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From 2015 to 2017, UrbanToronto and its sister publication, SkyriseCities, ran an occasional series of articles under the heading Explainer. Each one took a concept from Urban Planning, Architecture, Construction, or other topics that often wind up in our publications, and presented an in depth look at it. It's time to revisit (and update where necessary) those articles for readers who are unfamiliar with them. While you may already know what some of these terms mean, others may be new to you. We will be (re)publishing Explainer on a weekly basis.
Along with the updated and republished articles, we are also adding to the Explainer series, filling in gaps in the general knowledge bank. This week's article is an overhaul of an earlier one.
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When reading about new buildings in our UrbanToronto Forum threads or other development sites, you likely come across terms used to classify buildings by height. Most commonly you'll see references to low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise, while less frequently you'll bump into supertall, and even more rarely, megatall! In today's Explainer, we describe the differences between these classifications.
On UrbanToronto, the definitions of low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise do not have a hard line between them. Low-rise is pretty obvious at the low end, but when do we switch up to mid-rise? Three storeys? Four? Five? On UrbanToronto, we would consider a townhouse complex at four storeys tall with doors to the units from the street to be low-rise, but a four-storey condo or apartment building with internal hallways to access the suites would be considered at the low end of mid-rise. As the City of Toronto explains on their Mid-Rise Buildings page, "they are bigger than houses but smaller than towers."
The City also considers the relationship of their height to with width of the street: mid-rise buildings are no taller than the width of the street they face. In most of the City, that means mid-rises go up to about 6 storeys, but on wider streets, they can go as high as 11 storeys. If a building is taller than the street it's on is wide, then the City considers it a high-rise.
Skyscraper is another relative term. Are all high-rises skyscrapers? In a smaller city or town, a 12-storey building might be considered a skyscraper as it may be the tallest building for miles around. In larger cities though, you have to be taller than that to impress.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, based in Chicago but with chapters around the world, and with a membership mostly made up of architects, planners, engineers, and developers, has become the de facto body for determining the classifications for towers, and while there is still a dispute as to whether true skyscrapers start at 100 metres or 150, generally everyone agrees that supertalls start at 300 metres, and the newest category, megatalls, start at 600 metres. While there are only 3 completed megatalls in the world, there are about 130 supertalls. Toronto's first supertalls are under construction now; The One, and Pinnacle One Yonge.
The world's tallest building, by far, is the 828 metre megatall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
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Do you have other planning terms that you would like to see featured on Explainer? Share your comments and questions in the comments section below!
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Want to read other Explainers? Click on the magenta Explainer box at the top of the page.
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