Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[jonny24]

I'm always struck by this subdivision, since it's so visible when you get on the 400:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.7267428,-...-U_7tgtq_L8vNpazpJ3cw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

From the front, these look like pretty high quality, dense, urban residences. And a street like this could work really well... IF at the end of street was a street with a whole bunch of shops, restaurants, and a transit line of some kind. But instead, there's absolutely zero yards, and just alley/garages and a balcony looking at your neighbour's balcony and garage, and you're a 20 minute walk top a mall or a half hour walk to a corner store!

At the very least, the corner units in developments like this should be small commercial for corner stores, little restaurants, neighbourhood pubs, etc.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Mister F

The biggest difference between old suburbs like Riverdale and more recent imitations is that in old suburbs the major roads are pedestrian oriented, traditional mixed use main streets. These streets are the core of the communities they pass through.

By contrast, new urbanist subdivisions in the 905 may look like Riverdale in the interior but they're ringed by pedestrian-hostile high speed stroads. These roads are the edges of communities, barriers that make each subdivision an island of walkability surrounded by hostility and danger. As long as this approach is taken these areas will always be car dependent no matter how walkable the internal streets are.

Outward growth wouldn't be such a big problem if we were willing to build suburbs the way we used to.

the way we used to build subdivisions was pave over everything in sight and institute a strict street grid with a dense arterial network.

The 60's version of planning was pave over everything with large arterials sporadically placed which have to handle medium amounts of traffic due to lower densities.

As time went on, subdivisions got denser, requiring higher traffic volumes on the limited arterial roads, and we stopped paving over sensitive environmental features.

Arterial grids are starting to get denser in many new growth areas again, reducing each roads impact, but environmental feature protections are stronger than ever to the point where basically half of the urban areas are handed over to natural features.. It's hugely detrimental to walkability and densities.

We won't build housing like we did in the 1920's because it isn't the 1920's. There isn't anything wrong with that either. Areas like North Oakville are pretty good models to me of how we should be building modern suburbs - dense lotting, small streets, density along major arterials, walkable commercial main streets off the arterials with neighbourhood commercial uses, and high enough densities to support transit. The only missing item really is a decent rail transit link in an area like that.

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by rousseau

There's a little waterfall there you may have heard of.

But like Hamilton also managed to have a city built around it...

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by jonny24

I'm always struck by this subdivision, since it's so visible when you get on the 400:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.7267428,-...-U_7tgtq_L8vNpazpJ3cw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

From the front, these look like pretty high quality, dense, urban residences. And a street like this could work really well... IF at the end of street was a street with a whole bunch of shops, restaurants, and a transit line of some kind. But instead, there's absolutely zero yards, and just alley/garages and a balcony looking at your neighbour's balcony and garage, and you're a 20 minute walk top a mall or a half hour walk to a corner store!

At the very least, the corner units in developments like this should be small commercial for corner stores, little restaurants, neighbourhood pubs, etc.

Yeah, I noticed it too the last time I was on the 400. They're really striking and quite handsome, but the lack of private green space in the back is a killer. It's an unfortunate catch 22 with these developments because you need somewhere to put the one or two cars that literally every single household is going to have.

These kinds of neighbourhoods are almost everything that the new urbanists are dreaming of, save for the lack of garden in the back. Otherwise they'd reach the high standard set by Victorian row houses in Britain.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think they're mostly a Boomer era initiative that was "green" and ensured that many suburbanites would continue to have access to bucolic areas nearby in the future. They're not necessarily good policies (is the farmland near Kitchener less sensitive than the stuff north of Richmond Hill? who knows?) and they're not compatible with all the other stuff this same group wants, like high immigration to allow for plentiful and affordable services. Not trying to trash this group but this is what it is, and the planning regime in place served their interests pretty well for a number of years after when it was implemented (Ontario Greenbelt began in 2005).

