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I don't think the issue lies totally with urban development policy and growth boundaries and certainly not with densifying. If anything, they're too reluctant to densify a lot of areas and they don't expand frequent transit fast enough so that more areas would be zoned for greater density.
Another part of it is that they have a very high per capita immigration rate, more than double than that of the US for the last couple of decades, and so the absorption of that causes additional housing issues.
Also, Canadian population growth and thus housing needs is very unequally distributed among the provinces and the various cities.
Canadian cities have awful price/income ratios. The only ones remotely close to American standards is Calgary.
Toronto for example is about twice as expensive Price/Income as Boston. People just can’t afford a house. So they live in apartments. And it’s not getting better, Canadian GDP per capita has been decreasing since 2021. Only being kept afloat by the fact they are importing 1.2 million people or 2.5% of their population annually.
Canadians are much more cost burdened by vehicles than Americans.
All this is true. I think they are reluctant but they already build substantial density in places that don’t have it in the U.S. Mississauga and Brampton are essentially outer to inner suburbs that weren’t large cities previously and so are some of the most successful new urbanism stories in North America. Canada has way too many houses in urban cores but the bigger problem is if folks want to live in a house, the supply is extremely restricted because of the urban growth boundaries. Even if they made more towers in some of the low density neighborhoods in Toronto, the issue would still be for those that want housing a demand that outweighs the supply.
Toronto in terms of sprawl is about the size of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. But demographically where folks currently live and want to live is fairly similar to a city the size of Chicago or D.C and it has the growth of a Houston or Dallas. The urban growth boundary means that anyone who wants to own a home must be rich and rich people are also less likely to give up their home. Wealthy areas often do not get replaced with density historically. So as soon as poorer areas become towers, everyone who wants a home is gonna buy one and hold on to it because they are continuously incentivized to do so. As soon as you loosen the growth the way Dallas or Houston does and keep the same
incentives for density. Prices will drop because more folks who can will move further out, the cost for a house will decrease meaning a neighborhood becoming urban is more likely since the homeowners aren’t as wealthy, and so both urban development and suburban sprawl will blossom. Another thing is if Toronto builds its rail out much more. To areas in the urban growth boundary. It can turn rural areas straight to higher densities that will also relieve pressure in the city but high density areas on the outskirts of cities historically become ghettos.
I'm not certain about that part about wanting to own a house, which I assume you mean single family home that's not part of a multi-unit structure, is that large of a force. The eye-watering prices include units in multifamily structures as does the low vacancy rate and rental prices are quite high as well. I think it's much more that people want housing in general, not necessarily houses specifically, within the larger metropolitan areas and there is more growth of demand/population than there is growth of units regardless of housing type.
I think the urban growth boundaries make sense from the point of view of sustainability in some sense and as a quality of life measure as essentially lungs for the metropolitan area and to have some bit of natural preservation and exposure as well as keeping some agricultural production nearby. It certainly has an effect, but I think it's a lower order one than not having greater rapid transit expansion and densely building along those lines and a very high per capita immigration rate (beaten out mostly by petro-states that import en masse foreign laborers with highly restrictive immigration status and little protections living in huddled squalor), and very uneven distribution of population growth.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-27-2023 at 08:41 PM..
I'm not certain about that part about wanting to own a house, which I assume you mean single family home that's not part of a multi-unit structure, is that large of a force. The eye-watering prices include units in multifamily structures as does the low vacancy rate and rental prices are quite high as well. I think it's much more that people want housing in general, not necessarily houses specifically, within the larger metropolitan areas and there is more growth of demand/population than there is growth of units regardless of housing type.
I think the urban growth boundaries make sense from the point of view of sustainability in some sense and as a quality of life measure as essentially lungs for the metropolitan area and to have some bit of natural preservation and exposure as well as keeping some agricultural production nearby. It certainly has an effect, but I think it's a lower order one than not having greater rapid transit expansion and densely building along those lines and a very high per capita immigration rate (beaten out mostly by petro-states that import en masse foreign laborers with highly restrictive immigration status and little protections living in huddled squalor), and very uneven distribution of population growth.
