Stay on track to help move the future
About a month ago, I stood at Toronto City Hall, shoulder-to-shoulder with a number of my competitors in the land development and home building industry — but our minds weren’t on our individual businesses, they were on what is right for the city and its future residents.
This is just one example of what BILD does: it brings business competitors into the same room, at the same table, advocating for the same cause.
In this case, it was new transit infrastructure, planning for the city’s future residents and protecting their rights to affordable housing options.
Transit infrastructure is imperative to a well-planned, well-designed and well-built city that is attractive to residents and businesses alike. A transit plan is vital because it will dictate how the city will grow and evolve. It’s that plan that outlines how future neighbourhoods will connect to each other, and since Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods, a connected city is an attractive city.
I also think transit helps to define what home means to some people, because for many in Toronto, it is their means of getting to the grocery store, school, or workplace. It’s how many of us get to major sporting events or how we get down to enjoy the waterfront. And now it’s starting to connect residents with municipalities outside the city limits.
When I think of cities like Hong Kong, New York, Chicago and Amsterdam, so much of what defines those cities is their transportation infrastructure — and I’m not just referring to transit, but to concepts like interconnecting the various modes and the availability and ease of cycling or walking, as well.
In Toronto, we are on the cusp of major change. So, as the chair of BILD, I also think it’s a great time to write a series of columns about how our industry mobilizes when a transit plan is given the green light
Over the next eight months or so, I will dedicate one column every month to explain the ins and outs of the planning process — what some of us call “from dirt to door” — and what’s involved in building communities along a planned transit line.
I’ll take you from researching a parcel of land right through to completing the construction of new residential buildings on that land.
I’m going to try and avoid using our industry jargon, simplify some of the concepts and give you visual cues so that you will be able to recognize the stages of a residential development in your neighbourhood.
I hope you’ll follow along and if you’re on Facebook or Twitter, send me your ideas and your questions, and I can try to speak to them in a future column.
My next instalment: a new transit line presents an opportunity. Paul Golini is the chairman the Building Industry and Land Development Association ( bildgta.ca) and can be found on Twitter @bildgta, Facebook, Youtube and BILD’S blog ( bildblogs.ca).