Planning
February 20th, 2010
Brougham, a small village at the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Road in Pickering, doesn’t quite make the usual criteria for a “lost village” - urban sprawl is still far from overtaking the historic buildings, and the village looks much like it did 20 or 50 years ago.
But it is a lost village - or even a bona fide ghost town - in the making, and has been since March 2, 1972. On that date, the Government of Canada selected northern Pickering Township - along with sections of Uxbridge, Markham and Whitchurch Townships - as the site of a new Mirabel-sized international airport that would eventually replace Malton Airport (now Pearson) as Toronto’s primary airport. Brougham - in its entirety - was now the southeast corner of this 18,000 acre (72 square kilometre) land mass that then had to be expropriated. I have touched on the subject of the Pickering Lands before here on Spacing Toronto.
Before the federal announcement, Brougham was a small, yet growing, community, with a school, several churches, businesses and a community hall. Commercial House, pictured above, is one of only a few roadside taverns left in the GTA. Today, Brougham is largely by-passed by the extension of Highway 407, which skirts the southern boundary of the airport lands.
When the brakes went on in 1975, Brougham and the huge parcel of Class I farmland to its north and west was frozen in time, owned by the Government of Canada and rented out to farmers and residents (many of which were the former land owners). As only minimal repairs were taken on by the landlord in anticipation of future construction, many houses - of which quite a number appear to be exurban ranch houses built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s - were simply vacated and boarded up. Approximately one-quarter to one-third of all houses in Brougham are now vacant.
January 27th, 2010
As Transit City pushes forward — the Finch LRT was approved yesterday at city council — with the goal of providing reliable public transport to the forgotten reaches of the inner suburbs, it will be a challenge to ensure that areas of existing coverage aren’t forgotten in the process. The residents of the southwestern communities of Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch have become a vocal and organized group, claiming they have already been forgotten. Far from just complaining however, residents in the area have a plan for action, and they’re pitching it aggressively.
The Lakeshore Planning Council is a citizen’s group dedicated to reviewing and advocating planning issues in South Etobicoke. Of late, the group has turned its attention to what has become a foremost issue in the community: service, or lack thereof, on the 501 streetcar. The planning council notes that service along Transit City bus routes such as Wellesley, receive much more frequent service despite lower ridership. The communities along the western waterfront were some of Toronto’s original ’streetcar suburbs’ and as such, have streetcar service built into their very existence for both local trips and commutes into the city.
Problems started in 1995 when the TTC retired the old 507 route that used to serve between Long Branch and the Humber Loop in favour of a single extension of the 501. Since then, residents in the area have watched service slip badly.
January 26th, 2010
The famous shopping street Nanjing Road in Shanghai, China
On a recent trip to China I discovered that one of the most striking features of Chinese cities, at least to the eye of a Spacing reader, is the difference in the pedestrian environment. In the midst of an upheaval of historic proportions, Chinese cities are caught between a rush to the car driven, bourgeois lifestyle of the west, and the pedestrian and cycling practicalities of its recent past. The Chinese paradigm for urban design in the country’s sprawling new districts seems committed to separating vehicle and pedestrian traffic, both through barriers and grades, in an attempt to preserve the walking culture while accommodating the car. Many interesting design features result.
In Shanghai and Beijing, it is the norm is to have sidewalks cordoned off from the roadway with barriers forcing pedestrian traffic towards overpasses. While pedestrian grade separation is most common at intersections, in Beijing it is also quite common mid-block. Beijing has adopted a car-dependent design of very wide avenues with multiple degrees of separation. Down the centre, several lanes of heavy traffic crawl through congestion while a low speed access road, parking and wide sidewalks occupy the storefront side of a barrier fence. Pedestrian flyovers here almost always have one steep staircase and one very gradual. The overpasses also often provide stairway connections to bus stops, a considerable investment in bus infrastructure.
What this setup gains in easy access for motorists it loses in attractiveness of the pedestrian environment as the pedestrian is distantly removed from the other side of the street. It also must cause obvious difficulties for the disabled. In many ways, it really seems that the human scale of the city has been lost, and it is not uncommon to hear Beijingers complain about the loss of the old city.
January 8th, 2010
GO Transit is in the throes of major expansion. Examining how the system’s stations influence their surroundings, and how this, in turn, affects the suburbs, can provide a glimpse into the future of the GTA.
As an example of the potential for what GO transit could do for the suburbs, Oakville Midtown is fertile fodder for the imagination. Oakville’s midtown provides several unique and highly desirable characteristics, including a large wooded ravine, natural heritage, and large-scale public land ownership. The exciting redevelopment plan for Oakville’s midtown is an example of how enhancing the areas around GO Transit stations (an initiative central to the Ontario government’s Places to Grow Act) could help fix the suburbs while at the same time solidifying the feasibility of the region’s existing transit infrastructure.
