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Chiming in here. I don't think we'll ever need to, at least in the foreseeable future, demolish our inner city housing stock. Smart growth would include building up all of the inner suburbs to the point that they actually feel like part of the city, with continuous density from Etobicoke to Scarborough; this will take decades and decades of growth.

Now, a lot of development is downtown, but that's the market reacting to the desirability of the older Toronto neighbourhoods. As our relatively new inner suburbs become more established, they too will see similar growth and (hopefully, I'm obviously speculating here) see a similar influx of modern development.

Part of the current draw to downtown/central Toronto is the older established neighbourhoods- by destroying and replacing them you're essentially creating what could be created anywhere else in the GTA. Since we're not geographically limited like a city such as Hong Kong, I see no reason for the city to not grow organically, while retaining historical nodes and thoroughfares.

Ultimately, and ironically, downtown is becoming more homogeneous and suburbanized with all the new condo development. Eventually I think we'll see this growth spread out because the things that make downtown desirable and interesting get continuously pushed to different and less central neighbourhoods. Successive waves of development then follow: the development of Queen West and the downtown west neighbourhoods illustrate this. This coupled with a (hopefully lasting) resurgence in heritage appreciation should lead to a more natural and widespread growth of the city.
 
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^while nice in theory, there are economic reasons why it can't happen. (I.E. I ask you, would you rather live in downtown Toronto or on kingston road with a 20 minute bus ride just to get to the subway?)

I support general intensification, but people always fail to look at the economics behind these lofty goals. midrises have huge upfront costs and are rarely worth the risk in the current market, leaving them to be all but a small subsect of the condo market today. Laneway housing has to be first legalized as well, and you have to remember infrastructure restraints for them all the while. Is a typical streets sewage pipe large enough to hand twice as many people using it?

The big problem facing the city IMO is finding ways to build large spaces on the cheap for families that isn't sprawl. How can we find ways to build 1200-1500 square foot homes that are semi-affordable so that families can live in the city comfortably? are laneway homes really the only answer to that?
 
The big problem facing the city IMO is finding ways to build large spaces on the cheap for families that isn't sprawl. How can we find ways to build 1200-1500 square foot homes that are semi-affordable so that families can live in the city comfortably? are laneway homes really the only answer to that?

I think the greater likelihood is that successive generations will become accustomed to smaller amounts of personal space. More like Asian cities. It's already happening. Land values alone in successful urban cores will be a major driver of this adjustment.

Comfort is, after all, a relative term. Older generations may find the new standards repugnant, even absurd. But I believe that's where we're headed. If all you've known are small spaces, you tend not to see them as small. They simply are what they are.
 
The big problem facing the city IMO is finding ways to build large spaces on the cheap for families that isn't sprawl. How can we find ways to build 1200-1500 square foot homes that are semi-affordable so that families can live in the city comfortably? are laneway homes really the only answer to that?

I don't think that we necessarily need to build these kinds of homes downtown, we just have to build neighbourhoods that are urban and well-connected.

We did this pretty successfully until about 1954. Places like Bloor West Village, Leaside and Bedford Park still enabled people to live in semi-detached homes within walking distance of a commercial main street that offered everything you'd want, even though these areas were many kilometers outside of the core.

It's definitely within the realm of economic possibility to redevelop large infill parcels in inner urban, but not downtown, areas at densities and housing types that are good for raising families: townhomes, semi-detached homes, etc. We've actually been reasonably successful on the housing front, but we've sucked big time at trying to emulate the commercial main streets that these areas should be tied to. A very good example is the former Stockyards area. Here we have a large, family-friendly neighbourhood of townhouses at the end of a semi-rapid streetcar line but the commercial area is a big box mall that could be straight out of Vaughan. Another example is the development near Warden station. Again: great homes to raise families, good access to the subway, but the lack of walkable commercial retail makes the area seem as desolate as a subdivision in Milton. Maybe it's not a housing problem or even an access to rapid transit problem. Maybe it's our inability to generate decent walkable retail strips in areas where it doesn't yet exist.

This is what is particularly troubling about Toronto compared to a city like Chicago or New York. There are still large swaths of ungentrified NYC (which includes the urban parts of Jersey) and Chicago where people can settle in areas where streetfront retail exists fairly cheaply. They may not offer much right now, but the physical stock of streetfront retail is there waiting to be transformed. In Toronto, we are pretty close to maxing out on our available streetfront retail districts; there's Weston, parts of Lake Shore Blvd. in Etobicoke (scratch that: those homes in Mimico are expensive), the outer Danforth near Vic Park and maybe Silverthorn along St. Clair West. After that, we've exhausted it all and we have to build these kinds of neighbourhoods from scratch.