I agree that all contributes to growth. I just think urban growth boundaries do much more harm in the way of housing prices than people realize. Texas and Canada are growing at similar speeds with similar population as Texas’s growth distribution is arguably just as uneven as Canada with the majority of rural counties in Texas having slow or negative growth and all of the big cities outside of the top 4 are growing at a snails pace (Tyler, C/Stat and Killeen being exceptions but they still aren’t growing that fast at all compared to the big 4).
What separates Texas from Canada is the willingness to build everywhere. At one point 4 out of the 6 or 7 fastest growing cities as far as building housing, apartments and commercial/industrial buildings in the U.S were in Texas. If Canada was less restrictive today I truly believe in the trickle down method that I outlined in the previous post.
The most expensive parts of the U.S in some ways all have urban growth boundaries whether enshrined into law or artificially. San Francisco has Marin County and California law in general which makes it extremely difficult to build on slopes. You can argue it’s good to preserve all of that nature but Marin which is much closer to San Francisco than most of the Bay Area physically is 85% state or federally owned parks or something ridiculous like that. Seattle and Portland which are two cities that are seemingly expensive for no reason have urban growth boundaries. Austin Texas is currently super expensive but has started to repeal some of the laws holding it back and has open land to the north south and east is already seeing some deflationary effects in its housing market. I honestly think it’s because Texas law is so liberal in allowing new housing starts and new development of all kind in general.
Restricting sprawl is important for preserving natural and farm areas, as well as keeping travel distances down. But growth should be made easier inside the boundaries. The San Francisco area is horrible for that. Seattle's better, hence its much better pricing, but not enough.
It is jaw-dropping, but it is funny how it has better transit to leave the city than within the city. It's also expensive, it's cheaper driving my family (we're 6 in total) to Orlando and back than taking Brightline. Also, the fact that Brightline keeps hitting people and cars on almost a daily basis is another gripe I have, but that's from stupid people and having a high speed train at ground-level, which is another bozo move.
Grade separation, even just on the portion between Miami and West Palm Beach, would have been prohibitively expensive. Also, since tunneling isn't an option due to the water table, the line would have had to be elevated. Can you imagine the outpouring of community opposition that would have arisen? It would have been better, from a grade-separation standpoint, if they could have gotten the line that hugs I-95. At least some intersections (i.e. the ones that cross over I-95, as opposed to the ones that I-95 crosses over) are grade separated. But I suppose Amtrak and Tri-Rail have that line sewn up.
I don't know the legalities involved, but it seems that even something so simple as a chain-link fence on either side of the tracks might help with the pedestrian fatalities. It won't keep people off the tracks who are bound and determined to be on them, but maybe it would help direct the more risk-averse pedestrians to use the grade crossings.
I agree that all contributes to growth. I just think urban growth boundaries do much more harm in the way of housing prices than people realize. Texas and Canada are growing at similar speeds with similar population as Texas’s growth distribution is arguably just as uneven as Canada with the majority of rural counties in Texas having slow or negative growth and all of the big cities outside of the top 4 are growing at a snails pace (Tyler, C/Stat and Killeen being exceptions but they still aren’t growing that fast at all compared to the big 4).
What separates Texas from Canada is the willingness to build everywhere. At one point 4 out of the 6 or 7 fastest growing cities as far as building housing, apartments and commercial/industrial buildings in the U.S were in Texas. If Canada was less restrictive today I truly believe in the trickle down method that I outlined in the previous post.
The most expensive parts of the U.S in some ways all have urban growth boundaries whether enshrined into law or artificially. San Francisco has Marin County and California law in general which makes it extremely difficult to build on slopes. You can argue it’s good to preserve all of that nature but Marin which is much closer to San Francisco than most of the Bay Area physically is 85% state or federally owned parks or something ridiculous like that. Seattle and Portland which are two cities that are seemingly expensive for no reason have urban growth boundaries. Austin Texas is currently super expensive but has started to repeal some of the laws holding it back and has open land to the north south and east is already seeing some deflationary effects in its housing market. I honestly think it’s because Texas law is so liberal in allowing new housing starts and new development of all kind in general.
