Canadian Urbanism Uncovered
Read more articles by Julie Yamin
• Swapping car for transit a breeze for going downtown [ Toronto Star ]
• One-third feel life has worsened, poll finds [ National Post ]
• Cold weather snap likely won’t last [ Globe and Mail ]
• McGuinty admits health tax will haunt him [ Globe and Mail ]
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15 comments
The first articles pretty much sums the kind of transit service that exists in the 905. I happen to one of those cross-905 commuters (Brampton to Markham), and I have a choice: spend $43 a week on a GTA pass, or roughly $172 a month, and spend 4.5-5 hours on a bus, spend $350 a month on GO transit/Brampton/YRT fares, and spend 3 hours a day on a bus, or spend roughly $500-$600 a month on a car, and spend 1.5 hours a day to get home.
It’s a harsh life in the suburbs.
i think that anyone who can afford a house and a car in the suburbs can afford a car-free life in downtown. at today’s rates, $500 to $600 per month (the cost of a car from the previous post) will service around $100,000 of mortgage. plus, in downtown, a house without parking costs around $50,000 less than a house with parking. so, a suburbanite can put $150,000 of real estate within his or her grasp by ditching the car and moving downtown. not bad, eh? and you can get a whole lot of house if you don’t mind living on a busy street.
as for those who commute across suburbs, i am genuinely curious: why not move closer to your workplace?
No matter what happens to the price of carbon-fuels, it will always be economical to service the city core. Yes, even at twice today’s costs. Not so much for the fringes and beyond. Sell your house and move in, before the bottom falls out.
I think that living in the suburbs is an option that people make without knowing the costs associated to it. The average house located in sprawl is by average at least $100,000 cheaper than downtown Toronto, but if you ditch one of the family’s cars for transit and biking (which is possible to do downtown) then you end up saving a small fortune a year which would be more than enough to pay the extra mortgage on those needed $100,000 (at current interest rates). So you are committing a big mistake if you work downtown and live in the suburbs, the extra big yard and cul-de-sacs are not worth it (in my opinion).
When it comes to property investment, a house downtown Toronto will give you higher returns in value than a house in the suburb. Good neighbourhoods are those that possess a vibrant street life, and you are more likely to get that downtown. There is a higher demand for places where you can have a pleasant walk to the corner store, where public transit is accessible and where you are closer to the action urban life can offer, these are just a few reasons houses are more expensive in Toronto. The property taxes will also have to increase a lot in the suburbs to finance the low density. For a while Mississauga (as an example) was able to keep its property taxes down due to the development fees it charged developers whenever they built a new division, but now Mississauga is running out of land to develop and those fees are running dry. Now they have the problem of servicing wider roads, bigger sewer/water systems, longer trash collecting routes and a transit that must cover a huge area for fewer people, all due to the spaghetti roads and low density. The only way Mississauga will be able to cover the lost development charges is by increasing property taxes. Taxes in the suburbs will end up being higher than places with higher density. It doesn’t help that energy prices are going up, so not only do you have to pay more for gas to do all the required driving in the suburbs you will end up paying more to heat and cool a bigger house. Future of the suburbs: Higher taxes and higher energy costs. The suburban way of life is heavily subsidised, but subsidies can only go so far. Mayor Hazel McCallion realizes this and openly admits to her mistakes of city building in the 70’s, now they are trying to build a dense downtown core around Square One. It is going to be a huge challenge but I hope they succeed. Markham is another municipality that is doing its best to create a vibrant dense community and it might end up being an example for the other suburbs to follow (still too early to decide on that one). It is also ironic that businesses are moving to the suburbs for lower taxes, but they too will end up having to pay the costs of low density.
The ideal model for a city region would be a place with multiple dense cores surrounded by vibrant neighbourhoods where you could walk or bike to work or transit, these cores would then be connected by an excellent transit system. A web of subways, train tracks (GO) and LRT’s where it would be possible to go from Mississauga town center to Markham or from Markham to the Financial district in 30 minutes or less, but that demands a huge infrastructure investment and a new mentality on city planning that simply does not exist in Canada.
Amen! You the man, Carlos.
John Moore (CFRB) has a response in today’s NatPost opinion section to “Toronto’s War on the Car” story of Saturday front page. Doesn’t seem to be online…
The thing I find creepy about the suburbs? Streets without paved sidewalks.
The another creep factor for me is backyard fences facing main roads.
Isn’t the balance already shifting toward city living?
Looking at new real estate development in Toronto, all I see is one new condo tower after another.
I don’t see any significant new office space being built. Developments like the new Bay-Adelaide Centre or the Trump Tower are being billed as “mixed condo-hotel-office space”, which sounds like they’re not confident how much of the new space they can lease for office use.
