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14 Comments

cityscape

Duly Quoted: Jack Diamond

By Hamutal Dotan

“While there’s little or no gravy to be found in current city operations, there’s enormous wastefulness in the form of our cities… [T]he extra cost of operating a widespread, low-density city such as Toronto, compared with a more compact city such as Zurich or Vienna (to say nothing of Manhattan or Hong Kong), [is] an average of $1-billion annually.”

—Architect Jack Diamond, arguing in an op-ed for the Globe and Mail that while it may be politically expedient to blame bureaucratic waste for the cost of running Toronto, the much less convenient truth is that one major expense is the suburban layout that comprises much of the city. (The costs of maintaining streets, clearing snow, and providing many services increase when living space per person goes up.) Diamond suggests that higher orders of government should, for instance, consider allocating infrastructure funding on the basis of whether projects minimize financial burdens on cities.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Intensification is great, but I wish there was a better option than broom closet condos and ugly slab apartment towers.

    • Anonymous

      Arguably, there is. In that piece Diamond talks about changing zoning to allow suburban single family homes to be converted to duplexes. And others have contended (can’t find link now, but will post when I do) that midrise apartment buildings (8-10 storeys) should be next for Toronto: enough densification to make a difference, but still a very livable scale.

      • Anonymous

        Duplexes (even the 4-unit kind) don’t approach the level of intensification I’m lamenting.

        • Anonymous

          Right, but that’s the point: smaller scale intensification is still worth doing. Doesn’t need to be 50-floor condos or nothing.

      • Brittaney

        What you are calling mid-rise apartment buildings are actually very expensive to maintain, say compared to a high rise. Maintenance fees are considerably higher for the upkeep with so fewer people contributing to the support of things such as water heaters, roofing, elevator maintenance, salaries of support staff & on & on.

  • http://piorkowski.ca qviri

    “Downtown” Toronto has relatively underused capacity too. My mind splits when thinking of the two-storey shacks on Yonge south of Bloor. Bloor and Danforth are lined with 2-3 storeys too. If we don’t have intensification above subway lines, what hope is there for elsewhere? Extremely prominent corners like SE King and Spadina or SE Dundas and Spadina have single-storey structures. (Let’s see what becomes of the old TD branch at Dundas/Spadina, but I’m not holding my breath.)

    Is there something in the planning specifications or in the economics that makes 4-6 storey residential buildings unfeasible in Toronto? Our options seem to consist of single-family houses, 3 storeys with one of them in half-basement, then a jump up to older 10 storey towers, then straight to 20+ storey condo towers. 4-6 seems pretty well-suited for between subway stops and along LRT, but can it happen?

    • TooLazyToSignIn

      Part of the issue is the building code. You can build 1, 2 & 3 storey buildings using wood frame construction. If you go bigger than that, the code requires higher construction standards (i.e. concrete & steel).

      If you’re paying the premium for heavier duty construction, you need the extra units on more floors to make up for it.

      • StillTooLazy

        And don’t forget parking standards. Even with the changes Toronto made with the harmonized zoning by-law, you’re forcing people to either build really small (so not much parking is required), put aside half or more of their land area for surface parking, or build an insanely expensive parking structure.

        On the brighter side, that does mean we have huge amounts of land scattered throughout suburban plazas and employment areas just begging to be redeveloped before we pave over any more farmland.

        • http://piorkowski.ca qviri

          Oh, parking standards make me rage. (Especially in conjunction with total lack of transit service standards, which gives us current Portlands plans.)

      • chris

        Lowrise wood frame condos are extremely common elsewhere though. When you go up 3-4 storeys you only need to go one down for parking, which makes it a lot cheaper.

        I suspect there are other factors at play, most likely related to land values and/or difficulty in assembling parcels. When you do see such buildings, which are the dominant form of intensification in smaller cities (but also in say the suburbs of Calgary or Vancouver) they’re often on greenfield or brownfield sites rather than redeveloping existing residential areas.

      • http://piorkowski.ca qviri

        I’m not really familiar with construction costs in North America – is brick/prefab brick at all price-competitive? Is concrete really that expensive? I wouldn’t necessarily advocate a four-storey wood structure, but surely we don’t need a full-blown steel frame for that?

        • John Duncan

          http://www.guelphmercury.com/print/article/309952

          This is based on studies the wood industry had a hand in, so caveat emptor, but wood frame construction is apparently 10-15% cheaper than concrete & steel and, for small structures, up to 30% faster to construct. That’s a pretty hefty difference in cost.
          Not requiring any on-site parking (even one-storey of underground parking requires ventilation systems and hefty foundations) would cut the cost even more.

          The City of Toronto had discussions about this way back in 2005 as well, and most of the issues they flagged then still apply today. http://www.toronto.ca/planning/midrise_symposium.htm

  • Anonymous

    “allocating infrastructure funding on the basis of whether projects minimize financial burdens on cities”

    Exactly how is this going to enrich developers who make the biggest campaign contributions?

  • AndrewW

    If cities really want to make a difference, they’ll figure out how to reduce the costs of development. The Construction Industry hasn’t changed in hundreds of years and all the academics that study the industry recognize that the whole process has about 50% waste. That’s the goal if we want to have sustainable cities and housing for everyone – fix construction.