Quote:
Originally Posted by dleung
Whether it's mid-rise or high-rise, I'd never live in a building with less than 200 units. You get better amenities and more owners to share risks with. I'm on an 8th floor podium/terrace unit in Toronto and a 30th floor unit in Vancouver, and definitely prefer the former over any ground-oriented unit or SFH no matter where it is (large west-vancouver mansions excepted). Low-rise, if not somewhere unwalkable, means living in constant shadow of other buildings or with neighbours staring straight into your windows.
Also 1 FSR is only good for gentle densification of unwalkable areas, but is not nearly enough to justify transit expansions. I like to live near the subway, so 2.5 FSR should be the minimum density for living within walking distance.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I hated the 2 years I lived on the 15th floor of a ~300 unit tower. Experientially generic, too isolating, too disconnected from the street, and too one-dimensional with its typical single-directional view - vertical suburbia, basically. Though there are certainly better towers out there.
Everywhere else I've lived since in both Toronto & Vancouver have been like one these - either ground-oriented apartments in heritage duplex/triplexes or low-rise walkups. Not lacking in density; and no shadows, lack of privacy, or lack of access to higher-order transit to speak of. With much better access to the outdoors, more greenery, more interesting urbanity, typically better & more complex floorplans, and a better sense of community to top it off.
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This really goes to show that preferences and attitudes toward density and housing types are in large part down to individual preference. That picture in particular is very instructive. Many, including me, would consider areas like that very appealing. But I've heard countless people complaining when modest density increases of that nature are proposed such as allowing semi-detached or attached houses, subdivided houses, or small apartment buildings in areas where fully detached houses prevail. People actually claim that it will destroy the communities or at least the quality of life. While there are certainly trends where types of housing and density appeals to a plurality or even a majority of people, they are not universals that apply to everyone. So it's up to each person to decide what they find appealing and which trade-offs they want to make. It also suggests the importance of open-mindedness because people are resistant to change and can imagine negative outcomes from change much easier than positive ones.
Which is why it's so frustrating when we often hear claims that increased density is incompatible with quality of life because it's just not true. It's overly simplistic and reductive to suggest that one factor determines quality of life when it's far more complicated than that. There's no such thing as a neighborhood or the quality of life in a neighborhood being destroyed by adding extra density to it. That is only done through poor design and execution decisions which are density agnostic. So we have situations where people extol the virtues of neighborhoods like the one in the picture above while most NIMBY activity opposes it and demands only fully detached houses. And then there are people who express a preference for mid/high-rise living like in the first post, while the second use neighbourhoods that NIMBYs would have a meltdown over over as a counter example.
Some cities are notorious for having small homes and it results in a greater public life since it leads to people spending more time in social settings and third places. But of course that depends on those places being allowed to develop. And there are other settings where the density is low but quality of life is achieved by making it a more communal setting like a small town, contrasting with the sparse individualism characteristic of modern suburbia. I've also seen dense neighborhoods that were extremely lush and green with potted and hanging plants, vines, shrubbery, street trees etc. While I've seen low density areas with little greenery other than patches of grass.
The absolute, non-relative, non-subjective aspects of density are things like the amount of land a style of development uses, the cost to service it with infrastructure, and the travel distances that result from how spread out an area is. Beyond that, subjective aspects like quality of life can be discussed in terms of individual experience, but we absolutely cannot make categorical statements in terms of one development type of density offering a higher quality of life than the other. It depends on how it's done and who will be experiencing it.
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