There are a few glimmers of hope, though. This strip in Port Credit was pretty successful in building decent retail at grade in a place where it never existed.
 
I think the greater likelihood is that successive generations will become accustomed to smaller amounts of personal space. More like Asian cities. It's already happening. Land values alone in successful urban cores will be a major driver of this adjustment.

Comfort is, after all, a relative term. Older generations may find the new standards repugnant, even absurd. But I believe that's where we're headed. If all you've known are small spaces, you tend not to see them as small. They simply are what they are.

Families today are used to 2500 square feet.. getting it down to 1500 is going to be an achievement, yet alone 800. you also have to wonder if it is healthy to raise 2 kids in an 800 square foot home.
 
On the other hand Hipster I can see many ways in which our built form where low-rise residential housing dominates with some mid-rise at various nodes and high-rise interspersed throughout may actually be a superior built form to the kind of more homogenous mid-rise districts we envy. I'm not talking superior with respect to the kind of place young people like to hang out on vacation, I'm talking about superior in terms of balancing interests throughout the entire spectrum of human interest and human life cycle.

I'm in favour of mid-rise but the subtext of this thread is that it would be desirable to exchange what we have for mid-rise districts because that is a superior kind of land use. Is this true?
 
Chiming in here. I don't think we'll ever need to, at least in the foreseeable future, demolish our inner city housing stock. Smart growth would include building up all of the inner suburbs to the point that they actually feel like part of the city, with continuous density from Etobicoke to Scarborough; this will take decades and decades of growth.

Now, a lot of development is downtown, but that's the market reacting to the desirability of the older Toronto neighbourhoods. As our relatively new inner suburbs become more established, they too will see similar growth and (hopefully, I'm obviously speculating here) see a similar influx of modern development.

Part of the current draw to downtown/central Toronto is the older established neighbourhoods- by destroying and replacing them you're essentially creating what could be created anywhere else in the GTA. Since we're not geographically limited like a city such as Hong Kong, I see no reason for the city to not grow organically, while retaining historical nodes and thoroughfares.

Ultimately, and ironically, downtown is becoming more homogeneous and suburbanized with all the new condo development. Eventually I think we'll see this growth spread out because the things that make downtown desirable and interesting get continuously pushed to different and less central neighbourhoods. Successive waves of development then follow: the development of Queen West and the downtown west neighbourhoods illustrate this. This coupled with a (hopefully lasting) resurgence in heritage appreciation should lead to a more natural and widespread growth of the city.
Yes, the core is more desirable, which is why you're unlikely to get as much intensification in the suburbs. Also being further from the ammenities of the core and having (in most cases) poorer transit, a greater amount of parking will be required, and they don't have alleys to hide the parking on either, so you'll either have semi detached/attached homes with front loaded garages replacing bungalows or larger apartment buildings. That's why densification and urbanity should spread from downtowns outwards.

I would say the older neighbourhoods are mostly desirable because of the fine grained walkable urbanism. That's why new construction should also be fine grained walkable urbanism. As for downtown becoming homogenous, the scale of development is large to very large, we're talking about 100+ ft of frontage occupied by single bulidings designed by one architect. Walking on Bay St between St Joseph and Grenville for instance, you pass 5 developments with no smaller buildings in between which takes 6 minutes to walk, so on average you spend about 1 minute with the same thing by your side. In the older neighbourhoods you'd pass 50-100 individual owned buildings (15-30ft frontages) so about 1 new building every 4-7 seconds. The retailers are also somewhat limitted in how they can customize their storefronts if they're all part of a single large building. The wider streets of downtown are imo amplifying the issue caused by wide buildings because you have a wider field of view when you look across the street.

This is why I think it's important for the infilling of the older neighbourhoods to be fine grained. The fact that the lots are narrow would help for this, as well as preventing a too high level of density from being built (ie 4-5 storey height limits that can be raised gradually as densification proceeds). Gradually converting ground floor uses (thanks to increased density) on streets like Bathurst, Dufferin, Pape, Gerrard, Coxwell, Dovercourt, Ossington, (etc) or even some side streets ala Baldwin Village would make these neighbourhoods even more vibrant, and because the lots along these streets are narrow you'd have mostly just 1-3 shops per building making for a varied streetscape. There's a lot of places that have converted from residential to retail at one point or another, in addition to Baldwin Village, there's Kensington Market, Yorkville, Mirvish Village, as well as sections of Church, Parliament, Dundas... These were all residential (obvious from satellite) and were converted to commercial on the ground floor (granted somewhat cheaply): http://goo.gl/maps/F3zrQ

Here's a sketch of the type of built form I'm thinking of. This building would represent a ~4 fold increase in density over the neighbouring semi pair shown. My design was for large family sized units too (~1000-1400sf, none of which is stairs, an advantage over 2-3 storey homes, and btw they're building homes around this size in NE Calgary), and since this is only 4 storeys the per sf construction costs would be pretty low.
 
