Boiling a zoning code down to the basics

This article titled We need a new city planner has a spellbinding passage which seems to suggest that someone has long-ago preceded me and has taken The Three Rules and set them in code and said "That's it. Now go build."

On the advice of Jacobs and Toronto planner Ken Greenberg, Bedford did that in 1996 ago in the King-Spadina area by getting rid of all the zoning rules but two: new buildings could not be set back from the street, and the height of new buildings had to be no greater than existing buildings. The rules would not dictate how buildings could be used or how many square feet they could be: if the height was right and the building came out to the sidewalk, everything else was up to the owner. (italics added -DS)

To push all those zoning controls aside and allow decisions to be made not by planners and politicians but owners and the market was extraordinary, and these innovations have been terrific for the King-Spadina area. The place is humming with development.

Did they really boil down the code to such a simple formula? Is that really what they've done? If so, Terrific! And there's my libertarian land use planning: set the fewest possible rules and get out of the way.

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Luke Franci also thinks its cool.

Comments

[greg claxton]

Have you looked at the Toronto codes yet? I'm having trouble finding where they boil it down to those two rules. Chapter 4 of the Toronto Master Plan ("Land Use Designations") makes it look like they haven't gotten rid most standards: "Zoning by-laws will contain numerical site standards for matters such as building type and height, density, lot sizes, lot depths, lot frontages, parking, building setbacks from lot lines, landscapedopen space and any other performance standardsto ensure that new development will be compatible with the physical character of established residential Neighborhoods." Although it may be that Sewell is talking about a downtown district, whereas what I'm looking at is residential neighborhoods.

[David Sucher]

I have not seen the Tornoto Code and am relying entirely on the article to which I link. But I gather that this provision only refers to one part of town, the "King-Spadina" district. Some more info: City of Toronto: Planning - Regeneration in the Kings.

But the web page doesn't get to the specific issue; but one of the linked PDFs -- the "Full Report" -- seems to support the article.

[greg claxton]

Derf. I was so intent on looking for "downtown" that I completely missed "King-Spadina area." Thanks for pointing to that study.

[Andrew Spicer]

Also, Greg, please note that the official plan you linked to is a new one, more recent than the "Kings" revitalization moves.

[Andrew Spicer]

David, it's not one area, but two. King & Spadina is just west of the downtown core and King & Parliament is just east.

Both areas were fairly old and were losing vitality. They certainly have enjoyed some great success since the zoning changes were made, but in part they've been riding a considerable building boom that has affected all of downtown Toronto.

[John Doe]

There needs to be a super-simple exception mechanism to any super-simple zoning requirement.

I wonder if it would be useful to let buildings exceed the heights of nearby buildings, provided the developer paid the owners of the nearby structures whatever they demanded and also paid the city an equal amount.

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