It is very concerning when advocates for increased urban density laud cities like Tokyo and New York as places to aspire to. It makes it seem that, if Toronto only gets denser, it will somehow be a better city. Both Tokyo and New York are packed and crowded cities and it is not likely that Toronto residents aspire to that for their city.
Toronto is already ranked very high on happiness indices. According to the World Happiness Report, we rank 13th globally, and we come in 8th on the Global Livability Index. We are more dense than most of the cities that rank higher than us, and, believe it or not, second only to Vancouver, Toronto is already the densest population center in Canada.
There are numerous issues to adding density with no regard for its impacts, both problems in the here and now and problems in the future. If more density had been built alongside an infrastructure to match, and built in a time before climate change, things might be different. As that did not happen, it is now a game of catch up, and adding density and its resulting emissions does not help to mitigate a climate crisis.
The impact of overdevelopment, especially in areas like downtown or Yonge and Sheppard, or worse yet, Yonge and Eglinton (and it is creeping down to Davisville as well) is already being seen. There seems to be a rush to create super-tall buildings without any regard to their impacts nor their sustainability in a changing climate. Even when the city itself thinks something is overdevelopment, like the plans for developing over the train tracks downtown, the province can sweep aside their concerns.
The so-called “missing middle” is good in theory, but the size of such developments makes adding affordable units a non-starter for developers. The push to create new density has also removed more affordable housing from the equation by demolishing older more affordable housing stock to make way for expensive new condos.
Ten Problems with Density
Here’s a top ten list detailing the short-sightedness of further increasing density:
- Increased density has only added to higher land prices and less affordability. As counterintuitive as it seems, evidence from many places has made very clear that whatever form of intensification takes place, land values go up and consequently so do unit prices and rents.
- The current transportation network cannot handle our current density. Between road congestion and overcrowding on the TTC, how are we supposed to safely and efficiently move even more people? The Yonge line has been over capacity for a decade and, prior to COVID, other stations, like Main, were packed as well. When New York built their subway system they did not build it for the New York of that time, they built it with excess capacity and express routes for the New York of the future. Toronto by comparison is at least 20 years behind on mass transportation, building our subways and rail piecemeal over the last 70 years. Tokyo’s rail system is amazing, until just one line breaks down and suddenly thousands of people are displaced, all competing for sparse cabs – a personal experience of mine.
- The current infrastructure cannot handle our current density. Whether it’s the strain on aging watermains, or our aging sewers causing flooding and forcing sewage to be dumped in the lake, experts all seem to agree we’re not prepared for this growth, all these things are caused and/or exacerbated by increased density. The strain on our water systems is now so bad the city had to create the Foundation Drainage Policy so new developments have to create systems on site to handle water drainage. We have no idea how these untested systems will perform under the strain of climate change.
- Energy demands will be harder to meet the denser we get. With warmer temperatures, combined with a push to ban gas-powered vehicles and take up EVs, and a shift away from natural gas use in buildings, how will Toronto manage the energy demands, especially on particularly hot days where peak load is as much as all Ireland? RBC already predicts an energy shortage as early as 2026, all while electricity prices just keep going up.
- There will not be enough amenities, services, or green spaces for the population if we keep adding more density. Buildings can go higher but that does not also expand the number of parks and green spaces needed. Childcare spaces are already lacking, and the city can barely serve its current 3 million residents, never mind adding a half a million more. In some areas like Yonge and Eglinton or Yonge and Sheppard, there are not enough elementary schools for the increased density.
- Every addition of density is a worsening of food security and waste disposal issues. Food security and the problems with waste disposal are addressed elsewhere, but the simple fact is adding more density will cause those problems to worsen and become harder to solve. Toronto really needs to project 30 years into the future and figure out how it will feed and deal with the waste of over 3 million people if other places are unable to provide food or to take the waste. There must be a plan for the possibility that climate change and other environmental factors will change how we do business, where our food comes from, and where our waste goes to.
- Densification expands development and all the resulting environmental impacts and carbon emissions. This development-at-any-cost attitude of governments and their planners completely ignores the environmental impacts of development (more on that here). Emissions from development and the embedded carbon in new materials are excluded from carbon measures, and other environmental impacts, like on stormwater flooding, or our increasing heat island, or loss of tree canopy, are brushed aside.
- Density is added while population trends are ignored. Every level of government is acting as if our population will grow forever, seemingly oblivious to the global decline in birth rates combined with the “grey wave” of the Boomers passing (more on that here).
- Healthcare is not expanding with population growth. Hospital beds per capita have been declining for thirty years as hospital wait times keep getting higher and higher, and it is harder and harder to find a family doctor taking on new patients. It is not just city services suffering the strain of increased density, healthcare is simply not keeping up and is worsening as time goes on. Adding more people to this unbalanced equation is a recipe for a health crisis should another pandemic hit in the future.
- Every addition of density moves us further away from an actual sustainable circular economy. An actual sustainable circular economy (discussed elsewhere), as opposed to politicians using them as greenwashing buzz words, is incompatible with the endless growth that is ongoing. Every addition of density requires more economic inputs (like food) to serve new residents, inputs that will be increasingly harder for Toronto to supply and must come from afar. The more that comes from afar, the less sustainable and circular the economy.
With every addition of density the city becomes a little less livable; it makes existing problems worse and creates new ones. No one likes to be crushed on public transit, or stuck in constant congestion, or unable to travel busy paths and trails. No one wants to compete for scarce city services, or have their problems go unanswered because there are not enough councillors or city staff to address those problems. Housing advocates demonize people who resist new density, but there is nothing wrong with questioning their logic or their motives.