GenerationLee
Senior Member
I think I'll be knee deep in my vicadin addiction at this rate!
- Thread starter ferusian
- Start date
Koops65
Senior Member
Yonge & Eglinton, with 2323 Yonge centered:
Zoomed in:
Zoomed in:
HowarkRoark
New Member
Let's see your building so we can compare.
HowarkRoark
New Member
You seem hurt by Ayn Rand, only a weak man has problems with strong intelligent women?
ProjectEnd
Superstar
Why did you phrase that as a question?
ushahid
Senior Member
dude/dudette you again? why cant we criticize a Riocan building? enlighten us.
TronnaLegacy
New Member
The building looks boring, yes, but I'm fine with that. I spend a very small portion of my day looking at the outside of my apartment building. I spend a far greater portion of my day living in it.
Application Details
www.toronto.ca
Resubmitted with the following changes:
- Storey count increased from 58 to 65
- Height increased from 190.8 to 212.4m
- Total residential units increased from 750 to 784
- Total vehicular parking decreased from 50 to 46
- Total bicycle parking increased from 758 to 871
Elevations to give a sense of the material colour:
Koops65
Senior Member
Attachments
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Northern Light
Superstar
maestro
Senior Member
The standard for "living" in the tens of thousands of units built in the last year is equally unimpressive and arguably worse than ten or twenty years ago.
I just read an article that Riocan is divesting of all residential properties and development sites citing the return on investment is not worth the effort to manage or develop them.
maestro
Senior Member
There's a premium to build up and an even larger premium to provide public services and amenities for high population densities. Intensifying properties with existing property improvements (although much higher density zoning may make those improvements moot) comes with a premium as well. Affordability without outward growth given Toronto's expected population growth is not sustainable without massive government housing subsidies which adds substantially to the budgets. This super sized residential Manhattan in every YIMBY dream in reality ends up a dystopian, futuristic, Hollywood nightmare.
cateran
New Member
Would you be able to provide your sources that say it costs proportionally more for the city to provide amenities to higher density areas? I am assuming by “an even larger premium” you mean that it is per capita more expensive to service these areas
I ask because I have only heard the opposite that it is actually cheaper per person to service high density areas due to economies of scale and that less dense areas are generally a drain on finances due to the fact that they are more expensive to service and provide lower revenues
Northern Light
Superstar
I can provide background info, if you search the forum for my name and looking at posts in various threads, particularly zoning reform and population boom themed ones.
Without digging into them just now though....
Let me say this is a nuanced question. Its not an easy, straight-forward answer.
The argument above is not strictly one about amenities. Its about the cost of land and construction, which drives up the cost of purchasing/renting an apartment/home.
Its also about the cost to the City of servicing growth. That isn't just amenties as you might typically think of them, such as Parks or libraries or such. Its the cost of added energy production and distribution;
the cost of larger watermains, sewers, and various other utilities.
Those costs all grow with horizontal sprawl (more road area per capita, longer pipes too from water/sewage plants etc.) But they also grow with vertical growth. The 50-storey building not only needs just as much water per resident as those living in sprawl; they also need electric pumps to make that water rise much above the 10th floor, where no such pumps are typically required in a 2s suburban house. (that's an operating and capital cost that is private, rather than public, but does affect affordability
Tall towers create far more stormwater issues due to their surface area (the vertical walls do not absorb rain water), buildings are supposed to direct and store this water on-site in tanks nowadays, which when successful, can reduce municipal costs and flood risks, but still drive up construction and operating costs of those buildings.
Tall towers create far more issues w/urban heat island and therefore drive up the demand for air conditioning. Many hirise buildings also have high heat loss in winter.
When it comes to public services, greater density, to a point, does drive down the cost of public service per capita and can enhance the quality of same.
I'll use schools as the example here. A high school in a small town or low density suburb, will have maybe 800 students. It has certain fixed costs such as a gym, a sports field, an auditorium as well as a principal, a guidance counselor and a music teacher.
When you increase density initially, you might see that school rise to 1,200 students. But it still has and needs only 1 gym, 1 sports field and 1 principal etc.
This results in savings which can either mean lower taxes, or could mean a school that can now afford more field trips, a free year book, or more art supplies.
Great.
But as density rises further, the school will start to need a second gym, and another vice principle and the building may get taller, which will add some construction and operating costs.
Then, as density rises further .....the school is now under a tower.......this is a much more complicated and expensive construction project, the land is worth a lot more money, which in turn means you can buy less of it. As the school becomes more vertical you now need escalators, more elevators and it becomes more challenging to supervise as you now need staff looking at different floors at the same time. The school takes longer to load in /out not only at the beginning and end of the school day but at lunch etc. Parking will now go underground which is much more expensive than above ground. Same for loading and waste pick up.
So there are many different costs, all going up, but some going up per capita, and others down.
Likewise w/transit. Building a subway in sprawl or low density areas is relatively cheap, it can be built above grade, in a trench or cut-and-cover, in shallow tunnel. All much cheaper to build and operate than deep-bore tunnels and stations which is what you tend to build in high density areas.
A new, shallow subway station is 100M, a deep station is 250m to 400m. Expanding an already built station (see Bloor-Yonge) is 1.5B or more than 10x the cost of station in low density sprawl.
On the other hand, the subway in the highly dense area will require less subsidy per rider to operate and will be able to provide more frequent service. (When Toronto first built the University subway line, it was so lightly used that they closed it entirely on weekends)
I can get much more into the weeds and source the data.
Suffice to say, its not a straight line where all growth, or all vertical growth is good. There are adverse costs at different points to both owners/renters and the public purse. But equally the same can be said of endless sprawl.
The sweet spot in the middle is not easy to hit.
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Red_Bulmer
Active Member
What a silly discussion seeing as city Toronto cannot grow outward, only upward, and you are discussing municipal expenditures.
Back on topic… wow, un-recessed balconies up to the 65 floor, what could go wrong
Back on topic… wow, un-recessed balconies up to the 65 floor, what could go wrong
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