Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1412

This Tuesday evening at 630pm, WORKSHOP – which is a design studio, gallery, and retail shop located in Yorkville, Toronto – will be hosting a panel discussion titled: What is Smart Now?

On the panel will be a building scientist, a computer scientist, and two architects. The moderator will be Larry Wayne Richards, who is Creative Director of WORKSHOP and the former dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto . He was dean when I was completing my undergraduate degree and is one of my favorite people in the world of Toronto architecture.

Here’s a bit more on the panel:

For more than half a century, visionaries and companies such as Monsanto, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Samsung have promoted the concept of technologically smart homes with highly integrated, interactive systems.  However few of these homes have actually been realized, leaving us to wonder why.

Meanwhile, architects, builders, and home owners have become aware of the advantages of being smart in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability, from using common sense to selectively employing high-tech.  

But now, with the digital realm and software advancing rapidly, will sophisticated smart home systems merge with recent advances in high performance materials and energy-efficient construction, making “totally smart” (and affordable) homes commonplace? Will we finally be living in the magical future that was imagined 50 years ago?  And what are the implications for architects and architectural education?

And here are the panelists:

• PAUL DOWSETT, Architect and Founding Principal, Sustainable TO

• SRINIVASAN KESHAV, Professor of Computer Science, University of Waterloo

• TED KESIK, Professor of Building Science, University of Toronto

• JANNA LEVITT, Founding Partner, LGA Architects, Toronto

• LARRY WAYNE RICHARDS (Moderator), Creative Director, WORKSHOP

Given the current “ Internet of Things ” trend and the fact that software is creeping into so many non-tech fields, such as housing, I think this is a really timely discussion to be having. I also think it’s critical for these kinds of conversations to be cross-disciplinary. There are infinite opportunities in the housing market for people who are able to think in that way.

If you’d like to attend, click here to sign up . It’s free and open to the public. WORKSHOP is located in the lower concourse level of 80 Bloor Street West.

Image: WORKSHOP

If you live in Toronto and only give serious thought to one thing today, it should be to this interactive transit map created by Metro .

The map shows all existing, planned, and proposed transit lines in the city, and then overlays population densities, commuting patterns, household income, and so on. It’s a super valuable map that I think reveals a lot about how we should be focusing our energies to get Toronto moving.

So what sorts of things does it tell us? I’ll give 2 examples.

If you look at commuting patterns across the Bloor-Danforth subway line, you’ll see that Runnymede station in the west is where people switch over from taking transit to driving. People west of that station tend to drive. Naturally, it also happens to coincide with where population densities start to fall off.

By contrast, if you look at the east side of the city along the Danforth and beyond, the entire stretch more or less relies on transit to get around. Part of this likely has to do with income levels, but it’s also because of the availability of the Gardiner Expressway. There’s no equivalent in the east end. Dylan Reid of Spacing Magazine believes this makes a case for some sort of road pricing along the Gardiner, and I would agree.

As a second example, look at the population densities along the proposed Downtown Relief Line, Finch LRT, and John Tory’s SmartTrack line. Outside of the core, the population densities are relatively low along the proposed SmartTrack line – which is never a good thing for rapid transit.

There’s also no Sherbourne station on the SmartTrack line, which happens to have the highest population density across the entire Relief Line – 22,131 people per square kilometre! That’s more than any other stop along the Yonge-University subway line except for Wellesley station.

I’ve written about this a lot before, but I think we need to do a better job of matching up transit investment with expected customer demand. Too often we let politics get in the way of rationale decision making. Maybe it’s time we did something like set minimum population densities. If you want a subway line in your area, you have to first bring the people.

What else does this map tell you?

“We can’t address climate change without thinking about buildings.” -Bryn Davidson, Lanefab (Vancouver)

This is a line from a recent TEDx talk by Bryn Davidson, who is one of the founders of Lanefab out of Vancouver . Lanefab is a design and construction firm specializing in sustainable infill / laneway homes. Unlike Toronto , laneway houses are actually allowed in Vancouver.

If you have any interest in climate change, I would encourage you to watch his talk. It’s less than 20 minutes long and he addresses many of the misconceptions that I think people hold about what it means to build “green”. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEUShQ7r_tE]

While I think it’s great that the green agenda is much more front and center these days, I agree with Bryn in that we’re not yet on a sustainable path forward. For many people, being green means buying a LEED certified home, having a Tesla in the garage, and having a Nest thermostat on your wall. And certainly those things help.

But they’re not the whole story. Instead of just focusing on green and LEED buildings, Byrn argues that we need to take it a step further and start focusing on “Net Positive” buildings. In other words, ask yourself this: Will there be fewer green house gas emissions on the planet after your project is built?

More specifically, he outlines 3 criteria:

1. How good is your building?

2. Where is it located?

3. What does it replace?

The idea behind this framework is that the building itself (i.e. How good is your building?) is only one piece of the story. What also matters is its location and what it happens to be replacing. Is the building in a walkable area? Is it on a greenfield or infill site? Is it replacing an old energy inefficient building? Is it intensifying land use patterns?

All of these things matter when it comes to assessing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Let’s now apply this framework to three different building typologies: mid and high rise condominiums, and laneway houses. In the context of a Net Positive building, they all do quite well. In Toronto, we could certainly do a lot to improve the way many of our condo buildings are built, but they are usually in the right kinds of areas and they are the right kind of building typology.

Similarly, laneway houses as a whole are an incredibly sustainable building typology. In fact, I would argue that an energy efficient laneway house is easily one of the most sustainable homes you could build. They’re compact. They’re located on under-utilized and previously developed land. They often replace parking. And they increase population densities in established residential areas, which then makes transit more feasible.

But again, here in Toronto we’re not allowed to build them.

So whether you like it or not, if you’re involved in shaping the built environment, you’re also involved in climate change. This is a job for architects and developers, but also policy makers and communities. Laneway housing is a perfect example of that. Lots of people would build them — if only they could.

Image: Lanefab