Last week I spoke about the supply crisis that is incoming in the Greater Toronto Area. This week I’m going to dive a bit deeper into how zoning continues to play a role in causing this crisis and how if we re-think the way we plan cities, we could solve not only our housing supply crisis, but also increase the sustainability, and enjoyability of our communities. By looking to examples of communities that are currently working very well and discussing where we went wrong with zoning and what needs to change. We might be able to reframe the way we look at this issue and kill multiple birds with one stone. (If you missed my last post you can get caught up here.)
Let’s dive right into a brief overview of zoning bylaws. Zoning relates to how cities plan the use of their land. In Ontario we use something called an “Official Plan” which each municipality has jurisdiction over and it outlines the general plan for how the city will change and evolve over the course of 30 years. Amendments are made to the plan every 5 years with larger overhauls happening in 10 year increments. A big part of these Official Plans relate to zoning. Zoning can vary from municipality to municipality, but the general idea was to separate different “land uses,” e.g. residential, agricultural, industrial, commercial. The overall idea was to prevent that a noisy industrial shop from open next door to your peaceful residential street, and since everyone had a car, you can just drive to work, and the store, and ironically, the fitness centre. The idea was to keep different categories of real estate separate. But these bylaws were introduced and heavily designed with the automobile in mind, meaning that everyone was assumed to have a car and car infrastructure was placed front and centre. Now we have these swaths of homes, miles away from any shops, recreation, or places of work.
In some cases the intended effects did occur. You often can find quiet streets in certain suburban pockets isolated from shops, places of work and industrial land uses. In my opinion this doesn’t build a sense of community, it doesn’t encourage sustainable living, walkability or cycling and effectively turns streets into “bedroom communities”. I was recently having a discussion with my family at the dinner table about this exact topic and some interesting points were brought up about how restrictive zoning can be. A fellow neighbour of my parents in Mississauga, Ontario had tried at some point to apply for a permit to operate a massage business/sole-proprietorship out of her home. The application was eventually turned down, because as the law requires, the neighbours were notified. They complained and noted concern about the increased traffic through their quiet residential neighbourhood. However, this particular home had ample parking and could accommodate a large number of potential clients, and she was applying as a sole-proprietor meaning that she would be the sole person working out of her clinic, how many people would really be there at one time? At most 2 or 3.
Additionally, we started pondering why we disallow minimally disturbing businesses to be operated out of garages? For example: boutique shops, novelty stores, used book stores, small bakeries, bicycle repairs shops, small fitness studios, video game or board game cafes. People in the neighbourhood could leave their cars at home and walk to their neighbours house pick up some bagels, do some yoga, grab drinks and play board games; talk about building a sense of community. We’ve effectively destroyed small business in our suburbs and newer cities due to these zoning restrictions and replaced them with big box stores, cars, and fast food chain restaurants. I do believe that the municipality can and should retain some rights to restrict things like a businesses operating hours. But the system of opening a small “residential” business should be flipped. Where there is a minimally restrictive list of allowable business types that do not require neighbour consent to open and is basically just a form you fill out. Flipping the system in reverse where opening is easy and closing down is challenging, changing the incentive structure, would really help re-invigorate our communities. If the business was truly becoming distributive or not in line with what the neighbours want, the neighbours should be the ones who have to go through a lengthy, challenging process to try and shut it down. I imagine if the business is well respected this would be an unpopular stance for a neighbourhood association to take.
It was also interesting to me that in certain countries in Europe, specifically, Poland, where my family is from. The zoning bylaws are much less restrictive. They naturally have to be because of the densities involved and smaller land masses. The community decides how they want to use the land and governments or neighbours only tend to intervene if things are unsafe. For example, my uncle operates his furniture factory out of an old barn where there used to be horse stables. He employs about 6-7 local community members, including one of my other uncles, and is about a 30 second commute on foot from his home where his mother and family live and can visit during lunch breaks if he chooses. Uncle number 2 lives a 5 minute walk from the factory one street over. Uncle number 1 can have business meetings on his driveway or in a little office he’s built at the back of the shop. They have respectful business hours form about 8AM-6PM Monday to Saturday. Neighbours don’t hear air compressors and nail guns running all through the night and he’s built a great sense of community at the factory. Myself and my cousins would often congregate there as a meeting point before setting off on an adventure.
