Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
Looks terrible. For those low density residential neighbourhoods in the central city I'd much rather they concentrate on lane way housing. Besides, does Toronto really need to densify those streets? The vast majority of them are within walking distance of a major arterial road (high street) and those are being substantially intensified. Arterial roads like Bathurst, Bloor, St.Clair, Eglinton, College, Dundas, Queen, King, etc. are being re-worked from 2-4 floor buildings with retail at the bottom into 10-20 floor condos with retail at the bottom.
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This
is on an arterial, which is why it's even possible in the first place. A 5-storey multi-family dwelling on a back street would be flatly rejected by City Staff.
But to get to your point - intensifying those lower-density residential streets is important if we ever want to get serious about affordability or equitable urbanization.
As it stands, the vast majority of the city's land - all of the yellow area in the following image - is zoned exclusively for single family housing (including semis and rows) and duplex apartments. That's a lot of land that we're not making use of - land that has actually seen a decrease in population despite the city's booming population overall (due to declining household sizes & gentrification causing duplex/triplexes to be converted to SFH):
Secondly, this style of gentle intensification is useful because it is low cost and relatively easy to build. This creates an opportunity for small developers and entrepreneurial homeowners to develop their own properties, freeing the housing supply from being controlled exclusively by a small cartel of major condo developers, and thus creates more competition in the market. It also adds a new ground-oriented multi-family housing typology somewhere between the current extremes of large single family house or small high-rise condo unit - the "missing middle" that is essential for families who can't afford a SFH, but need more space than what the typical condo provides.
Thirdly, by expanding the amount of developable land, it reduces the pressure on the relatively small amount of land that is currently zoned for high density. This brings land prices down, and in particular enables the kinds of interesting, low-rise commercial strips that give our city character, a chance at survival. As it stands, we're losing so many small businesses because the land that they sit on has been so artificially inflated that they can no longer afford it.
By limiting development to the red, orange, and brown zones only, we run the risk of become a sort of two-tier city, whereby the majority of the population - poor people, young people, immigrants, etc. - are relegated to small apartments in overdeveloped slivers of land; while the wealthy minority occupy a vast, unchanging expanse of suburbia in the city. Building apartments in the "yellow belt" is the only way around this.