Oakville’s Midtown Core development is centred on the Oakville GO station, in the area bound by the Sixteen Mile Creek, the QEW and the Oakville rail yards. The Midtown plan calls for a redrawn street grid, new civic facilities, an educational campus, and conversion of surface parking into two large garages. The area could host upwards of 5,500 new residences and around two million new square feet of office and commercial space by 2030. Designed to create a focus for the neighbourhood, the civic centre proposal includes a new town hall, marquee arena, and public square.
November 12th, 2009
I recently attended a community meeting regarding the redevelopment proposal for 2055-2057 Danforth Avenue, at the intersection of Danforth and Woodbine. This site, empty since 2001, is slated for a 12-storey condominium with retail space at the ground level. The reason for the community meeting, held by Councillor Sandra Bussin, was because of a rezoning application for the site, which would allow the developer the extra building height.
Prish Jain, of TACT Design, presented the concept for the new building, showing its footprint on the overall site, with its affect on sun and privacy for the local residents. This was followed up with remarks by Leontine Major, Senior Planner, City of Toronto Planning Department and then a question and answer period. The gathering, which attracted about 50 attendees, was a chance for the local residents to raise concerns on specifically the height of the proposed building. The current bylaw allows for five-storeys, while Toronto’s Official Plan suggests a density of nine-storeys for this area.
November 12th, 2009
Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent September 30-October 3 in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is sharing some of the lessons he learned there and reflecting on their implications on public space, livability, and sustainability in cities.
When referencing urban planning processes, the term “public participation†often conjures up mental pictures of half-empty community centre halls, text-filled Powerpoint presentations, and confrontational NIMBY-inspired battles. These images are part of the reason that discussions of these processes often elicit responses ranging from indifference to frustration.
Yet public participation remains one of the foundations of contemporary planning practice, and, in Toronto, some well-publicized stories have brought them to the forefront in recent years. The formation of Active 18 in the Queen West Triangle is probably the best-known of these stories, with residents and business owners banding together to try and influence planning in their community.
So when I saw a seminar at the OPPI / CIP Conference called “Joining the Conversation: New Strategies for Consultation and Action,†I highlighted it as one I needed to attend.
October 22nd, 2009
1545 Eglinton Ave West by Kevin Steele
A few weeks ago I wrote about the project to create a new comprehensive zoning bylaw for Toronto. In an effort to dig deeper into this huge project, I’ve focused my attention on one important section — “Commercial Residential“, the section that will govern main streets outside the central core of the city — including both old main streets like Queen and Dundas, and newer arterials like Finch and Eglinton. In other words, it will have a profound impact on some of the most visible parts of the city. (Note that it does not apply to the “Kings” areas beside the downtown core around where King meets Parliament and Spadina, which have their own separate zoning category).
The mandate of the zoning bylaw is not to reshape zoning in the city, but rather to translate the multitude of existing bylaws into one consistent code — although it can select the best practices of the old zoning.
The Commercial-Residential (CR) category embodies the “mixed-use” concept for main streets where buildings have commercial uses on the ground floor, and residential uses above. However, since past zoning varied widely, the CR category is divided into three “standard sets” to roughly continue the previous conditions: #1 is for the centre of the city, #2 covers mostly the older City of Toronto main streets, and #3 applies to suburban arterials.
The meat of the standards begins at section 40.10.40.10, where it sets maximum heights in each section, respectively 16, 14 and 11 meters (roughly 5, 4 and 3 storeys) unless there’s a previous maximum height specified (unfortunately the website does not provide the promised height overlay map, just a kind of random map of zoning areas). This largely makes sense and seems to maintain roughly the existing guidelines. (One thing missing from the current guidelines is the “step-back” at the top of buildings to allow sunlight onto the street, but apparently that will be added to the next version). For standard set 3, the expectation is that Avenue studies will be done for suburban arterials that will allow taller heights and more mixed uses.
But then part (4) of this section describes how to determine the “Base Building Height”, and says it’s equivalent to the street’s Right-Of-Way (ROW), that is, the distance between property lines (so including street, sidewalk, and sometimes some setback on public property).
What’s weird is that most main street rights-of-way in the old part of the city are 20 meters or more, that is, about 6-7 storeys. And in the suburbs, they tend to be 30-40 meters, which is roughly 9-14 storeys. That’s a lot taller than the height allowances specified in the preceding paragraphs.
