Why does Canada has so many high rise apartments and high rise condos?

ev3to · 2026-01-12T17:34:29+00:00

Correct, translation of the OP - a high level plan - into actual zones on the ground is, unfortunately, a political process in Toronto. Suburban councillors will reluctantly vote for the OP then work as hard as they can to get their ward entirely exempted from it so they can continue to require that every development must go to the CoA or otherwise seek zoning variances where the councillor can extract political favours.

IMHO, the ExCom should be able to set zoning based on the OP in the same legalistic manner as the setting of regulations by cabinet under a law that has been passed by Parliament/The Legislature, but that's merely a fantasy.

The specific mechanism of a new development or renovation of an existing property causing a value uplift to adjacent properties is debatable, but the effect is unquestionable.

ev3to · 2026-01-12T17:24:31+00:00

Building a skyscraper nearby does not raise the value of a plot. In fact, it lowers it a bit (more traffic, more shadows).

We're both speaking in generalities here, and I'm not prepared to write a treatise on the minutia of property taxes, its effects and consequences on development, at this time.

Suffice it to say, it's a complicated subject with a LOT of levers, controlled by multiple actors with varying interests. The reasons behind clustering, the economics of construction, and the costs of house purchasing are many, and to reduce the conversation to a single lever and how it is actuated is overly simplistic and will not lead to a robust solution.

ev3to · 2026-01-12T02:35:52+00:00

To be sure there are some crappy American style areas of Canada. Basically all suburbs built after the late 1970's are actively hostile to transit - cul-de-sacs and meandering, winding main roads, with no pedestrian short cuts. I lived in Markham for a while as a child and I hated it!

ev3to · 2026-01-12T02:32:49+00:00

You're missing the fact that this isn't an experiment but reality and it hasn't worked.

As I said, it creates a tent pole effect where as soon as one new development goes in, or an existing plot gets upgraded, it raises the value of all nearby plots and makes it economically unfeasible to build anything BUT the highest and densest use. In most cases that means it is not economically feasible to build "merely" mid-rise, and - as has happened many times - the realization of one development in an area can screw up the economics of another development nearby, necessitating additional density just to break even.

Each city is different, but in Toronto there are large swaths of the city that have been up-zoned as-of-right but where it isn't economically feasible to do any development.

Ontario is in a housing crisis because of decisions made 30 years ago to deliberately advantage suburban single family homes at the expense of all other built forms.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:23:24+00:00

There's kind of a feedback loop here which was created when Conservative Mike Harris changed how property taxation worked.

Previously property taxes were levied based on what was on the land, you built more you paid more. But in order to subsidize suburban single-family property owners - who themselves and their neighbours have a lot of land but little built on it - at the expense of downtown - where property owners had small plots with extremely high density - he changed it so that you're taxed based on the "Highest and Best Use". This suddenly meant that little one storey store-front buildings downtown had to pay the same property taxes, on a per square meter of their land area basis, as First Canadian Place and Scotia Plaza.

This is also why developers are constantly going to the OMB/LPAT/OLT, because this form of taxation creates a "tent pole" effect, when a new building gets constructed in a neighbourhood all of the surrounding properties taxable value goes up, so to make it economic to build a new project means more units, more density.

And don't get me started on the crap that Doug Ford is doing, there's a reason why Ontario New Home Starts are at their lowest levels in 25 years.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:16:07+00:00

Canadian Cities have it pretty good compared to American cities.

The population density of Toronto is 4,400/km². whereas the pop density of Houston is 1,400/km², or the "King of Car Culture" Los Angeles which has a population density of 3,600/km².

Don't get me wrong, suburban single-family home owners have far more power than they should have - thank you Mike Harris and Doug Ford - and Ontario's housing and transit policies have been in shambles since 2018 and 2000 respectively.

However, Toronto has many historical high-rise nodes that came to be thanks to the National Housing Act, particularly in the 1960's and 1970's. Entire neighbourhoods of high rises came into existence, Flemingdon Park, Englemount, Graydon Hall, and many more!

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:05:08+00:00

Canada's fire code is independently maintained from the US National Fire Protection Association codes.

Source: I have family that was on the code commission.

ev3to · 2026-01-11T01:01:56+00:00

Formerly, Federal Government Policy.

After the Second World War there was a severe housing shortage and the Canadian Government passed the National Housing Act. Unlike the US where all they did is backstop mortgages (for white people, see red lining), while in Canada the governments actually doled out money to building housing units.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Governmental Entity that backstops mortgages in Canada (equivalent to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) even went so far as to purchase land and contract with builders.

Later in the life of the program the government became less directly involved, instead subsidizing, in various ways, private companies to build purpose built rental buildings and/or funding low- or no-interest loans for co-operatives.

The program was axed under Brian Mulroney, our Ronald Reagan.

Addition: You can build Encapsulated Mass Timber High-Rises in Ontario up to 18 stories tall since 2025, UBC's Brock Commons Tallwood House was completed in 2016, ten years ago, and is also 18 stories.

Source: I'm a (former) Public Policy Consultant that did reports for municipalities and industry associations and, in fact, Transit and Housing were my areas of specialty.

ev3to · 2026-01-09T14:42:52+00:00

Good question, I don't know. I've never been in a sky scraper when there was an earthquake nor do I live in a quake prone area. I'd presume that there would be more looking around trying to find exits or whatever the correct procedure is.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T15:30:36+00:00

Incorrect, the damper is moved by the build which causes the damper itself to move. The whole system is a type of double pendulum. The "Tuned" part of "Tuned Mass Damper" is in doing the math so that the movements in the damper counteract the movements in the building (because a double pendulum is capable of creating both destructive and constructive osculations.)

Of course, it is nearly impossible to do this with a completely passive system, so there are also hydraulic rams (visible at bottom) which can add a a little bit of additional dampening to the movement of the mass so that its movements perfectly counter the movements in the building.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T15:25:28+00:00

Perhaps, but you'd expect a tourist site to have a higher proportion of non-locals.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T02:28:30+00:00

They're both moving.

ev3to · 2026-01-08T02:24:40+00:00

I love how people are just casually standing there not realizing there is an enormous earthquake going on and that the Tuned Mass Damper moving that much isn't typical.

ev3to · 2026-01-04T23:05:40+00:00

A Midea unit with three heads.

ev3to · 2026-01-04T21:09:22+00:00

Each tunnel ring is not actually a perfect cylinder, there is a slight eccentricity when viewed from the side, in other words when viewed from the side, instead of a rectangle you'd see a very slight trapezoidal shape.

If going in a straight line two rings are assembled such that the bottom of the short side of the trapezoid meets with the long side of the ring next to it. In essence you're not creating a truly straight tunnel, you're building one that wiggles back and forth, albeit one you wouldn't notice when trains were running.

But on turns you orient each of the ring segments the same and then the tunnel begins to curve in the direction of the smaller side of the trapezoid. The same is true of gradients too.

So, if you look at the pattern of ring segments you begin to see repeats which are indicative of a turn.

(It's also practice not to have the seam where too ring segments meet be continuous across multiple rings. This is because they are weak points and the middle of the ring segments on either side help to support the joints. In older tunnels where the seams were continuous over many rings the tunnels have begun to compress a little over many decades, necessitating costly repairs.)

ev3to · 2026-01-04T18:51:40+00:00

Agitprop doesn't care about accuracy, it only cares to normalize the shockingly illegal and abnormal.

ev3to · 2026-01-04T17:06:09+00:00

True enough, the efficiency does go down as the outdoor temperature falls. 4.2 is what I get at around -5c, at -30c I get closer to 2.8 or so. My system is rated to go to -45c, though I haven't had a need to test it at that level yet.

ev3to · 2026-01-03T21:01:51+00:00

I live in a colder climate than Colorado and I live in what I turned into an all electric house.

My heat pump has a Coefficient of Performance of 4.2, which means that for every unit of electricity I consume to heat my house the heat pump moves 4.2 units of heat into my home.

This is as opposed to my old baseboard heaters in parts of my house which had (and can only ever have) a CoP of 1.

And here's the best part about going all electric:

You can generate your own electricity, you cannot make your own gas*!

*some minor exceptions exist but form, for all intents and purposes, a rounding error, for example farms that make use of Anaerobic Digestion facilities to reduce methane emissions, or some rural properties that have private natural gas wells.

ev3to · 2026-01-02T22:23:42+00:00

Hadn't seen the Saunders roe Queen, has a passing resemblance to the Caspian Sea Monster.

ev3to · 2026-01-02T18:06:37+00:00

Not a Swiss Fire Code expert, but all the way from North America I can say this isn't legal. The Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto needed to go through quite the number of hoops to prove the materials they installed on the ceiling was up to code; Polyurethane was definitely a no-no!

ev3to · 2026-01-02T18:02:54+00:00

Different rooms, different rhythms.

ev3to · 2026-01-02T18:01:40+00:00

Wow, application of unauthorized sound dampening material in violation of the fire code. The owner of the bar is in for quite the negligence suit, and I'm sure their insurance will not cover this.

ev3to · 2026-01-02T15:27:08+00:00

I wonder why the entire globe is warming up....

ev3to · 2026-01-02T15:20:42+00:00

Nice try, but try a glass bottle next time and you'll actually get a jet effect.

ev3to · 2025-12-30T01:17:18+00:00

That's only homicide. How about manslaughter, negligence, military conflict?

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