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Globe and Mail opinion piece that makes the case for reforming our elevator rules:

Canada’s outdated elevator rules are adding to the housing crisis​

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Canada is an increasingly urban nation, but the soaring cranes across its cities mask surprisingly few elevators – around four for every 1,000 Canadians, slightly ahead of the United States but behind every other high-income country with available data. Switzerland has half the population of Ontario and almost four times as many elevators. Greece has 10 times as many elevators per capita as Canada.
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Elevators in Canada are far more expensive than in Europe. A new elevator in a small, mid-rise apartment building in Canada costs the developer upward of $200,000, compared to roughly a third of that cost in Europe. Canada’s expensive elevators are both a cause and an effect of our more suburban, low-rise settlement patterns – we rely less on apartment buildings so there is less of an outcry over high costs, but those high costs also continue to make family apartment living less affordable and attractive in Canada.
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The high cost of elevators in Canada also means some smaller buildings have none at all, limiting accessibility. Larger buildings have fewer elevators, leading to longer waits and more disruption when one is out of service. As Canada opens itself up for more small-scale infill growth – with smaller rental and condo buildings made viable by pending single-stair reforms and land use reforms – the high cost of elevators will become more of a barrier to the development of affordable, accessible homes.
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https://archive.is/1SFfU
 
A year ago, the City of Toronto hived off the reviewing of development applications from City Planning, and created a new unit called Development Review.

The Star has an article today, looking at that's going.

www.thestar.com

One year ago, Toronto launched a division to speed up development approvals. Here’s how it’s going

The division has reduced wait times on major application types by 80 per cent, and approved more than 46,000 homes, says its executive director.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

From the above:

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afransen said:
What if that allows the current residents to extract lots of investment in infrastructure (say, a subway line) and refuse to allow anything but SFHs in their neighbourhood. *cough* Willowdale *cough*

Strong Towns, the advocacy org, has a good way of stating it:

"The Strong Towns movement advocates that no neighborhood should be exempt from change, but also that no neighborhood should experience radical or sudden change. This means that while all areas should be open to incremental growth and adaptation, sudden, disruptive changes that could negatively impact existing communities should be avoided."

It's not reasonable and it is a historical aberration to try to freeze a neighbourhood in amber and not allow any change.
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Except that 4 plexes are now allowed as of right.
 
Northern Light said:
Its a bad idea that keeps re-treading again and again.
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I for one am willing to accept some experimentation. You have argued that you don't expect it to result in any cost savings. I'd be open to allowing development to take place and evaluate how it performs in practice. This plus allowing the EU elevator standard to be used in NA, even if only for small midrise buildings that would benefit from single stair.
 
MTSAs have been finally approved

bsky.app

Toronto City Planning and Development Review (@cityplanto.bsky.social)

Today, the Province of Ontario approved, with modifications, 120 Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas in #Toronto. The decision increases building heights and densities near transit and supports more housing options for these areas. Learn more: toronto.ca/OurPlan
bsky.app bsky.app

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The Ontario press release said they will keep working on 14 other transit station areas... I think we can infer these missing stations to be

TTC: Royal York, Glencairn, Chaplin, Avenue, Milliken, Don Valley, Finch West, Sentinel, Mount Dennis

GO: Guildwood, Rouge Hill, Long Branch, Exhibition, Scarborough

Mostly in pretty affluent neighborhoods so I’m not surprised.
 
They're allowing building heights of up to 30 storeys within 200m of a transit station and 20 storeys within 200-500m of transit station, but ONLY for sites that can accomadate three or more towers.

What's the reason that they would limit those allowable building heights to only those sites?
 
OPA 778 (expanding Avenues, removing Avenue Studies, and allowing mid-rise as-of-right on Avenues) made progress at the OLT with the appelants allowing the unappealed sections to go into effect

[6] The City then requested that the unappealed portions of OPA 778 be confirmed to have come into force and effect on March 14, 2025, by operation of s. 17(27) of the Planning Act. The Appellants consented to the request, and as such, the Tribunal confirmed that the unappealed portions of OPA 778 came into force and effect on March 14, 2025.
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The only city-wide section that is still being appealed is the required ground floor activation for buildings on avenues in mixed-used areas which is being appealed by the TCDSB. Outside of that, it is only the appelants' specific sites that are being blocked for now

Case Information

They also tried their best to include a table but instead they included images of multiple parts which is why I have to do the same here because I am not typing this all out

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I've mentioned this before, but Ray Delahanty just posted a video essay exploring the questionable ethics of locating intense residential uses in proximity to high traffic roadways and particularly highways. Something for folks in Toronto to think carefully about. I can think of countless high density residential communities being located in close proximity to highways in the city, from Langstaff Gateway, 2150 Lakeshore, STC redevelopment, etc. And beyond that, the City policy of concentrating density on arterials, which is also questionable, as it maximizes the number of people who are at risk from poor air quality in addition to noise pollution, traffic violence, etc. I can't help but wonder if in 30 years these decisions will be cursed as the poor urban planning decisions made by this generation.

 
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I’m not sure if this has been raised before, but I was recently wondering: just as we maintain rental units when a building is demolished and replaced with a condo, why don’t we do the same for retail units... or at least give former retailers the right to return to their space at a comparable rent? This would go ways to reduce the loss of fine-grained retail and also maintain the unique retail mix that are much less likely to move into new condo ground floor units.
 
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