We also need to come to terms with some trade-offs like whether or not we really want Canada to have a much larger population and what that means for the environment and land use here. Although I think a lot of people are too pessimistic. The land use impact in many rural areas has been declining for years and is probably more important than the smaller urban footprint. Meanwhile we are in the middle of a shift away from fossil fuels. Even EVs aside, GHG emissions per km driven have dropped a lot.

It is still drummed in that we need a detached house with a lawn and a 3 car garage. This is not a good thing in terms of sustainability.

Being the second largest country by land says that we should allow more people in. We do have the resources to support ourselves and more. The problem is, we are developing the wrong places. Build large cities in places where there isn't farmland. That would mean places on the Canadian Shield would be good. Plan the cities out so that the waterways are protected. The way things are now, we won't be able to sustain ourselves on the land we have.

Originally Posted by lio45

Same here at first sight, but then thinking about it a bit, the idea of a "belt" is actually a really bad one (it'll get leapfrogged and you'll have tons of Miltons on the other side). Why not instead have the agricultural lands of the entire province (or even country) protected? Let's just do infill instead for the foreseeable future.

Green "belt" kinda means "it's okay, and even encouraged, to destroy the greenery that, unfortunately for it, happens to be beyond the belt", and when viewed like that, it's not a good idea in principle at all.

If there's a silver lining to the Putin/Ukraine global food crisis, maybe it'll be that it will further raise the price of good agricultural land up to the point where building million-dollar Welland-style shitboxes on it finally stops making financial sense for developers.

It won't. However, it might have people work either from home, or closer to work due to cost of transportation. The problem is that in Southern ON, that does mean still more development in farmland. Imagine if there was a 10 year moratorium on building on agricultural land. You might start seeing developers eyeing land that is north of the GTA and you might hear them lobby for better transit options north too. Maybe HSR along the Newmarket North Sub, Bala Sub and Mactier Sub would be where the government invests due to the fact that land along those do not have much farmland, and much of the area isn't too dense. Imagine places like Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Parry Sound becoming the next Oakville, Whitby or Aurora. It could happen, and be sustainable, and not destroy the land around it as bad.

Originally Posted by jamincan

The Greenbelt is not specifically about constraining development, despite what it might look like. It's composed of two environmentally significant features: first, the Niagara Escarpment, which is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is both ecologically important as home to a wide number of species at risk, but also a critically important ground water recharge area for Central Ontario.

Places to Grow is the primary instrument for controlling development in the GTA and surrounding areas and further restricts things beyond just the Greenbelt itself.

It is doing kinda what they did with the ravines of Toronto after Hurricane Hazel. It is there for many reasons.

Originally Posted by jonny24

I'm always struck by this subdivision, since it's so visible when you get on the 400:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.7267428,-...-U_7tgtq_L8vNpazpJ3cw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

From the front, these look like pretty high quality, dense, urban residences. And a street like this could work really well... IF at the end of street was a street with a whole bunch of shops, restaurants, and a transit line of some kind. But instead, there's absolutely zero yards, and just alley/garages and a balcony looking at your neighbour's balcony and garage, and you're a 20 minute walk top a mall or a half hour walk to a corner store!

At the very least, the corner units in developments like this should be small commercial for corner stores, little restaurants, neighbourhood pubs, etc.

They look horrible with no green anything. Sure, they have little tiny shrubs, but no trees to walk under that will provide shade in the heat.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by jamincan

The Greenbelt is not specifically about constraining development, despite what it might look like. It's composed of two environmentally significant features: first, the Niagara Escarpment, which is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is both ecologically important as home to a wide number of species at risk, but also a critically important ground water recharge area for Central Ontario.

This.

A significant amount of Ontario's cities source some of their drinking water either from groundwater or from rivers like the Grand whose source originates somewhere in the Greenbelt. All the hardscaping and impermeable surfaces of sprawl basically threatens their water supply.

While on the surface (no pun intended), it looks like Toronto can sprawl forever in three directions, the isthmus between Georgian Bay/Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario where Toronto sits is actually quite small, and the sources for many of the rivers are barely 40 km north of downtown as the crow flies in the Oak Ridges Moraine.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

the way we used to build subdivisions was pave over everything in sight and institute a strict street grid with a dense arterial network.

The 60's version of planning was pave over everything with large arterials sporadically placed which have to handle medium amounts of traffic due to lower densities.

As time went on, subdivisions got denser, requiring higher traffic volumes on the limited arterial roads, and we stopped paving over sensitive environmental features.

Arterial grids are starting to get denser in many new growth areas again, reducing each roads impact, but environmental feature protections are stronger than ever to the point where basically half of the urban areas are handed over to natural features.. It's hugely detrimental to walkability and densities.

There's nothing about protecting environmental features that prevents communities from being walkable. The protected environmental lands in North Oakville for example are quite narrow, and hardly intrusive to the built form. The watercourses and their valleys don't dictate car-centric design.

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

We won't build housing like we did in the 1920's because it isn't the 1920's.

And yet those areas we built in the 1920s are more functional than anything we've built more recently. They're more economically productive, they result in lower obesity rates and other health problems, and they're much safer to walk in. We've accepted inferior community design as the standard for no good reason.

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

There isn't anything wrong with that either. Areas like North Oakville are pretty good models to me of how we should be building modern suburbs - dense lotting, small streets, density along major arterials, walkable commercial main streets off the arterials with neighbourhood commercial uses, and high enough densities to support transit. The only missing item really is a decent rail transit link in an area like that.

Well that's just the problem, walkable commercial areas are relegated to out of the way locations off the arterials while the arterials are almost exclusively given up to cars. This limits the commercial potential of these walkable areas because they're not on natural travel routes, it increases car traffic and demand for parking, and it creates arterial barriers around communities where hardly anyone feels comfortable walking. So while non-car modal share tends to be a bit higher in these kinds of communities than the rest of modern suburbia, it falls well short of what it could be.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

look no further than this map to understand why places like Guelph, KWC and Brantford are going to boom for many years to come.

I love the idea of a green belt in principle. But if there are highways passing through them (there always are), then developers will just leapfrog to outside of that permeable barrier.

Protecting valuable land for valuable agriculture should absolutely be a priority. But using a green belt to constrain GTA growth seems...like it would actually encourage sprawl and the further miltonization of the universe.

yeah it's kinda crazy when you look at just west of the Greenbelt around the GTA to see where sprawlburbia/the Miltonization will continue unabated until hemmed in by natural features.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

But like Hamilton also managed to have a city built around it...

true but that happened decades ago. People forget Hamilton is so old (by non Quebec standards) it could have been the capital of Ontario at one time.

It's our job to maintain the rest of it. Old growth Carolinian forests, etc. "It has the oldest forest ecosystem and trees in eastern North America."-wikipedia entry
The escarpment is nothing compared to the Laurentians or Rockies but it's certainly a unique feature of North America traversing the Great Lakes on both sides of the border.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Escarpment

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm a big fan of Bungalow Courts that were historically popular in California.

I'm also a fan of what Cerdà originally intended with his apartment blocks in Barcelona. I think this would actually work quite well with midrise development for medium high density in many cities in North America.


https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/8/18266760/barcelona-spain-urban-planning-history

TN, thanks for sharing that vid.
I agree we should be building stuff like that instead of $1M generic vinyl boxes in car-centric neighbourhoods where one can't even walk to the convenience store.
I'd also love to see a few Barcelona blocks built and if successful replicate it in other major urban areas across Canada

[1overcosc]

Maybe I'm biased because I live in Kingston - a small city with a huge university - but I feel like one easy win for housing in this country is to build student housing. Queen's has 25,000 students, 99% of whom come from out of town, but only 5,000 residence spots, so that's 20,000 students who need to find rental housing on the market here. If the government built 20,000 dorm spots, that would remove all those people from the rental market and free up a huge amount of housing in the central, walkable areas of Kingston for potential newcomers from Toronto or Ottawa.

