Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I actually agree with you that SFHs and highrises don't tend to oppose one another. In fact, when most of the residential land is zoned exclusively for SFHs, it promotes highrises because that's the only way to cram enough density into the limited remaining land. And as a result, Toronto has an abundance of highrise residential buildings. I disagree that this is a good thing however, because this does NOT promote a diversity of housing and in fact discourages it. The areas zoned for detached housing are forced to remain so, and the areas that are allowed to density are compelled to have large highrises with these being increasingly the only options. Not surprisingly, we have a growing issue of a missing middle, something that the About Here channel explores in the context of Vancouver, but is also equally applicable to Toronto.
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Many experts in the field of planning have noted that highrises are not the ideal form of residential housing. The best-selling book Happy City points to studies showing that people living in units with a stronger connection to the ground tend to be happier on average than those living in towers, with several examples including the residents of a tower and townhouse project in Yaletown. Obviously this may not apply to everyone since people are all unique individuals so we can really only discuss the issue in terms of averages. But preserving SFHs is not a sustainable goal because you either have a situation of:
A) Unlimited sprawl caused by continually adding the necessary land to accommodate enough new detached houses to keep up with demand for homes on the ground, or
B) A finite number of detached houses that become increasingly expensive and rare as a proportion without any ability to increase supply. Therefore as the city grows, an ever smaller percentage of people can live in one.
This does not allow for a diversity of housing types because as the population grows, if you want to prevent sprawl you can't grow the SFH supply along with the population so newcomers, unless they're wealthy, generally don't have a choice between a detached home or a highrise unit. That is not a diversity of options. It's just preferential treatment for those who are wealthy or lucky enough to already have a detached home.
A mixture of housing that includes townhouses, lowrise apartment, midrise apartment, and highrises apartment is far more diverse than a binary of just SFHs and highrise. Yet trying to preserve the maximum number of SFHs means you don't have the room for any of those medium-density options. I would love to see a good number of SFH areas replaced with medium density because honestly, SFH areas just house too few people relative to the amount of land they occupy to be beneficial to a growing and expensive city. Unless they're historic or otherwise notable, detached houses don't help anyone other than the increasingly small proportion of people who can afford them. They just make a city less vibrant, less interesting, and less efficient. And if there's limits on sprawl, also less affordable. |
You bring up some good points as usual. I have to say I love the low-rise apartment complexes all over Montreal. Those winding stairs, no need for elevators (less electricity). I wish we had that here in Toronto too. I actually prefer that "middle ground" over binary high-rise apartment neighbourhoods vs. detached house neighbhourhoods. But maybe that's just my personal preference, right?
But the Vancouver style isn't actually binary SFH vs. high-rises, are they? It's actually defined by skinny high-rises with low-rise and mid-rise podiums. These Vancouver style high-rise developments also result in low-rise and mid-rise streetscapes. The percentage of the streetwall even along a major road might actually more low-rise and mid-rise than high-rise. It's rarely ever a pure high-rise streetscape. That's Vancouver's style and now it's Toronto's style as well.
Maybe it's true that more townhouses could have been built all over the Toronto area. My mom bought a freehold townhouse, and it gives her a lot of the experience of a detached house. I've wondered why so few were built in the Toronto. Maybe more freehold townhouses and semi-detached houses could have been built all over the place, not just near major arterials. But you have to consider also that this isn't suburban Atlanta. These detached houses are already very tightly packed together, especially in recent years. How much density would you gain from demolishing an entire SFH neighbourhood and replacing it with townhouses or low-rise apartments, and how much would that impact the overall density of the Toronto area, I think not much.
And I will say again: in terms of efficient land use, the SFHs aren't even close to the number one problem right now, either here or anywhere else in Canada and US. The main problem is commercial land. Malls. Strip malls and plazas. Big box. Power centres. Office parks. And then there's the commuter rail stations too. All those parking lots need to be redeveloped and they are already located along major streets. Getting rid of parking lots should be the main focus of all cities right now, not getting rid of detached houses on side streets.
Imagine if all the parking lots that dominate these suburbs finally get redeveloped, would all those big driveways of all those detached houses still be as desirable? One step at a time. Get people onto transit, reduce the demand for parking, get rid of parking lots and garages, and then we can start looking at all the big, empty and underutilized driveways of all those detached houses.
We need to think in terms of building a city, not destroying a city. It's about gradually shifting the culture, not completely changing it suddenly into something foreign. It's just not the right time in Toronto to concentrate on demolishing neighbourhoods of SFHs. We are just not at that step yet.
Parking. THAT is the number one barrier to urbanity. You can see it in so many US downtowns like OKC where transit is nonexistent. I see every day here in Mississauga, how much parking limits density and development. Too many parking lots and garages. Not enough on-street parking. Not enough buses. Not enough trains. If you guys want to increase density, if you want to make housing affordable, if you more high-rise and mid-rise redevelopments, the parking is really what you should be focusing on, not the single family homes. And the solution isn't zoning, it's investing in transit. Those ugly SFH streetscapes you guys see in my photos aren't rooted in a lack of medium and high density zoning, they are rooted in a lack of public transit.
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