Raise the Hammer

I take your point about Concession, or the Mountain north of somewhere between Mohawk and Fennell.

In truth, density varies widely across the lower city too. The built-form is overall more compact and oriented to a grid which makes it more amenable to transit service.

We need to think about density a little more precisely: in terms of people per household, private dwellings per hectare, and people per square km. Intensification has in many ways become about a different kind of density: the amount of assessment per acre or hectare.

We need to be clear about this. You can have fewer dwelling units per hectare with larger household sizes. That increases costs, yet generates the same tax revenue as a smaller household in the same dwelling unit. This is a classic problem with secondary suites if they aren't legal. More intense usage of public infrastructure and services without paying additional taxes. Legal suites clearly do pay increased taxes for this reason. The policy question is how much should they pay?

Conversely, I'm well acquainted with population stats for most Canadian cities. Most central cities or old city areas (if amalgamated) have added many more units than people since the 1970s. In other words the trend is toward smaller households, especially one-person households, living in smaller dwelling units like rental or condo apartments. To use Toronto as an example, even after the apartment boom of the 1960s the population in the old City dropped substantially as family sizes fell in houses ... more dwelling units but less people. I think in 2011 census after a substantial condo boom downtown the old City has finally surpassed the population it had in the 1951 census of just over 700,000 (it now has approx. 730,000).

Effectively, Toronto has been building feverishly just to maintain its population ... "nice" gentrified neighbourhoods like Riverdale and the Beach have census tracts that have lost something like 20-30% of their population since 1971. The households are smaller (have fewer children and lodgers), but are richer ... no one thinks of them as being in decline, because they now have richer trade areas. Meanwhile whole communities have sprouted up in condo land along the central waterfront. The effect is to standstill in terms of overall population, but to have it less evenly distributed.

Comment edited by RobF on 2015-12-01 23:56:56