I strongly disagree with the emphasis on urban growth boundaries being a strong factor here. I think urban growth boundaries, especially as the Golden Horseshoe, for example, has implemented them, contribute strongly to housing prices primarily because of the deficiencies elsewhere. Remember, the greenbelt in the Golden Horseshoe is quite thin and thin to the point where traversing it quickly by transit in most directions should be easy to do and the vast majority of what's available for development is not very densely developed. The areas out of the urban growth boundaries, on either side, are not anywhere near "fully" developed or even moderately developed overall. There are plenty of low density, suboptimal land usage that's not within the Golden Horseshoe greenbelt that can easily accommodate for much more housing, and I think what you were originally saying about home ownership, which I take you were specifying detached single family homes, is a massive red herring, like a school of massive red herrings.
Texas, relative to Canada but still good relative to the world as a whole, offers rather minimal social safety net overall and little regard for quality of life and has substantial numbers of people living in what in Canada would be considered poverty and insecurity while hedging a lot of this on not needing to be wary of future detrimental patterns. The uneveness of population growth in Canada relative to total population growth is larger than that of Texas though disguised somewhat in that most stats and representations of such for the Canadian census are on a 5 year basis versus the 10 year official basis for the US census. Take the two five year bases cumulatively though for Canada to match the 10 year census interval in the US and you will see larger outliers.
I do not think it's the urban growth boundaries that are the main culprit. This includes for the Bay Area. It's the urban growth boundary in interaction with highly restrictive development policy and milquetoast to awful transportation policy. Greatly enhancing the latter two then completely overrides the former. Sprawling out to do more and more greenfield development is an incredibly bad idea and going along with that as we have been so far for the most part is a large part of why we're in a world of hurt so far and gearing up for much worse in the decades to come.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-28-2023 at 11:02 PM..
Speaking of rail updates, the long awaited and highly scrutinized Gateway tunnel project finally broke ground today on the NJ side of the Hudson river in North Bergen right along Tonnelle Ave/Routes 1&9. Part of a larger, multi-phase joint $16 billion project between NJ, NY and Amtrak to build two new Hudson River rail tunnels and rehab the existing 113 year old tunnels.
And to think if Christie didn't nix this project 13 years ago it would've been completed right about now. The new scheduled completion date is 2035. Long overdue and will be a major upgrade for travelers across the busiest region in the country.
Miami and Baltimore continue to drop in heavy rail
Los Angeles is back in the green with light rail but can't catch San Diego. LA buses gained while SD's lost though.
Portland is stalling which has put Dallas DART on a glide path to pass MAX rail. Pretty significant because MAX is one of the biggest and most established light rail systems.
As predicted, WMATA is running away as #2 in HR. It's now through three quarters about 12 million riders ahead of CTA which it separated from more in Q3, and 6 million riders past the ridership totals in all of 2022. The DC metro this year has moved more riders than MBTA and Septa (in heavy rail) combined thus far.
San Diego is eeking out ahead of LA in light rail, but it's close.
Commuter rail has seen big increases all over, lots of growth in the Bay Area, Boston.
Bus agencies 5 largest ridership totals:
MTA NYC
Los Angeles County MTA
CTA
NJ Transit
WMATA
As predicted, WMATA is running away as #2 in HR. It's now through three quarters about 12 million riders ahead of CTA which it separated from more in Q3, and 6 million riders past the ridership totals in all of 2022. The DC metro this year has moved more riders than MBTA and Septa (in heavy rail) combined thus far.
San Diego is eeking out ahead of LA in light rail, but it's close.
Commuter rail has seen big increases all over, lots of growth in the Bay Area, Boston.
Bus agencies 5 largest ridership totals:
MTA NYC
Los Angeles County MTA
CTA
NJ Transit
WMATA
Man some of those cities are pathetic. Birmingham Alabama with 7,000 daily riders?
MBTA up to 789,000 riders per day which puts Boston at number 2 per capita after New York
Also SFL if you add up their transit agencies, seems pretty comparable to Philly?
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