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I think the greater likelihood is that successive generations will become accustomed to smaller amounts of personal space. More like Asian cities. It's already happening. Land values alone in successful urban cores will be a major driver of this adjustment.

Comfort is, after all, a relative term. Older generations may find the new standards repugnant, even absurd. But I believe that's where we're headed. If all you've known are small spaces, you tend not to see them as small. They simply are what they are.

Certain dwelling sizes in major urban centers can decrease for a number of reasons (declining family size, better layouts), but there must be limits to this. Canada isn't like Japan. Even if Toronto-Vancouver is crowded, the rest of this country certainly isn't and if the differential in housing cost per sf gets too large it'll just lead to out-migration.

Just personally, I'm uncomfortable with banking on smaller dwelling sizes as a solution to affordability. Yes, 5000sf mega-mansions with wasteful layouts are inefficient and stupid, but the last thing we want to do is end up like Tokyo or Hong Kong where personal space is so expensive! It leads to deleterious social conditions (family formation becomes cost prohibitive).

Urbanists can end up coming off as insensitive to popular preferences in these circumstances. Personal space requirements are contingent, but that doesn't make them wrong. Look at the waves of immigrants from Asia who are, presumably, completely happy to have small units in Asia but go strait to Richmond Hill here. The desire for large houses, while sometimes taken to extremes, is understandable and something planning should try to accommodate.
 
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Families today are used to 2500 square feet.. getting it down to 1500 is going to be an achievement, yet alone 800. you also have to wonder if it is healthy to raise 2 kids in an 800 square foot home.

I was raised in a 2500 sq ft home. Now I'm raising my kids in a 1250 sq ft home. Being able story walk to a subway station and to stores was important to me. I don't thinking he only one. Traffic is terrible and it's not getting better. By the way I love my home and wouldn't trade it for my parents suburban home for anything. What I did do was buy a 2000sq ft house in Stratford for the times I get tired of the city.
 
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This is what is particularly troubling about Toronto compared to a city like Chicago or New York. There are still large swaths of ungentrified NYC (which includes the urban parts of Jersey) and Chicago where people can settle in areas where streetfront retail exists fairly cheaply. They may not offer much right now, but the physical stock of streetfront retail is there waiting to be transformed. In Toronto, we are pretty close to maxing out on our available streetfront retail districts; there's Weston, parts of Lake Shore Blvd. in Etobicoke (scratch that: those homes in Mimico are expensive), the outer Danforth near Vic Park and maybe Silverthorn along St. Clair West. After that, we've exhausted it all and we have to build these kinds of neighbourhoods from scratch.

Can't you just re-zone existing parts of the city so that streetfront is permitted? Doesn't seem like such a crisis.
 
On the other hand Hipster I can see many ways in which our built form where low-rise residential housing dominates with some mid-rise at various nodes and high-rise interspersed throughout may actually be a superior built form to the kind of more homogenous mid-rise districts we envy. I'm not talking superior with respect to the kind of place young people like to hang out on vacation, I'm talking about superior in terms of balancing interests throughout the entire spectrum of human interest and human life cycle.

I'm in favour of mid-rise but the subtext of this thread is that it would be desirable to exchange what we have for mid-rise districts because that is a superior kind of land use. Is this true?

If you read my very first post in this thread, you will see that I don't argue that midrise areas are "better" or "worse" than the low-rise, semi-detached status quo.

What I would argue, however, is that the low-rise, semi-detached status quo is unsustainable. Not 'unsustainable' in the environment/ecological sense of the word, but in the sense of being able to stick around in a culture of rapid population growth (almost impossible to change) and increasingly valuing central city living (not going away) without leading to massive price spikes and all the other nastiness that follows.

Hey, I think that living in a bay and gable is great if you are among the dwindling percentage of people who can afford it. Would I rather live in a 2,000 square foot home or a 500 square foot home if the home was in the same great neighbourhood? Of course I would pick the 2,000 square foot home. The problem is that there are a lot more people who would want to live in the core than what we are supplying, and right now the areas that we can build supply on are so tight and restricted that it only makes sense from a financial perspective to build 500 square foot shoeboxes in 50 storey towers. Something has got to give.
 
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Can't you just re-zone existing parts of the city so that streetfront is permitted? Doesn't seem like such a crisis.

I'd like to think it's an easy task, but it probably isn't. Still, I think that encouraging streetfront retail near areas that are, otherwise, family-friendly and relatively dense is probably the easiest thing we can do to give more families the possibility of living in a truly urban environment.
 

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