{"id":3096,"date":"2008-05-02T12:41:28","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T17:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2008\/05\/02\/high-rise-apartments-and-transit-city\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:17:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:17:18","slug":"high-rise-apartments-and-transit-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/05\/02\/high-rise-apartments-and-transit-city\/","title":{"rendered":"High rise apartments and Transit City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tower-map-existing-transit-2.jpg\"<\/a>
\nMap 1: <\/strong>Black dots represent Toronto’s modern apartments with existing rapid transit (click on map for larger version)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"tower-map-new-transit-2.jpg\"<\/a>
\nMap 2:<\/strong> Clusters of Toronto’s modern apartments with the proposed rapid transit lines of Transit City <\/em>(click on map for larger version)<\/em><\/p>\n

While most of the current discussion about the TTC involves the weekend strike, there are still other matters to not lose sight of. Spacing’s Sean Marshall sparked a good discussion<\/a> about the Downtown Relief Line<\/a> (DRL) a few weeks back which prompted side-discussions about the effectiveness of the Transit City<\/a> plan to bring LRT to the inner suburbs.<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting and important aspects when discussing Transit City is the connection between density and the location of the lines. Graeme Stewart of ERA Architects has developed maps and that help illustrate the potential of Transit City and how the proposed LRT lines relate to Toronto’s high rise communities. The maps are a part of Stewart’s current leadership role on Toronto Tower Renewal, a project that aims to bring energy efficiency and social urban design (among other things) to the vast number of high-rise towers scattered throughout the city. Spacing’s Dale Duncan recently wrote in Eye Weekly about Tower Renewal and its intending results.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s most recent post<\/a> on the Toronto Tower Renewal blog<\/a> details the history and reasoning behind the development of these post-war neighbourhoods. (A disclaimer is needed here: ERA hired me in the winter as a graphic designer to conceptualize and build a blog for this project<\/em>). What I find fascinating about the maps is just how many buildings and communities would benefit from these proposed LRT lines — the contrast between the two maps clearly illustrates the dependency these areas have on low-capacity bus routes. While I have no objections to intelligent subway expansion such as the DRL or a Queen\/King line, these maps reaffirm my belief that spending money on above-ground LRT is the near future is much more beneficial to Toronto and its residents than the expansion of subway lines to York University and York region.<\/p>\n

From Stewart’s post:<\/p>\n

…the idea of 1960s development was to minimize commuting by creating self sufficient macro neighbourhoods; providing housing of all tenures in proximity to major employment, and accessible through both private and public transit.<\/em><\/p>\n

Key to these planning goals was the provision of significant apartment housing, providing both housing for all classes of workers as well as sufficient density to support transit….<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, despite the intent of self-sufficient communities, these vast areas of the city have become increasingly fragmented and disconnected. In the past decades, places of residence and employment have become disjointed and current transit lines, like the University-Spadina line, are noteworthy for the lack of service they provide to apartment neighbourhoods, which rely primarily of surface routes. Communities themselves, built at the scale of the car and consisting of vast areas of single use zoning, are not meeting the evolving needs of diverse resident communities increasingly going elsewhere for retail and community services.<\/em><\/p>\n

None the less, if it wasn’t for these high-density clusters, transit would not work within Toronto’s vast post-war communities, and to accommodate the same population our region would be significantly more sprawling.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest of the Stewart’s analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Map 1: Black dots represent Toronto’s modern apartments with existing rapid transit (click on map for larger version) Map 2: Clusters of Toronto’s modern apartments with the proposed rapid transit lines of Transit City (click on map for larger version) While most of the current discussion about the TTC involves the weekend strike, there areContinue reading “High rise apartments and Transit City”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8,20],"tags":[4690,331,1586,23,423,4300,8896,2426,7531,62,19,8897,592],"class_list":["post-3096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-space","category-transit","category-urban-design","tag-community-services","tag-dale-duncan","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-environment","tag-eye-weekly","tag-graphic-designer","tag-queen-king","tag-retail","tag-sean-marshall","tag-sustainability","tag-toronto","tag-tower-renewal","tag-york-university"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHigh rise apartments and Transit City - 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