I used to live in Sandy Hill in Ottawa, which is next to the University of Ottawa and is populated mostly by students, and the same logic would apply there too. I assume other cities have this problem as well.

It wouldn't even be that hard to build 20,000 spots in student residences in Kingston. There's a lot of vacant or underused land in central areas of the city that could easily host 20,000 units in high rise residences. Quite a few of these spots are also already publically owned.

Of course everyone here is a home city booster, but Kingston really is a great place to live. Just big enough to have most amenities you'd want (admittedly, it is lacking in some areas, like nightlife that isn't all student party bars), and accessible enough to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal (2 hours by car to Ottawa, 3 hours to the other two, plus there's decent rail and bus links to all 3 cities) for the rest. Decent public transit for a small city. And a beautiful natural setting, too. Kingston is the regional centre for an area that is very rural and wilderness-y; while we have typical Ontario towns to the east and west, once you go more than 20 minutes north of Kingston, it's all lakes, forests, and hills everywhere and not a single village with more than 500 people. If you like camping, hiking, canoeing, that kind of thing, Kingston is probably the best city in Southern Ontario for access to that stuff.

[casper]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Maybe I'm biased because I live in Kingston - a small city with a huge university - but I feel like one easy win for housing in this country is to build student housing. Queen's has 25,000 students, 99% of whom come from out of town, but only 5,000 residence spots, so that's 20,000 students who need to find rental housing on the market here. If the government built 20,000 dorm spots, that would remove all those people from the rental market and free up a huge amount of housing in the central, walkable areas of Kingston for potential newcomers from Toronto or Ottawa.

I used to live in Sandy Hill in Ottawa, which is next to the University of Ottawa and is populated mostly by students, and the same logic would apply there too. I assume other cities have this problem as well.

It wouldn't even be that hard to build 20,000 spots in student residences in Kingston. There's a lot of vacant or underused land in central areas of the city that could easily host 20,000 units in high rise residences. Quite a few of these spots are also already publically owned.

Of course everyone here is a home city booster, but Kingston really is a great place to live. Just big enough to have most amenities you'd want (admittedly, it is lacking in some areas, like nightlife that isn't all student party bars), and accessible enough to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal (2 hours by car to Ottawa, 3 hours to the other two, plus there's decent rail and bus links to all 3 cities) for the rest. Decent public transit for a small city. And a beautiful natural setting, too. Kingston is the regional centre for an area that is very rural and wilderness-y; while we have typical Ontario towns to the east and west, once you go more than 20 minutes north of Kingston, it's all lakes, forests, and hills everywhere and not a single village with more than 500 people. If you like camping, hiking, canoeing, that kind of thing, Kingston is probably the best city in Southern Ontario for access to that stuff.

Ideal setup would be what Finland does. Separate non-profit that builds off-campus student accommodation near universities but not exclusive to a specific university. Could be a federal crown corporation. This should also be a zero cost item for government with rent revenue covering the operating cost and paying down the mortgage on the building. The government just needs to provide the loan guarantees.

[Truenorth00]

We have real issues in this country when some nutters see loosening of zoning restrictions as some woke socialist plot....



https://twitter.com/jwsthomson/status/1528080914718158848?s=20&t=bMKswxmzQm2aLejzNUYFzA

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We have real issues in this country when some nutters see loosening of zoning restrictions as some woke socialist plot....



https://twitter.com/jwsthomson/status/1528080914718158848?s=20&t=bMKswxmzQm2aLejzNUYFzA

There have always been nutters. From the dawn of time.

I recall reading a letter to the editor in the local paper 20+ years ago regarding USAF chemtrails over Elliot Lake causing increased cancer rates. Uh, sure.

I do not consider these views as representative of mainstream society. The only difference between then and now is that the kooks get undue airtime because Twitter/Facebook amplifies idiocy (see: that Tweet). In ye olden days, that would have been a non-issue.