This factory is more of a rural village setting, and obviously I can understand that in a more dense area maybe operating a furniture factory wouldn’t be ideal, but it still proves a point that in this small rural town there is a greater sense of community than most suburbs in Canada, and that small local business plays a big role in employment as well as enjoyment of that community. It also enables convenience for both my uncles to be so close to work and their families, not to mention the local grocery store is a short 10 minute walk from the factory. This tiny village of 2000 people is more walkable than most of Mississauga! It’s more sustainable, builds community and allows you to be close to family in case of emergencies. Small adjustments to zoning bylaws could greatly improve the sense community in new cities and suburbs like Mississauga and bring us closer to the small town feel of places like Streetsville, Port Credit, Riverdale/Danforth, Harbord Village, or even smaller rural settings. Not to mention that well designed communities like the ones I mentioned tend to be places where many people desire to live and actually increase property values because of all the great amenities, convenience, and sense of community.
I would like to now shift a bit to talking about density. Until very recently, most suburban municipalities made it very difficult and time consuming to build a 2+ unit home where there was a pre-existing single family home, with our culprit again being zoning bylaws. However, due to new provincial laws, you can now build a second unit on a pre-existing lot pretty much anywhere in the province without having to apply for re-zoning; which is a process that requires public meetings and notifying all the neighbours which usually becomes a war against “developers” and nothing gets built, status quo almost always wins in these cases. However, these new laws mean that it will be possible to contribute a small amount to the large supply issue by creating 2 or 3 homes on 1 lot. We’ve also seen the addition of laneway suites become relatively easy to apply for in cities with laneways such as Toronto. This again adds some units to the overall supply. These are small changes, but anything will help to chip away at the problem.
While the improvements in reducing red tape are a welcome sign, the housing problem we are dealing with is a monolith and all this talk of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s) and laneway suites is really a drop in the bucket compared to the grand reforms that need to happen to actually solve this looming issue. NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard) is still alive and well and changing zoning bylaws for larger developments can still be either next to impossible, or extremely time consuming. I do understand why some people feel that a large imposing apartment tower shouldn’t be built next to a community of smaller residences. Some common complaints are the building casting shadows, increased vehicle traffic, or strain on pre-existing services. I won’t get into the poor public transit of suburbs, but lets just say adding such large density, with little or no consistent public transit to serve it, makes more vehicle use inevitable and almost required if the new residents want to reach any local services or their places of employment. That is why I propose a more moderated, but equally impactful approach to increasing density and planning future developments.
If we look back at older communities like the ones I mentioned earlier in this article, or take notes from places like Quebec City and older European cities. With their non-imposing 3-6 storey row apartments with shops on the main level and base our future communities on these models with work, housing, and recreation in mind. We can not only contribute significant supply to the housing crisis, but this type of housing also accomplishes many things that we claim to care about. Such as reducing car use and overall carbon footprints, increasing density in a non-imposing way, and has the added benefit of increasing the “beauty” of our neighbourhoods making them places people actually want to live in. We’d be able to walk to all our errands right outside our doors. The various shops and restaurants would allow for a nice social environment to be had in what is technically a denser community and local business owners could operate their businesses close to home. While I do think I make some strong arguments for changing the way we think about housing, I am not the first to propose this type of housing. If you look up “the missing middle” on Google there are some great videos and articles about this type of housing and how it can be a great solution to our housing problem.
The moral of all of this is that I think we need to re-open the options for intermingling shop with homes, and rethinking our entire system of community planning. Changing bylaws to allow businesses operate out of people’s homes or garages is just one of the small things we can do to improve. We can try to get back some of that ”old city” community that has been lost with modern zoning bylaws whose goal it was to separate these things. Which had the unintended consequence of breaking down our sense of community while also being an inefficient use of land. If we plan to welcome cities worth of people into Canada every year, we need to think about building cities in a new (technically “old”) and sustainable way that will not only improve our communities and quality of life, but allow us to solve many problems at once.
All the best,
Oliver