Christo­pher Hume – Yourhome​.ca

Toronto’s tow­ers have grown up, but not its cit­i­zenry. Though the real issue is how our build­ings behave at street level, the city and its plan­ners remain fix­ated on height.

“There needs to be inten­si­fi­ca­tion,” argues archi­tect Bruce Kuwabara. “What we have to think about are ways to cre­ate a ver­ti­cal urban life that’s liv­able. It isn’t just about the view. It has to be about how build­ings work at the base and how they con­tribute to the pub­lic realm.”

Kuwabara’s firm, KPMB, is one of sev­eral par­tic­i­pat­ing in the exhi­bi­tion, “Too Tall?” The show, on dis­play at Har­bourfront Cen­tre, 235 Queens Quay W., until Dec. 31, addresses Toronto’s fear of heights. Though the city has more high­rise devel­op­ment under­way than any other city in North Amer­ica — there are 132 such projects in Toronto, com­pared to 88 in Mex­ico City, 82 in Chicago — that has only stiff­ened local resistance.

Toronto’s pre-eminent condo designer, Peter Clewes of archi­tect­sAl­liance, agrees with Kuwabara.

“We’re cre­at­ing a new urban fab­ric,” he says. “Tall build­ings make sense in the North Amer­i­can city when they’re aggre­gated. All the debate is about height, but it should be about how well these tow­ers knit in at ground level. When you’re right down on the street, height is irrelevant.”

And as archi­tect Richard Witt of RAW Design, points out, “The only way to build sus­tain­able cities is with den­sity. Den­sity allows us to cut con­sump­tion and reduce pollution.”

At a time of grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal uncer­tainty, sus­tain­abil­ity is more cru­cial than ever. For the first time in decades, at least since the end of World War II, cities are start­ing to real­ize that they need to be com­pact, coher­ent and con­nected. Toronto’s for­mer plan­ning chief Paul Bed­ford has a sim­ple test for the suc­cess­ful 21^st-century city: Can you live with­out a car?

That’s why the most remark­able devel­op­ment in the Toronto condo mar­ket isn’t the height of the tallest tow­ers, but that one of them — a 42-storey com­plex on Uni­ver­sity Ave. north of Dun­das St. W. — will be built with­out park­ing. Though city plan­ners opposed it, this is the project that marks the begin­ning of Toronto’s com­ing of age. For all its flaws — and its backward-looking mayor — the city has achieved a new level of urbanism.

The focus on the base has already changed how Toronto con­dos are designed and built. In most new projects, tall, thin, tow­ers sit atop podi­ums of between two and five floors. These podi­ums are where build­ings meet the city and become part of the urban fab­ric. This is space we all share. This is also space for shops, restau­rants, bars, art gal­leries and so on.

“The thing that char­ac­ter­izes the best projects,” Kuwabara explains, “is that they have sub­stan­tial pro­grams at ground level … an ani­ma­tion strategy.”

Maple Leaf Square is a good exam­ple of how tall build­ings can con­tribute to the pub­lic realm. Tucked in behind Air Canada Cen­tre around Brem­ner Blvd., this trio of tow­ers exhibit a clear sense of the larger con­text. Though the streetscape could have been taken to a finer degree of fin­ish — why are there no benches? — the square feels gen­uinely pub­lic. The crit­i­cal fac­tor here, of course, is an arena that draws thou­sands. A giant video screen, pub­lic art, extra-wide side­walks and a degree of archi­tec­tural poros­ity add up to a thor­oughly urban precinct.

Keep in mind, too, that ACC and Maple Leaf Square are fully acces­si­ble by the under­ground PATH sys­tem and tran­sit, a reminder of the wis­dom of putting the venue down­town, not a site in the hin­ter­land acces­si­ble only by car.

“We’re oper­at­ing in a weird plan­ning con­text,” Clewes argues. “The province has man­dated den­sity and the city has amended its Offi­cial Plan, but this hasn’t trick­led down to the plan­ners. Plan­ners are an obsta­cle; they see them­selves as advo­cates of pub­lic opinion.”

Speak­ing of his Pure Spirit com­plex at the Dis­tillery Dis­trict, Clewes says. “There was never a con­ver­sa­tion about the base, only about height.”

That’s why city plan­ners rec­om­mended against the build­ing, among the most urban-minded of any tall condo in Toronto.

Still there’s a gen­eral sense in this city that height is bad, that the plan­ners’ job is to cut these tow­ers down to size. It’s an emo­tional response, if not the tall poppy syn­drome, cer­tainly the tall tower com­plex. As a rule of thumb, the city reduces the height of a pro­posed build­ing by 10 per cent. Ask for 50 storeys, expect 46.

But as Witt points out, “There’s a lot more to it than whether a condo tower is 40 or 50 storeys tall. The city’s urban design depart­ment has embraced tall build­ings; I think the resis­tance is politics.”

Given wide­spread antipa­thy to high­rise, the coun­cil­lors’ desire to keep build­ings short is obvi­ously intended to keep ward vot­ers happy. Even though Toronto’s Offi­cial Plan envi­sions tow­ers on the “avenues” — main streets — for many res­i­dents height remains problematic.

Besides, Toronto and every other com­mu­nity in the province exists in the shadow of the Ontario Munic­i­pal Board, the quasi-judicial body that has final say over devel­op­ment for more than a cen­tury. It can — and has — over­ruled com­pro­mise solu­tions that have been years in the works.

“There are nat­ural and eco­nomic and con­struc­tion lim­its to how tall a build­ing should be,” Clewes insists, “before it becomes about ego. We’re try­ing to cre­ate an objec­tive process but the debate soon gets com­pletely subjective.”

But, Witt adds, com­plain though we might, Toronto condo tow­ers are fully occu­pied. Builders seem to have no trou­ble sell­ing units, some as small as 301 square feet. Indeed, a more press­ing issue is why there are so few family-sized units to accom­mo­date the grow­ing num­ber of par­ents who choose to raise their kids downtown.

In Hong Kong, where res­i­den­tial tow­ers now reach 88 storeys into the sky and even fac­to­ries are high­rise, height is assumed, taken for granted. Toronto isn’t there yet, but that’s where we’re headed like it or not. In fact, we’re well on the way. If the ver­ti­cal city cur­rently tak­ing shape here is worth inhab­it­ing in the future, it will be because of deci­sions made today.

But to get the right answers, we must first ask the right ques­tions. So far, that has been too tall an order.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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paul bed­ford real estate

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