The fact it is posted in a newspaper now just mostly makes me think it is some old crank, because anyone under the age of 35 probably isn't buying the local newspaper, nor considers classified ads a medium of exchange. Remember searching for apartments on vaguely worded classified ads in the backs of newspapers? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Admittedly, we could just ban any undesirable speech. It works in some countries. A lot of countries just ban cranks. I'm not sure I'd be too happy with that, though.

[Truenorth00]

I'm not arguing for a ban or restriction on their speech. Just pointing out that these kooks think missing middle housing is some kind of cultural attack. And sadly, these kooks are usually the ones who have time to show up at all the municipal hearings.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We have real issues in this country when some nutters see loosening of zoning restrictions as some woke socialist plot....



https://twitter.com/jwsthomson/status/1528080914718158848?s=20&t=bMKswxmzQm2aLejzNUYFzA

This add is nonsense. Victoria is full of the "missing middle" and there is not of it being built. It is not missing it is everywhere in this city. Outside of the downtown core most multi-family built in Victoria would be "missing middle". Lots of it under construction.

As for the nonsense about statues and shame. I don't think anyone buys that nonsense.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We have real issues in this country when some nutters see loosening of zoning restrictions as some woke socialist plot....



https://twitter.com/jwsthomson/status/1528080914718158848?s=20&t=bMKswxmzQm2aLejzNUYFzA

So, what we used to do in the military is use those emails as things we use to sign up for stuff. Sounds like we have a new email to do that with.

Originally Posted by thewave46

There have always been nutters. From the dawn of time.

I recall reading a letter to the editor in the local paper 20+ years ago regarding USAF chemtrails over Elliot Lake causing increased cancer rates. Uh, sure.

I do not consider these views as representative of mainstream society. The only difference between then and now is that the kooks get undue airtime because Twitter/Facebook amplifies idiocy (see: that Tweet). In ye olden days, that would have been a non-issue.

The fact it is posted in a newspaper now just mostly makes me think it is some old crank, because anyone under the age of 35 probably isn't buying the local newspaper, nor considers classified ads a medium of exchange. Remember searching for apartments on vaguely worded classified ads in the backs of newspapers? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Admittedly, we could just ban any undesirable speech. It works in some countries. A lot of countries just ban cranks. I'm not sure I'd be too happy with that, though.

Old people are part of the problem in society. For something unrelated, I went to a local CAN(Community access network) meeting. It was full of old people whining about "teenagers in McDonald's". I learned then that the various CANs are nothing but old people whining about old people stuff.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm not arguing for a ban or restriction on their speech. Just pointing out that these kooks think missing middle housing is some kind of cultural attack. And sadly, these kooks are usually the ones who have time to show up at all the municipal hearings.

To them, it is a cultural attack.
The loudest voice gets the job done.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We have real issues in this country when some nutters see loosening of zoning restrictions as some woke socialist plot....
….

Well, Mayor Lisa Helps has been a bit of a work cliche of a west coat mayor, so there’s that…..

[Nouvellecosse]

That's really whole central project of conspiricist thinking. If you think it would make sense for a person or institution to act based on a particular motive, that must be their true motivation. So any decision that has significant cultural implications or effects must therefore have been made because of those cultural implications or effects. It isn't possible for the decision to have been made for other unrelated reasons since the cultural aspect is so much bigger and more important. But they fail to conceive of the possibility that the cultural aspect may only be subjectively important from their own perspective and may be less important or even irrelevant from the perspective of others. It's just a natural result as seeing one's own perspective as objective fact.

In this case, from the perspective of the NIMBY the primary result or importance in a potential change to zoning would be the change to neighbourhood aesthetics and "character." Therefore, this must be the primary motivation behind any proposed changes. The possibility that others may simply consider different factors such as land/resource usage or economics to be more important considerations or that not everyone thinks of increased density as something unpleasant isn't plausible.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Well, Mayor Lisa Helps has been a bit of a work cliche of a west coat mayor, so there’s that…..

This is supposed to justify hating on densification?