Province eager to create new ‘density nodes’

Appropriate zoning needed to take advantage of transit

Builders aren’t the only ones anxious to put people on Toronto’s new transit lines. The province is also eager to encourage “density nodes” — places where residents’ homes, jobs and leisure activities intersect, leaving a smaller footprint.

“Development interest at existing and future transit stations has grown significantly. While there was limited interest in transit-oriented development in previous years, today developers cite access to transit as a key component to successful projects,” said Anne Marie Aikins of provincial transportation agency Metrolinx.

Getting the development incorporated into the planning and design earlier rather than later is critical to maximizing those opportunities, she said.

To do that, Toronto needs to make sure it has the appropriate zoning to take advantage of the big transit build-out, said Cherise Burda, of the Ryerson City Building Institute.

The GTA has a reputation for building expensive transit lines to places that don’t attract the kind of development that warrants the billions in investment poured in by the province and other levels of government.

Think of the Spadina subway extension and the proposed additional stop on the Bloor-Danforth line at the Scarborough Town Centre.

It will take some “creative placemaking” to attract more resident and businesses to the six new stops on the Yonge-University-Spadina line to Vaughan, she said. That needs to be done quickly.

Burda cites the Bloor-Danforth subway that, 60 years on, is still hemmed in by single-family homes. The Sheppard subway has spawned residential buildings but has sparse commercial development, she said.

Contrast that to the Toronto waterfront, where new mixed-use neighbourhoods are mushrooming without the “desperately needed” LRT developers there were promised.

“In places like the waterfront, you need to build the LRT. In places where transit is going and there’s low density, you need to rezone to make sure that local opposition isn’t stopping the right development from occurring,” she said.

There will always be people who covet the traditional, car-centred suburban lifestyle and that’s fine, said Burda.

“But an increasing number of young families and seniors are looking for proximity and they’re looking for neighbourhoods they can walk around in and there are amenities they can walk to,” she said.

That includes GO stations as well as subway stops.

“Development interest at existing and future transit stations has grown significantly.” ANNE MARIE AIKINS METROLINX