Sorry for the late reply. I've had a very busy summer, and haven't been on UrbanToronto for a while.
Can you give any specific reasons why it would be "wrong" to put a tall building next to a 2 to 3 storey house, other than that it would piss off rich people?
Because it's simply bad urban design. Putting tall buildings directly next to 2 to 3 storey homes would feel like standing next to a giant. That's why it's reasonable to increase density gradually (ex. 4 storey next to the small homes, then 6, then 12, etc). Also, almost every Canadian is a homeowner and lives in a home. It's wrong to generalize homeowners as "rich people".
(see above)
Many more reasons - too many to explain.
Not the case at all. Historically this was a forest. Then a road was cut through and it was large estate lots and some 1 to 3 storey buildings for a long time. Yonge & Scrivener/Shaftesbury then became home to a major train station in the 1910s and grew in importance and centrality. Then the station closed in the 1930s and the area was less important until the subway opened in the 1950s and it picked up again. Then some mid-rise office and residential buildings came in the last 50 years. The only constant about this area, post wilderness, is that it has constantly changed as the population has grown. As it will continue to do.
Yes, every place in the world was once covered in nature. So what? That alone does not prove your point. This stretch of Yonge is successful at being a vibrant retail main street, and has had much history in making this a unique community. The fact that it used to be a forest does not prove your point of there "being no constant".
Actually... this would definitely solve the housing crisis. Imagine 10 house owners in a great location near transit could get together and pool their land for minimal cost and allow a tall housing building to be built. This would pull the rug out from under the land values of those who currently own developable lands in the Centres and Mixed Use Areas, and drive down the cost of housing immediately. Abundance of supply also generally drives down cost.
Allowing tall buildings to be built anywhere would solve the unaffordability of condos/apartments, but would not do anything for people that need more space or just generally don't want to live in a tall building. Also, Line 1 (Yonge section) is already very overcrowded and that is why adding huge amounts of density along the entire street would be reckless. In my opinion, it is better to shift density around other transit lines (and sections of Line 1) that have room for ridership growth. Even with the Ontario Line, the Yonge subway will still be near capacity. While I agree that supply matters, planning policy should not be solely based on statistics & economics. There is much more to consider when building a city, such as livability, transportation, how people experience it, adequate habitats for people, and much much more. Every time that planners made decisions & policies simply based on statistics, it created many unintended consequences. Planning is about shaping the city, and doing so by considering as many perspectives as possible for what the people want their city to be.
This is, for sure, part of the solution.
Of course! Allowing sensitive & contextual development in
Neighbourhoods is a much better solution than pushing for max heights in every development that is located in
Centres,
Downtown, or along the
Avenues... sadly many continue to push for max heights as if it's the only solution. My preferred approach is, in my opinion, a thoughtful evolution of the city that fixes our problems without wrecking what makes people love this city in the first place. We've seen how destructive the wrecking ball approach of the 20th century was to our cities. Many small communities were demolished in favour of huge towers, and we now know that it didn't only destroy identity... it also destroyed the tiny details that made the city work in the first place.
Who advocated for "uncontrolled development with infinite heights"? Me? Don't think so.
On the topic of "transportation impacts" -- well, here's the thing. People are moving to Toronto. That isn't going to stop. Should we not allow and even encourage housing next to subway stations? Like the very site we are discussing in this thread? Otherwise those people are going to buy cars and make it harder for everyone to move around town. So density near transit makes a lot of sense. This argument works against you.
What is a "visual" or "social" "impact" of a tall building? Sounds to me like NIMBY code words for "people not like us" and "more people". Serious question, what is a "visual" or "social" "impact" of a tall building? What does this mean?
1. Sorry, you are advocating for very significant heights around subway stations. Except... don't forget, we still have our
Avenues that are well-served by transit - some even with streetcars. We can transform them by speeding up transit via space allocation & good service planning (plus speeds), and most importantly make developing sites along
Avenues easier by giving developers automatic planning permission. This would mean that developers wouldn't need to go through long Official Plan Amendment or Zoning By-law Amendment processes (often adds years to the approval process), and would only require them to submit a Site Plan Application (which only reviews design + technical details). This would give developers certainty of how much profit they could make from these sites (trust me, they care much less about being forced to add bike parking or decorative pavers), thereby shifting more development outside of the overgrown parts of our city, while providing a housing typology that is more attractive for consumers along with a pretty good foundation for infrastructure & amenities. Of course, we could also change our Mid-Rise Building Performance Standards which make for excessive restrictions (on stepbacks, floor width, etc) fueled by NIMBYism, but that's a whole other topic.
2. I agree that generally subway station areas should not have low-rise density, save for a few exceptions. I take a balanced approach to this issue. I don't think we should stack as much density as possible on each site, and I have explained above.
3. Believe it or not, our built environment impacts us as people. That is what I mean by social impacts. Think about the tower-in-the-park typology (housing projects). One big reason for their failure is due to how austere the buildings & public realm were designed. They are often disconnected from the city either by location or due to excessive setbacks from streets, do not create the right conditions for activation of public spaces... rendering them desolate and just about right for criminals, and the design aesthetic is one that most people (except for a few crazy architects) could not possibly care about. The quality of our built environment directly influences whether or not we actually care about these places (
great explanation here).
4. Believe it or not, aesthetics matter. Of course, I could talk about how tall buildings (when poorly designed in shape) create huge shadows, deteriorate the vibrancy of the public realm, and can really look like monoliths or ugly eyesores when poorly located or massed. I would like to mention the fact that many people still do care about aesthetics, and most developments in Toronto are a) poorly executed in the quality of materials b) have lazy and/or repeated designs c) have no regard for context, do not preserve the context's identity, and do not create identity and d) are regarded as ugly or "nothing special" or "I've seen the same building in literally every city in the world" by most people. The fact that people think of beauty as "purely subjective" is very sad, and has contributed to our society's apathy for architecture (in the sense that we don't demand it anymore).
Don't care. They are already too loud and have too much influence. Being scared of them getting louder and more annoying is not a principle around which to build policy. I just don't care what NIMBYs think.
That's not how the world works. We don't live in a dictatorship and, at the end of the day, all planning policies are approved by City Councillors who want to get re-elected. If we are to solve Toronto's problems, we have to think of how to convince people that our ideas are great... and most importantly, we have to learn from people on how to make our ideas better. Many NIMBYs aren't opposed to new housing, they're just opposed to how housing is getting built. And very often, it all comes down to the tiny details. Many people are very happy to accept developments that make their communities better, and surprisingly... those that are attractive. People hate their quaint neighbourhood turning into an uncoordinated overbuild of glass boxes. They're just not sophisticated enough to see how, with some tweeks, development can be a nice thing. That's why we need to hear their concerns... because we can learn from them while still solving our city's challenges.