Now, I don’t imagine many suburbanites will be lured out of Mississauga by the promise of a tiny condo 25 floors above Bay St. (The exceptions may be young singles buying their first place, and maybe some older empty-nesters.) For them, only Bloor West Village or similar would do, and the prices on those kinds of properties are $200k+ over something comparable in the ‘burbs just 30 minutes away by GO Train (90 minutes away by car in rush hour).
Sue: good comments. i do wonder whether there is a new subdivision in the suburbs to match every new condo building in downtown, however.
as for choice of neighbourhood, i think this is a point of compromise between desires and wallets.
my main thought is that condos aren’t the only affordable thing in downtown. have a look at property values in the neighbourhood alternatively called “south riverdale” or “leslieville.” these places are less than 5km from the core and you can get a slice of land and a house (and probably also parking) for less than $400K.
snarky downtowner: Wow! I’m impressed by the Leslieville prices! That does compare favourably with Mississauga. It looks like some parts of Riverdale may also be comparable, as you suggested:
http://juliekinnear.com/toronto-neighbourhoods/leslieville-real-estate
Regarding new subdivisions in the suburbs, I recently read that Milton is the fastest-growing city in Ontario (or Canada?). Mississauga is nearly full, with just a few acreages west of Winston Churchill to be developed, while Oakville climaxed long ago.
Milton is growing really fast because between 1996 and 2001, it got connected to Halton’s Lake Ontario water supply, and after years of stagnacy, the urban area’s size doubled almost overnight. At the time, the ads for subdivisions on the radio and newspapers went with the catchphrase “The Wide, Wide West is not Wide, Wide Open.” Didn’t take long before the wide west became congested more and more cars in a leapfrog subdivision a 20 minute drive to the Mississauga boundary.
Right now, Brampton has just passed the top of the bellcurve of sprawl and is slowly getting built out (it came second to Milton in % of growth in 96-01). Suddenly there’s a rash of condo and infil townhouse developments downtown there, but it will barely make a dent. Local transit in Brampton (where I lived until early 2006) has just done from miserable to merely poor, thanks to a newer transit-friendlier regime there, and it might go all the way up to fair in a few years – it’ll likely never become good, or excellent, and might work if you’re heading to the mall, to downtown Toronto via the GO station, or to a high school.
Since so many jobs are all over – particuarly the low-paying jobs in factories, warehouses, retail, temp jobs that could be anywhere in the GTA, it is the poor that are served the worst by what should be a social service and an affordable alternative to the car. GO charges premium fares for fast service to downtown – great if you’ve got a comfortable job in an office tower, or going to Ryerson or U of T. But if your job is in one of these industrial parks where many of the lower paid jobs are, transit is a pain in the butt.
And these lower-paid jobs are not in Leslieville, Queen West, Downtown, North Toronto. They are in Scarborough, Concord, Brampton, Rexdale, Mississauga, etc. And the housing is cheaper there.
As for the lower marginal costs of living in an area where you can easily hop on the bus or subway to work, bike or walk, maybe the banks and lending firms need to consider this. If you don’t have a car, you don’t have a car loan or lease, insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc, so more money could go to mortgage. Somehow, offset the higher initial financial barrier.
Oh, I should point out that above I meant 2001-2006, not 1996-2001. As I work with Statscan data, I still mostly use the old 2001 data as 2006 is still not out yet. I do stand by everything else I say above – the biggest challenge is serving the lower-income employed who can have longer distances and don’t typically live or work in the inner parts of Toronto.
Sue, I agree there’s more residential being built downtown than office space, but I don’t think you can say there isn’t any significant office space being built. In fact, three large office towers under construction have no residential space in them:
– the first phase of Bay Adelaide Centre (1.5 million square feet)
– the Telus tower south of Union Station (780,000 sq ft)
– the RBC Centre (1.2 million sq ft). The Ritz Carlton hotel/condo is a separate building in the same complex.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be either/or: we’re not tearing down large office towers to build condos. We can find room for both.
Sean: you have raised good points.
however, i must point out that lending agencies *do* consider car ownership in determining how much to lend a mortgage-seeker. lenders ask a lot of questions about the mortgage-seeker’s assets, liabilities, cashflow and credit risk before agreeing to lend a dime. the less a person pays to service existing debt (including car payments), the more money that person can borrow to buy real estate. if you pay $500 to $600 for car payments every month, then a decision to ditch the car will create the ability to service about $100K more debt on a real estate purchase. check out this mortgage calculator from the canadian mortgage and housing corporation:
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/co/buho/buho_005.cfm
of course, it’s hard to service a mortgage if it’s impossible to get to work!