Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1319

Daniel Hertz of City Observatory recently published an interesting post talking about what makes American zoning unique compared to the rest of the world . It is based on the conclusions of a book published earlier this year called Zoned in the USA .

Here are 2 snippets that I liked from his post:

Hirt’s major claim is that what really sets American zoning apart is its orientation, explicit or implicit, to putting the single-family residential zone at the top of the hierarchy of urban land uses. Not only are single-family zones listed first in many zoning codes, but they make up significant pluralities, or even majorities, of total land area in most American cities. Interestingly, Hirt points out that this wasn’t necessarily true when zoning was first introduced: New York’s famous first zoning law didn’t even have a single-family zone at all.

As Hirt points out, Americans appear to be unique in believing that there is something so special about single-family homes that they must be protected from all other kinds of buildings and uses—even other homes, if those homes happen to share a wall. The recent revolt in Seattle over a proposal to soften that city’s single-family districts , in other words, would not be possible anywhere else in the world, not least because very few people live in single-family districts to begin with.

I don’t know if Canada is covered in the book, but we clearly share many similarities with that of the US.

I would say more, but at this point in the day I should probably rest my eyes and stop looking at a computer screen. Hopefully we can continue this discussion in the comment section below.

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Three months ago when Toronto City Council voted not to remove the Gardiner Expressway East (which in my view was a mistake ), it did so with a commitment to look at tolling options for both the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway (which in my view is a positive thing ).

Last week a preliminary report was released discussing some of those tolling options. If reading dry city reports is your thing, you can do that here .

The Coles Notes version (CliffNotes for you Americans) is that a $3 flat toll on both the Gardiner and the DVP – the same cost as riding transit in this city – would be expected to reduce vehicles on the highways by 9% and 12%, as well reduce end-to-end travel times by 3 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. There’s obviously a lot more in the report, but these figures stood out for me.

Given how monumental the 3 minute delay was in the Gardiner East debates, it will be interesting to see whether people treat a 3 minute time savings in a similar way. I suspect they won’t. The cost will be the larger issue.

I’ve been a vocal supporter of tolls and road pricing on this blog . One of the main reasons for that is because I view the demand for highways as being largely inelastic and therefore a potentially great source of transit funding.

The discouraging part of the above report is that its primary goal is to explore tolls for the purpose of “offsetting capital, operating, and maintenance costs.” The primary goal is not to come up with sustainable sources of transit funding.

Having these costs paid for by user-fees as opposed to general taxes is still a good thing in my view. But an even better thing would be to help fund mobility solutions that we know will be far more effective at getting people around this region as millions more people move here in the coming decades.

The other discouraging part of the report is that near the end it explains that while the City of Toronto Act of 2006 allows for toll highways, they cannot be implemented without the Province passing regulation.

It’s a reminder that our governance structures do not reflect the current urban reality of this country.

I’m back and it feels great . I missed blogging the past 2 days. Though, there was something nice about not touching a computer all weekend.

This morning I got up extra early and listened to a brief conversation between Aaron M. Renn of The Urbanophile and urbanist Richard Florida . The topic is New York’s “Great Reset”, and the impetus was a recent report (of the same name) that was put out by New York University.

The conversation starts by talking about the resilience of New York City and its ability to accept and then reinvent itself in the wake of “creative destruction.” Destruction such as the financial crisis of 2008/2009. 

But they then go on to talk about the challenges that New York, as well as many other cities, are now facing. Challenges brought about, not by failure, but by their tremendous success. Challenges such as income inequality and the dwindling middle class.

The overarching premise is that we are still in the early stages of a new urban and creative economy. And that there’s lots of work to be done in order to figure out how to make it an inclusive one.

There’s even mention of former Toronto mayor, Rob Ford.

You can listen to the talk below. If you can’t see the embedded play button, click here .

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