Furthermore, if you keep going, you find that later sections regulating setbacks, etc, all refer to this taller “base building”. And they all have sections that specify requirements for tall towers built over these base buildings, too.
What gives?
October 6th, 2009
Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent last week in Niagara Falls at a joint conference held by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He is …
September 28th, 2009
“Every time you do something in the city, don’t just do it, do it beautifully.”
A seemingly simple statement made by Joe Berridge at IPAC’s recent Cities and Public Policy Conference, speaks volumes about how we see planning and urban design policy making in Toronto. It summarized much of the talk during the two days and over 40 speakers, who included politicians, academics and management. A common thread of the speakers was the need for us to change the way we think about cities and urban design.
The conference opened with Mayor David Miller and Toronto’s role in Canada and among other global cities. He spoke about Toronto being a city that people choose to live in because of its diversity, culture and economic opportunities. While admitting he did not have the answer, he urged the delegates to think about how cities can sustain themselves in a changing political context, a relevant issue for Toronto, now that Mayor Miller’s time in Office is ending.
Eva Ligeti, Executive Director of Clean Air Partnership stated, “one of the key things that is holding us back is our culture of entitlement,” and an overall thinking that “whatever we have now, cannot be changed.” She references Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas in The Tipping Point and “the magic moment when ideas transcend and social behaviours cross thresholds, tip and spread like wild fire, whereupon institutions undergo fundamental change.” Ligeti gives the successful example of the five-cent a bag bylaw, which the City of Toronto recently implemented. A very simple change that has shown people things can be done on a small scale and now stores all over Ontario are doing the same. As Ligeti says, “a small item, but it worked.”
September 10th, 2009
I went to an open house at City Hall last night about Toronto’s new zoning bylaw project. It doesn’t sound all that exciting, and the event was pretty sparsely attended, but the project is in fact both huge and very important. It will, literally, determine the shape of the city as it evolves.
The goal of the project is to finally amalgamate the 43 existing zoning bylaws from the former municipalities of the old Metro Toronto into a single coherent set. These zoning bylaws determine the size, shape, placement and use of every building in Toronto (unless, of course, they are overwritten by the Committee of Adjustment or the Ontario Municipal Board). The bylaws currently in force are still the original ones set up in each of the cities after the Second World War (the first was in Etobicoke in 1949), all of which have been repeatedly and massively amended over the years — a total of over 10,000 amendments.
Making sense of this massive tangle of laws is a necessary but Herculaean task, so it’s understandable that the current effort is focused on creating a single coherent zoning bylaw that encompasses the existing bylaws, rather than trying to make significant improvements. On the other hand, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create zoning that is better focused on creating a more attractive and sustainable city, so to some extent this is an opportunity lost. If it’s not done now, it’s hard to imagine when it will ever be done.
There are, fortunately, a few useful changes towards making a better city. First, the new bylaw will include standards for bicycle parking for most types of new buildings, including condos and apartments, office buildings, and shopping. These standards will apply across the city, and much higher standards will apply in the cycling-heavy downtown core. Unfortunately, the currently proposal does not include standards for some types of buildings, notably institutional ones (hospitals, schools) for which such standards are also necessary.
The new zoning also takes a more coherent approach to minimum parking provisions, requiring a lot less parking for condos/apartments or office buildings that are in the downtown core or on heavy transit lines. Many new projects don’t need the amount of parking required by zoning, and developers would be glad not to pay the extra cost to provide it. But the overall reduction in minimum parking requirements is disappointingly limited — the planner in charge of the project, Joe D’Abramo, estimated it at about 10% less compared to previous requirements.
But parking is just the tip of the iceberg. The new bylaw is vast and complex, with a lot of it in technical language, but it will have a big impact on issues like green space, water drainage, sunlight on streets, density, the width and vibrancy of sidewalks, and many other questions that will shape the overall feel of our city as properties are built and rebuilt. I’m worried that the only people with the time and expertise to understand and analyze the impact of this project will be people with specific interests in commercial or residential real estate. Will the project be simply too big, or too detailed, for people who are interested in the overall shape and direction of the city to digest? The project seems generally well-thought-out and positive in its direction, but without the ambition to make significant improvements.
There are two more public consultations coming up, in North York and Scarborough, and there is also an extensive website with feedback options. One of the most striking aspects of the website is an interactive map that will give you the zoning that will apply to every single property in the city, including references to the previous zoning and any special exceptions.
I know too little to do much further analysis, but here are some issues that struck me as interesting and possibly worth looking at. Maybe some readers will be able to investigate them in depth. (Note that all of these apply only to new buildings — old ones are always grandfathered in).
