Reece Martin

It’s a running joke that any empty lot in Toronto is sure to sprout a condo tower in due course, but development in Toronto is painfully dispersed. When compared to Vancouver where high-density high-rise development is concentrated around rapid transit, in Toronto the density often feels like it’s shotgun sprayed around the city. The inevitable outcome of this is that many serious transit hubs in the city are underdeveloped. 

In this post, I want to highlight five sites (in order of least absurd lack of density to most absurd) in hopes of highlighting how much room for intensification we have in the city — especially when we embrace a more polycentric urban model where flows are not all into the financial district in the morning and out in the evening.

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Bloor-Dundas West

If you’ve been following me for a long time, you’ll know that I think the lack of development around the Bloor-Dundas West (for the love of god can we please implement a logical unified name already) is criminal.

The site already has streetcar serving on two routes, the subway, GO, and UP Express (which will be connected with the subway in the next few years — construction is underway), and lots more transit could show up in the future, from an extension of one of the streetcar routes to the Junction (with a transferway please), to the Ontario Line that will be primed for a second phase in this direction if development justifies it, to the potential for future Milton line train service. The site is arguably already the second-best served for transit in the country after Union, and could be made much better in short order.

Despite this, most development in the area over the past few decades seems to have been townhomes — which is painfully shortsighted. There are a couple modern towers going up and the choice lands to the south are also going to be developed in the future, but there really should be much more development and ideally better integration with the station with direct indoor connections. Who knows, perhaps one day we might even see a complex build above the regional train station (I should hope!).

East Harbour

East Harbour is in many ways similar to Bloor-Dundas West in that its a future streetcar, subway and regional train interchange, but East Harbour will benefit from having two stopping GO train services at it, with through-running service to far more of the region (Brampton, Markham, Durham, Mississauga, Oakville, Hamilton) that will make it a more connected site.

While plans for East Harbour are already quite significant, the plans are mostly limited to the parcels of land directly south of the rail corridor (the former Unilever site). Unfortunately though, we are being totally lily-livered with the tapering of density to the south, mostly for the benefit of… industrial lands and the future Port Lands community, which has been criticized itself for being too low-density, and it doesn’t have three rail lines running through it!

We should also be talking seriously about major density to the north of the rail corridor, and as far northeast as Queen and Logan (about 10 minutes from the station) — these areas are among the best served by transit in the Americas and even mid-rise development is too modest for most sites; I am confident we will regret not going big here.

It is worth noting that while East Harbour is unlikely to get a second subway line (unless it truly goes full Canary Wharf) it could very well get more GO service, with the Richmond Hill line in close proximity, it could certainly have platforms on another through-running GO line, and I personally like the idea of also building some terminating platforms at the site that could allow trains from Barrie and various expresses to also stop at East Harbour, giving it service levels that may not be far off from Union Station itself.

Cedarvale (Formerly Eglinton West)

Cedarvale, which will be the name of Eglinton West station once the Eglinton Crosstown opens, is obviously underdeveloped, and this is rather well known. The site is mostly surrounded by small street-facing businesses and single family homes, and while there are some apartment buildings to the northwest they are halfway between Cedarvale and the next station on the western leg of Line 1 (Glencairn).

You can kind of already see how absurdly underdeveloped Cedarvale is by comparing it to its sister station of Eglinton-Yonge, which, while still insane (the major development and intensification is on the three quadrants of the intersection where the station isn’t), has an order of magnitude more density than Cedarvale, but also substantially less free transit capacity as the Yonge Line is much more congested than the western leg of Line 1.

Clearly there should be a broad upzoning of the walkable area around the station site, and given the station will have a number of entrances, you could imagine high-density developments which directly link in to the station. While some might see Allen Rd, the truncated northern end of the once planned Spadina Expressway, as a major problem for the area, the truth is auto and vehicle access to the 401 could make the area attractive as a destination — this would be a way better site for a big shopping centre than say Yorkdale with similar road access, but way more transit access. Now, of course, I wouldn’t suggest a big box-laden mid-20th century shopping mall to replace the single family neighbourhoods around Cedarvale station, but high-density developments with retail and office in the lower levels akin to the Well would be great for this area, and would make much better use of the superb transit access — if only the actual Well had that!

Pape

In many ways, Pape is like Cedarvale but leveled up — instead of being the interchange of a subway and a (let’s be honest) light metro line, Pape is going to be the interchange of two high-capacity subways when the Ontario line opens around the end of the decade. While there is a bit of movement around high-density in the area, including a potential “TOC” above the station and the “meme” proposal for a tower at the corner, the reality is that places like Pape are ground zero for the crazy NIMBYism that has exacerbated the housing crisis.

This intersection should look like Yonge and Eglinton, but with more density and ideally (as with all of these sites) with a tapering of density as sites get physically farther from the subway interchange. My only hope is that the small but growing chorus of calls that the Danforth should not in fact remain predominantly low-rise ends up leading to some big change around the corridor. It’s helpful to remember that Line 2 has the same practical capacity as Line 1, and yet Danforth looks nothing like Yonge street; there is enormous room for densification and also for increased subway ridership with the infrastructure we already have (and built at reasonable prices – unlike the projects of today).

St. George-Spadina

Probably the most underbuilt site with respect to transit in Toronto if not in Canada is the general station area of St. George and Spadina stations in central Toronto. While every other example I’ve given in this post is really a single station, St. George and Spadina are so close together (~350 meters) that they should probably function as one from a development and density point of view. I’ll add that while from the perspective of passengers the long distance between the Line 1 and 2 platforms at Spadina can be an annoyance, in practice they create yet another node that can anchor dense urban growth in the area, since the subway station extends up Spadina Road nearly half way to Dupont at Kendal Avenue — which is the most convenient location to access Line 1 trains at Spadina station. 

While there is a smattering of apartment buildings on St. George St. and on Spadina, the development intensity here is much much lower than somewhere like Eglinton-Yonge, despite already having two subway interchanges and being the terminus of the slow (but with room for improvement) Spadina streetcar (or LRT or tram)! While a lot of the low-intensity of development here is probably thanks to powerful NIMBYs living in the Annex, much of the walkshed of these stations is on the grounds of U of T, and while this does currently comprise an area of student housing, it can and should comprise high-rise students residences that the university desperately needs and would be wise to place near the subway as opposed to away from it on College (as with Campus One).

Given the additional capacity on Line 1’s western leg and Line 2, and the ability of the Spadina streetcar to move far more people if the TTC actually made it like the trams of Europe and made it fast and implemented signal priority, this whole area should be a forest of high-density, and the fact that it isn’t while places like King West and the Fashion District with dramatically less transit capacity (and worse service because it’s just streetcars, which Toronto currently cannot do well) is a real indictment of any suggested integration between transit and land use planning in the city.