Toronto 350 Davenport | 29.56m | 8s | BBB

Don't forget about hanging shoes on overhead wires:

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This one is in Spain.

Even a picturesque German town isn't immune:

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Of all the things listed, you think the low hanging fruit, so to speak, is the wholesale burying of hydro infrastructure along kilometers of roads across the city?
And I said "wholesale" where, exactly? Are you being deliberately obtuse or is the virus getting to you?
The city looks as if it has been hit repeatedly with an ugly stick and it's obvious that nobody gives a shit.
On a site that where people obsess almost exclusively over skyline, building heights and number of cranes this should come as no surprise.
Wallow in your 'World Klass' ugliness, you get the cheap-looking city you deserve.
 
And I said "wholesale" where, exactly? Are you being deliberately obtuse or is the virus getting to you?
The city looks as if it has been hit repeatedly with an ugly stick and it's obvious that nobody gives a shit.
On a site that where people obsess almost exclusively over skyline, building heights and number of cranes this should come as no surprise.
Wallow in your 'World Klass' ugliness, you get the cheap-looking city you deserve.
Well, here:
Not to bury all of them (maybe eventually) but at least the ones on major streets in the core.
You can spend all you want on streetscape improvements but at the end of the day, if you still have teetering 19th century wooden hydro poles on your main streets like some 3rd world banana republic, what does it matter?
Not to mention the money wasted due to power outages caused by fallen tree branches, freezing rain, accidents etc.
 
"Not to bury all of them (maybe eventually) but at least the ones on major streets in the core."

Wholesale? lol
 
Hey guys glad to have a forum - I’m a local resident living on Chicora. Parking is a disaster in the area especially residential. How are there only 8 parking spots for 6 units? What is going to happen to the second cars and visitors? There is zero capacity locally for more cars. This thing needs 16 spots minimum 2 for each unit and some visitor parking.
 
Hey guys glad to have a forum - I’m a local resident living on Chicora. Parking is a disaster in the area especially residential. How are there only 8 parking spots for 6 units? What is going to happen to the second cars and visitors? There is zero capacity locally for more cars. This thing needs 16 spots minimum 2 for each unit and some visitor parking.

This is effectively precisely backwards -- if you are concerned about traffic in the area, you should be advocating for zero parking here, not 8 spots, and certainly not 16+. The City should absolutely not be encouraging vehicular parking, to say nothing of the massive cost that each additional vehicular parking space adds to a development pro forma, and the downdraft negative effect that has on affordability.

If you want less traffic in your area -- which is a completely understandable and supportable policy goal -- write your local councillor to support more bus service, BRT lanes, and bike lanes, and neighbourhood traffic calming and diversions.
 
Hi Andrew, welcome to the forum, happy to have you aboard.

One thing: if you're here to advocate for additional parking on an application such as this one, it's going to be an uphill battle.
 
Hi guys thanks for the replies. Apologies but I’m not an advocate for less traffic - at issue is parking. Maybe you guys can help me out - what is the issue exactly with the city approving new units with adequate parking? Happy to have an uphill discussion - however - what’s the issue? The expense of adding parking units to this development that can’t be offloaded onto the cost of the unit? Does the project become not feasible with more spots per unit? No one will pay over $2M for a unit and then have to fight it out on the street for a city parking spot 2 blocks away.
 
Studies in traffic reduction prove that success comes partly from being afforded different options to travel (better transit, more and better walking and cycling infrastructure, etc.) and partly from it being more difficult to drive. If parking is not being provided, then that second or third car becomes more of a pain than it's worth and can be disposed of. As you say, each unit is getting a space so it's not as though any one purchaser will be left without a space, but when we start worrying about multiple spaces for purchasers, you're going to lose most of the posters on this forum.

Look up 'induced demand' for the academic background to this phenomenon.
 
Hi guys thanks for the replies. Apologies but I’m not an advocate for less traffic - at issue is parking. Maybe you guys can help me out - what is the issue exactly with the city approving new units with adequate parking? Happy to have an uphill discussion - however - what’s the issue? The expense of adding parking units to this development that can’t be offloaded onto the cost of the unit? Does the project become not feasible with more spots per unit? No one will pay over $2M for a unit and then have to fight it out on the street for a city parking spot 2 blocks away.

All fair questions; taking them one by one:

> There are lots and lots of people in this city who have paid -- and of course many more who will pay -- for $2M+ units without parking; the underlying supposition of your point here seems to be that all rich people own cars, which is simply untrue.
> At today's construction costs in downtown Toronto, every single unit of parking costs a developer somewhere between $70,000-$100,000 and effectively every single cost in a development pro forma is passed on through the purchase price; development is only feasible if the margin on cost is high enough to satisfy a developer's investors, so when margins are tight, a big hard cost such as parking requirements can and frequently does either render a project unbuildable, or whittle away at other much more desirable project attributes (like the pursuit of higher sustainability metrics, community benefits, or architectural aesthetics). These are big problems in a city in the midst of an unprecedented housing affordability crisis that shows no structural signs of abating.
> Mandatory parking minimums (or just broadly advocacy for more parking) have significant negative externalities beyond just affordability (road congestion, added carbon emissions, etc.); the City -- and all its residents -- should in a broad sense be advocates for public policymaking that reduces negative externalities.

More simply and specifically put, think of the alternate scenario from which you have proposed: if you lobbied some combination of your councillor, the local planner, and the developer such that you were able to convince them that they should build this with zero parking, you'd actually be advocating for a position that is much more likely to net you the outcome for which you're searching (no added strain on the parking supply in your neighbourhood) -- you'd be getting people moving into this building who don't own cars at all.

If you're not interested in that approach, a much more productive one (from the standpoint of both your own personal interests and through a broader societal lens) would be to work with your councillor to change the parking regulations on your street (correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there is currently 1-hour free parking on Chicora and no permit parking), to introduce permit parking either exclusively throughout the day or for designated hours. This is done routinely throughout the city and is a very simple change for a councillor to enact.
 
Not sure it it's actually even feasible to build more parking on the site - they are using a stacker system here.

Anyways - there's a parking study document in the city documents for this site (granted it was undertaken in 2015).

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Many buildings in the core of the city are now dealing with issues of over-supply of underground parking as local residents drift towards car-less lifestyles.

Understandably, some households might necessitate the ownership of multiple cars (e.g. many contractors) which balks against the general trend. My advice is to seek out a neighbouring rental building with underground parking (whom are likely dealing with high parking vacancy), and striking a deal with the property manager for a spot.
 

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