hours away from downtown core by transit if everything goes OK. I think lack of density in the proposal is understandable. Or at least singles here is not as ridiculous as townhouses on Lawrence West couple of minutes away from subway, which we saw yesterday I think.
There should be a mid-rise proposed on Kennedy here, with townhomes behind.
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44 North
Senior Member
That's the future right there, ditto for the reverse address floating across the porch of the second home.
I think if we want a neighbourhood of true SFD homes we should copy the old. Give each property at most 6m lot width while providing back lanes for rear parking/garages. An open driveway or carport could fit two vehicles, a garage too but that'd be a tight squeeze (tho still doable). If not get a permit for street parking of a second vehicle. The rest of the property will have a 3-storey fully detached home not unlike the refurb'd Edwardians that are a dime a dozen in older areas of the city. Not looking at this closely, but surely a narrower but longer lot + land ceded for lanes would result in higher density (and greater developer profit) vs what we have here.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
check out Cornell. Lots of laneway housing in there too.
The big thing with laneway based houses is that it is actually more infrastructure intensive as you have to build 2 roads to service 1 home. It limits saleable land, even if it improves overall density.
The big thing with laneway based houses is that it is actually more infrastructure intensive as you have to build 2 roads to service 1 home. It limits saleable land, even if it improves overall density.
44 North
Senior Member
But ignoring Cornell's semis or towns and only focusing on the fully detached, the lot size seems to come in ~30% more than I'm talking here. Say 10x30m vs 6x35m or 5x30. Roads and curve radii larger too. And really we needn't bring up Cornell when we have areas south of St Clair to mimic. But good points about servicing, and for the other points you mentioned in the past when I brought this up (e.g reduced sightlines that come with a narrower road network).
Still though I'd like to see a proposal of all fully detached done in the way described. Or a more extreme variation where the lane/road network is switched to pedestrian paths, and parking moved to a group location near/offsite. In effect mimicking Toronto Islands' car-free neighbourhoods, albeit with larger houses. Obviously we have townhome areas like this going back decades, but would like to see this done with all detached SFDs. Just to show that we can create new developments that offer the full suburban dream, but much more urban.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
There are lots of that description in Cornell. Most of them are 9 or 10m lots, but there are a lot that are 6 or 7m frontages.
You can't really go skinnier than 7m or so on a detached home since you need a side yard - 0.5m side yards on a 6m lot only allow for a 5m wide home, which is starting to get too narrow to really function properly.
Road widths can certainly be reduced - Markham uses a 20m ROW. Toronto's standard is 18.5m with an 8m wide road.
Below 8m or so is troublesome for bidirectional traffic after getting in a row of parked cars - so once you get your sidewalks and grass medians in, 18m or so is about as thin as it gets.
If you are will to do one way streets you can get it down by another 2 or 3m, but that causes other issues.
Most old Toronto streets are actually 18m ROWs anyway - the big reason they feel much smaller is because the trees are so much larger and often only have 6 or 7m roads.
You can't really go skinnier than 7m or so on a detached home since you need a side yard - 0.5m side yards on a 6m lot only allow for a 5m wide home, which is starting to get too narrow to really function properly.
Road widths can certainly be reduced - Markham uses a 20m ROW. Toronto's standard is 18.5m with an 8m wide road.
Below 8m or so is troublesome for bidirectional traffic after getting in a row of parked cars - so once you get your sidewalks and grass medians in, 18m or so is about as thin as it gets.
If you are will to do one way streets you can get it down by another 2 or 3m, but that causes other issues.
Most old Toronto streets are actually 18m ROWs anyway - the big reason they feel much smaller is because the trees are so much larger and often only have 6 or 7m roads.
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44 North
Senior Member
Thanks for actually being technical. And yeah I guess you're right abt those 7m frontages. But with the 6m and 5m I mentioned I was already assuming a private side path from front/back (on one side only). So a 6m wide lot would have a 5.5m wide house, and 5m a 4.5m house. Hm, I guess that doesn't really work because then the path would be less than 2ft wide. Ok, let's say a 5.5m lot, with 1m path, and 4.5m house. Or shared path between two houses; which would give two 5m houses. "Narrow", arguably, especially when compared with modern detached homes. But still very functionable., particularly with newer interior layout standards. And decent square footage since it'd have a full third storey.
Maybe it's a bit pointless what I'm talking here. Feel like we'll eventually move toward this, and at least towns have been like this. Just would like to see true modern 3s detached homes that are as narrow and packed together as we used to build them. Not some frou frou attempt to be quaint. The standard Toronto Edwardian is as basic and malleable as they come. Lots of room for 21st C design when given a narrow rectangular base to work with.
And by default I was thinking mostly one-way, parking on one (or both) sides. Obviously some could argue one-way is bad for peds (moreso with arterials). But with narrower streets, on-street parking, tight grid network w/ small curve radii at intersections and short sightlines -by default this becomes pedestrian-friendly. Can't think of any major vehicular incidences on such older residential streets south of, say, Davenport.
Site Plan rejigged in a December 2017 resubmission so that Fort Dearborn now extends to Kennedy Road. It's sill all single detached homes instead of having any towns or low-rose apartment building along Kennedy, but at least the road network isn't so punishingly awful.
http://app.toronto.ca/DevelopmentAp...4067791&isCofASearch=false&isTlabSearch=false
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http://app.toronto.ca/DevelopmentAp...4067791&isCofASearch=false&isTlabSearch=false
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