I don't have this evidence, but I don't think that kills my argument. We're not even necessarily arguing for solutions to the same problem. I see the stagnation of our urban form as a problem to be solved in and of itself, separate from the specific crisis we find ourselves in today. Even with slow, stable population growth, our inner neighbourhoods would eventually become prohibitively expensive without the capacity to change organically. Beyond the question of what will or won't solve our current crisis, it's in our interest to encourage that kind of organic growth, and prohibiting a building type that, I want to emphasize, is so common as to be the basic unit of many other large cities (New York and Paris, yes, but also Chicago, Philadelphia, central Boston, not to mention nearly all European cities—Barcelona, Madrid, Geneva, Lyon, to name just a few) is, to me, just so obviously the wrong move. I contend that the 4-6 storey walk-up building would, if it were allowed, fill a currently unoccupied niche in the market for slightly less expensive apartments in central locations, even if it didn't lead to a "material reduction in housing price" across the board. I do not think it would canabalise meaningfully on the construction of the kind of "luxury" mid-rise buildings that are already common. Rather, what would today be proposed as a three storey multiplex might instead be proposed at five storeys (66% more housing!). A developer who today would build a row of (non-accessible) townhouses might instead build a row of small apartment buildings. Etc., etc.
All of the above
may be true...... but a fair question, I think, is, even were it so.......... is that a sufficient benefit in light of being exclusionary to a material portion of the population?
My answer to that is No.
I think the threshold for justifying such exclusion is or ought to be very high, and I don't think, if I accepted your argument in whole, that it would reach that place for me.
For others, mileage will vary.
Yes, you're right. I was referring less to the city-wide density stats and more to specific areas, as an illustration of what's possible within Toronto's inner neighbourhoods. Manhattan, for example, has an approximate population of 1.6 million in a land area of roughly 60 square kilometres, vs the Old City of Toronto's ~900,000 people in ~100 square kilometres. The Wikipedia density numbers are 28,873 and 8,659 people per square kilometre respectively. That's about 3.33 times. If our goal is to accommodate a growing population within the confines of the urban area we already have—and I think it should be—New York is a useful example.
I'm certainly not adverse to considering that ..........except that I don't see NYC as a panacea.
It has many wonderful traits, from architecture to theatre to robust is somewhat unattractive transit.
But when I consider the questions of affordability, unit size, commute, and other quality of life questions, I would argue doesn't provide optimal quality of life, particularly to citizens in lower income demographics.
I would currently say the same of Toronto or Vancouver, as I would of SF, DC, Paris, London, UK etc.
I think you're missing my point here. I'm not suggesting that we aim to be a city of eight or nine million. I'm merely suggesting this: the problem we're confronted with is how to design a city that accommodates a larger population than the current ~2.8 million—to choose a totally arbitrary number let's say ~3.5 million people within the City of Toronto in the medium-term future.
Not being pedantic here, but just to update you.
The official City number from 2022 is currently 3,025,000. For practical purposes, best estimates have the City at about 3.2 -3.3M currently.
And that problem—how to house ~3.5 million people in a relatively small area—is one that New York successfully solved. As did many other cities. The fact that New York now needs to accommodate a population of 9+ million people in that same area and is therefore in the midst of its own crisis isn't really relevant. The physical infrastructure that they do have would be up to the task of the problem that we are facing and is therefore worth emulating.
I'm not sure that I accept the bolded above.
Success is invariably subjective, but when I look across a number of metrics that I value, I would argue NYC has failed to accommodate people in reasonable accommodation at a reasonable price, and further that it provides inadequate infrastructure and services to support said people.
