Large condominium projects are now being herald
as the wave of the future. Buyers are being sold on tall towers with
window walls, grandiose lobbies and expensive amenities that make
condos rival resort hotels.
I worry that buyers spend too much time looking at the condo's
physical aspects and not enough time studying what it will be like
owning a unit in one of these buildings.
Mixed-use
development
Toronto's city planners and the developers are adopting mixed-use
development as the new wave of the future. The idea is to mix office
complexes (work places), retail, entertainment and public amenities
such
as parks and bicycle paths in the same neighbourhoods so that people
can eat out, be amused, have
a place to walk their dog and go shopping all within walking distance
of where they live and work.
Toronto will be a bit more like Hong Kong.
It is a plan to reverse the last sixty years of urban sprawl. So the
Canadian dream changes from a house with a piece of land and a white
picket fence to a tiny condo unit 30 floors above the subway tracks.
If Canadians buy into this condo life style, and some have already
done so, then the push to replace parking spots with bicycle racks may
make sense.
Location
The majority of large condo towers are being built in five major
centres that are
linked by the three TTC subway lines. Mid-size condos, like the strip
malls they are designed to replace, are zoned to run along major
streets that have streetcar service
or bus routes that connect to a subway station.
The thinking is that if a condo owner lives near a subway station, they
will not need a car. Freed from the need to build a parking spot for
every
unit, developers are now providing bicycle racks. Paying more
getting less
As prices skyrocket, up to $700–$1000 a square foot in downtown
Toronto, the units are far smaller than they use to be. Lockers and
parking spots are no longer standard features but extremely expensive
options.
Downloading
our housing problems
Until recently, Canada was considered a rich country that could afford
the high costs of social programs designed to help our society's
underprivileged.
However, with government deficits growing and politicians believing
that they will not be re-elected if they raise taxes, the federal
government downloaded expensive programs onto the provinces and the
provinces downloaded more costs onto the
municipalities.
The first problem was the building of new rental units. Since
rent controls were first introduced, investors shied away from building
new rental buildings. That is where condo corporations came to the
rescue by becoming a very important source of rental stock.
When it cames to social housing—expensive to build and then very
expensive to
maintain—the municipalities need to figure out how they can
download these costs onto the private sector. They also need a way to
stimulate the building of affordable housing and encourage the building
of affordable rental housing (code word for social housing) without
using tax dollars to fund them.
Once again, the social planners are looking at condos to help solve
these problems. Presently on a very small scale, but growing, new condo
units
are
now seen as a source of:
