Built environment

Land use patterns are a major source of differences among the study areas and contribute to the varying densities of these areas, the travel mode shares of those who live or work in the areas, as well as interrelations among their functions. This analysis focuses largely on the spatial interconnectivity of their functions and the quality of their urban environment from the perspective of pedestrians.

In accord with planning thinking since the publication of Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the analysis assumes that pedestrians are particularly attracted to areas with continuous street-facing facades, small blocks, and a stimulating street-level environment. Such an environment typically features attractive store windows, sidewalk cafes, a scale of activities that is consistent with walking speed, and the presence of large numbers of people on sidewalks (Handy, Paterson and Butler, 2003).

Jacobs' perspective on walkable environments was based on direct observation of a particular neighbourhood. Over the past few decades, however, the impact of land use and the built environment on walking has been the object of more systematic investigation in a variety of locations. Researchers have concentrated on specific aspects of the physical environment that influence walking and used statistical analysis to measure these relationships (Handy, 2005). Residential and employment density (Frank and Pivo, 1995; Greenwalt and Boarnet, 2001; Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade, and Douglas, 1993) and a mixture of land uses (Kitamura, Mokhtarian, and Daidet, 1997; Kockelman, 1997) are commonly highlighted in studies. Other factors identified as favourable to walking include continuity of the built environment (Appleyard, 1981; Gehl, 1986) and an environment that is sufficiently complex and fine-grained to sustain the interest of pedestrians (Rappaport, 1987). Attention has also been given to human scale and a sense of enclosure (Handy, Paterson, and Butter, 2003). Finally, the presence of activities accessible on foot plays a major role in the walkability of a given area (Cervero, 1996; Cervero and Duncan, 2003; Hanson and Schwab, 1987).

This report takes the view that not only can nodes, downtowns, and corridors help reduce dependence on the car by offering an environment that is hospitable to pedestrians and inter-connects different functions, but that such an environment can promote the success of these areas. Indeed, the possibility of walking to a wide range of activities can distinguish nodes, downtowns, and corridors from other urban settings and thus represents a major comparative advantage for these areas over automobile-oriented suburban sites. Such an advantage can be an important factor in the ongoing development of nodes, downtowns and corridors.

Downtown Toronto

Downtown Toronto represents the most diversified environment among the study areas. It includes the financial district, highly differentiated retail areas (Yonge Street, Bloor Street, Yorkville, Queen West) and major public spaces and institutions (Nathan Phillips Square, Queen's Park, the University Avenue hospitals, the University of Toronto). The downtown also contains Chinatown, remnants of old residential areas (now generally gentrified), industrial districts (often transformed into offices or lofts), and high-density residential developments.

From an urban form perspective, most of the downtown is covered with buildings. The space devoted to the automobile -- roads and surface parking lots -- is relatively limited. In consequence, the environment is generally friendly to pedestrians, offering continuous facades, rarely interrupted by surface parking. However, streets with stores offer a more stimulating environment to pedestrians than the windswept plazas of the financial district and the blind walls of large buildings from the modernist era. Overall, the downtown area provides excellent conditions for walking among its different functions, either through the street network or the underground PATH pedestrian walkway system, with its store-lined corridors. In its multi-functionality and synergy, downtown Toronto represents a model to be replicated at a reduced scale by other GGH downtowns and nodes.

TORONTO DOWNTOWN > Yonge and Dundas, looking south: On the east side (left), traditional store facades and of the west side (right), the Eaton Centre also presents store windows.

TORONTO DOWNTOWN > Redevelopment in the Bloor-Yorkville district adopts a high-rise configuration with stores at the street level.

TORONTO DOWNTOWN > Chinatown: Narrow facades and diversity, stimulation and entertainment for the pedestrian.

TORONTO DOWNTOWN > Queen Street West: A traditional retail area increasingly occupied by trendy and tourist-oriented stores. Note the wide sidewalk.

Yonge-Eglinton node

The Yonge-Eglinton node replaced, from the late 1950s onwards, much of the mature inner-city texture that predated it. It includes office space, a retail mall that is part of an office complex, two traditional commercial streets, and numerous high-rise apartment buildings interspersed with single-family homes and low-rise apartments on residential streets. High-rise residential buildings are generally set back behind a landscaped front yard, a legacy of the architectural models prevailing during the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, thanks to a layout that is mostly street-oriented, the absence of large surface parking lots, and its small size, the Yonge-Eglinton node provides excellent pedestrian connectivity among its different functions.

YONGE-EGLINTON NODE > Retail facades on Yonge Street with redevelopment behind.

North York Centre

North York Centre stretches along Yonge Street over more than 2.5 kilometres. It has largely replaced a typical 1950s commercial strip, stretches of which still stand. Redevelopment has not been uniform along this portion of Yonge Street, but has been concentrated around three poles that coincide with three subway stations. The largest cluster of redevelopment runs from Sheppard Avenue to Park Home and Empress Avenue and occupies the middle part of North York Centre. It consists of a high-density mixture of offices, indoor retail malls, a civic centre (with municipal offices, library, and theatre), street retail, a hotel, and housing. The second cluster, which surrounds the Finch Avenue?Yonge Street intersection, shares some of the functional diversity of the first pole, but is not as developed. The third, located immediately north of Highway 401, is essentially residential. All three have recently experienced extensive high-rise residential condominium growth.

The linearity of North York Centre is a function of zoning regulations adopted to protect surrounding single-family-home neighbourhoods. The effect of the regulations is to cause an abrupt fall in density one or two blocks away from Yonge Street.

The attraction of North York Centre for pedestrians is uneven. Yonge Street's sidewalks connect all components of the centre and some remnants of the original retail strip provide continuous store facades, as do many of the newer developments. However, the six lanes of Yonge Street and its heavy volumes of traffic do not make for a pleasant pedestrian environment. The length of North York Centre represents a further obstacle to pedestrian movement through the area as a whole, and much of the interaction between activities probably takes place within the three clusters. Sidewalk-facing parking lots and automobile-oriented retailing make the areas between the clusters unattractive to pedestrians. We can anticipate that, over time, the replacement of these types of development will make North York Centre more appealing to pedestrians.

NORTH YORK CENTRE > The width of Yonge Street and high traffic levels are detrimental to the pedestrian environment of North York Centre.

NORTH YORK CENTRE > Mel Lastman Square is a well-designed public space in North York Centre.

Scarborough Town Centre

The difficulties confronting pedestrians in North York Centre pale by comparison to those experienced in Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre. The two have much in common, since both nodes centre on a large indoor mall, surrounded by extensive parking.

Parts of Scarborough Town Centre feel like a campus, with curvilinear streets, footpaths, green space, buildings placed at a distance from each other, and heavily treed buffers separating multi-functional areas from nearby single-family residential districts. The campus ambience is, however, compromised by abundant parking. The different functions found in Scarborough Town Centre are often spatially disconnected. To reach the shopping mall from the main office concentration, one has to cross a major arterial road and a sizable parking lot. The link from the mall to the largest -residential cluster involves a one-kilometre walk on wide streets surrounded by open land and surface parking lots.

SCARBOROUGH TOWN CENTRE > Parts of Scarborough Town Centre adopt a campus-like layout.

SCARBOROUGH TOWN CENTRE > Much of the space in Scar-borough Town Centre is taken by the regional mall and its parking lot.

Mississauga City Centre

Mississauga City Centre does not have Scarborough Town Centre's campus-like layout. It too is composed of specialized districts, but they tend to be different and larger. The shopping mall is the second largest in the Toronto metropolitan region, and is adjacent to an extensive and architecturally distinctive civic centre, two groups of private office buildings, and high-rise residential development (Jones and Hernandez, 2006: Table 6.2).

Although much of the surface of the central, commercial part of the node and of some of the office districts is taken by parking (at ground level or decked), the remainder of the node devotes far less space to parking, thanks to the presence of underground parking in the civic centre as well as in some office and residential buildings. The newer buildings relate much better to the street than previous structures did. Nevertheless, it is proving difficult to find activities to animate the sidewalk-facing facades of these recent buildings. Shops and restaurants to the north of the mall have made efforts to create a street-oriented environment, and the expansion of the shopping mall towards the civic centre has removed the obstacle to pedestrian movement that the parking lot represented.

However, these initiatives have so far failed to provide the kind of pedestrian-hospitable environment that would promote the integration of Mississauga City Centre's different activities. One problem is its size (1.5 by 1.5 km), which discourages walking from an activity at one end of the node to another at the other end. This problem is compounded by the wide arterials and abundant surface parking in its core. Finally, the large scale of the development is ill-adapted to people moving at walking speed.

Mississauga City Centre > Mississauga City Centre, like the other nodes under study, is the site of a considerable condominium construction boom.

Mississauga City Centre > As in Scarborough Town Centre, a high proportion of the space in Mississauga City Centre is given to parking with deleterious effects on pedestrian movements.

Downtown Oakville

Downtown Oakville is a traditional main street lined with boutiques, restaurants, and cafes. The downtown covers 12 blocks and presents continuous facades along the main street. Parking is at the back of the stores, in lots that are small enough not to break pedestrian connectivity with neighbourhoods surrounding the downtown. The downtown and these neighbourhoods are well linked by the street grid covering old Oakville. With the exception of concentrations of high-density housing at each end of the main street, nearby neighbourhoods are mostly composed of single-family homes.

Its small size, layout, and external links make Oakville's downtown highly conducive to walking. Because the shops do not cater to the needs of nearby residents (for example, there is no supermarket), the downtown is primarily oriented towards visitors, to whom it owes its success. So although pedestrians can easily walk in from the abutting neighbourhoods, the scarcity of downtown activities adapted to residents' needs discourages such trips.

DOWNTOWN OAKVILLE > Downtown Oakville is one of the few outdoor pedestrian-oriented environments in suburban Toronto.

Downtown Kitchener

Like downtown Oakville, downtown Kitchener is a traditional downtown. In the early 1960s, it was the region's premier retail centre. But over the decades, the area lost employment and retailers, and the landscape bears the scars of its lacklustre economic performance. Main-street facades that used to be uninterrupted are now broken as a result of fires and demolitions, which have allowed the infiltration of surface parking lots. Remaining facades tend to be either vacant or occupied by low-order retailing.

Two downtown retail malls were built in the 1970s and the early 1980s to help downtown Kitchener compete with the suburbs, but both have since lost their mainstream stores and faltered. One is now entirely occupied by offices and the other contains a fitness centre, some stores, and offices. Functions are mixed on the main street, with stores and office buildings (although most large office structures are on surrounding streets). The main street is, however, increasingly becoming the site of civic and subsidized cultural activities: it is already home to city hall, a theatre, and a children's museum. A new library is being considered.

Despite the industrial sites (both active and abandoned) at one end of the downtown area, connectivity with surrounding neighbourhoods is high, since all these districts share the same grid pattern. Housing types vary within the abutting neighbourhoods: single-family homes, duplexes, and low-rise and high-rise apartment buildings. There are also profound differences in the socioeconomic status of residents in different neighbourhoods.

Pedestrian movement is promoted by the connectivity provided by the street grid, as well as by the remaining street-aligned facades, but hindered by breaks in the main street's frontages, the unattractiveness of existing facades and store windows, and the vacant land left by de-industrialization. Distance is also a problem: the commercial part of the downtown covers 20 blocks and the main street stretches over 1.3 km. To make matters worse, in response to concerns in the 1960s that a revitalized downtown would become too congested, the concert hall was located more than 500 metres from the main street.

One challenge confronting downtown Kitchener is the design of new buildings that are attractive to pedestrians. But the biggest struggle is how to launch a cycle of growth by creating positive synergistic effects between, on the one hand, retailing and hospitality services, and on the other, employment and housing.

DOWNTOWN KITCHENER > Fires and demolitions have created gaps in the facades along downtown Kitchener's King Street.

DOWNTOWN KITCHENER > The main street in downtown Kitchener has become the site of public sector and cultural activities: We see here the theatre and the children's museum.

Yonge Street corridor

The buildings lining Yonge Street, the spine of the Yonge Street corridor, are mostly continuous store facades surmounted by one or two additional storeys. These structures are interspersed with mid-rise and high-rise buildings. The street orientation of the more recent buildings presumably reflects a wish on the part of their developers to profit from the commercial character of the street by having stores on the ground floor, which coincides with planning requirements for street-related retail. High-rise buildings are mostly found close to the four main intersections of the corridor (and the sites of subway stations): Yonge/St. Clair, Yonge/Davisville, Yonge/Eglinton, and Yonge/Lawrence. Just to the east and west of Yonge Street are residential neighbourhoods containing single-family homes, mostly on narrow lots, as well as some townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings. Yonge Street provides a stimulating pedestrian environment and links with surrounding neighbourhoods are secured by a tight street grid.

Retailing on Yonge Street is targeted at different markets. For most nearby residents, the portion of Yonge Street close to their home plays the role of a neighbourhood main street. Office building clusters at Yonge and St. Clair and in the Yonge-Eglinton node also support retail activity. Another market consists of people driving along the corridor or using its subway stations. Finally, restaurants and other activities with a relatively large trade area have adopted a Yonge Street location because of its street life, the trendy character of some areas, and its accessibility by car and public transit.

Mississauga East corridor

If Yonge Street displays the features of an inner-city environment, the Mississauga East corridor is clearly suburban. It is defined as a succession of census tracts with densities that well exceed the suburban norm. In fact, this corridor represents the largest outer-suburban concentration of such census tracts, despite sharp variations in density levels, the outcome of clear demarcations between residential districts, each of which features a single type of housing.

Most of the corridor consists of single-family home subdivisions, with pockets of townhouse developments and high-rise apartment buildings. Retailing is in the form of one indoor mall (Square One, just north of the boundary of the corridor) and strip malls of different dimensions, all with abundant parking space. The corridor itself may be underprovided with retailing because of its proximity to the mammoth Square One mall.

The street pattern of the corridor follows the superblock principle, with arterials at approximately one-kilometre intervals. Retailing is found on the arterials. If the inner portions of the superblocks offer a peaceful, albeit unstimulating, walking environment, the arterials are clearly dominated by the automobile. Since building facades are not built out to the sidewalk, the Mississauga corridor lacks pedestrian connectivity. Still, efforts have been made to connect high-density residential and shopping areas. Residential and employment densities are highest along the portion of the corridor that is closest to, and overlaps with, the Mississauga City Centre. Elsewhere in this predominantly residential corridor, employment is minimal.

Morphology, suitability for pedestrians, and connectivity

A systematic measurement of the different land uses present in the downtowns and nodes under investigation allows for a deeper examination of the morphology of these study areas and, indirectly, of their suitability for pedestrians and inter-functional connectivity. There is some variation between the boundaries of the places that are the object of land use measurements and those used elsewhere in the report to define study areas. For a delineation of these variations, see the note at the end of Table 15 (page 74).

Research on environments that are favourable to walking and strong connections among different functions shows that such places usually have a large proportion of their land covered by buildings. Such a layout can support a concentration of activities within a limited area and may ideally take the form of continuous facades built out to the sidewalks. Campus-like configurations that segregate pedestrians and cars ostensibly provide a setting that supports walking, but people in such environments are surrounded largely by green space and may miss the stimulation found on lively commercial streets. These configurations also lack the sense of containment provided by unbroken facades. Empty spaces, roads, and surface and decked parking impede walking and connectivity. Generally, the more space that is devoted to the automobile, the poorer the pedestrian environment, given the monotony of automobile space for people who walk and, more generally, the unsuitability for walkers of environments built with the car in mind.

Land use measurements drawn from aerial photographs do not allow a review of all factors of walkability discussed in the literature. They do, however, yield statistics on a number of features with known effects on walking, such as the balance between land uses that accommodate the automobile (roads and parking) and those that cater to pedestrians (sidewalks, pathways and plazas). Land use data also indicate the proportion of study areas occupied by buildings, and thus the capacity of these areas to bring activities within walking reach and provide both connectivity and a sense of enclosure. Measurements of the proportion of street frontages occupied by facades made it possible to further gauge connectivity and enclosure.

Table 15 contrasts two types of environments: four downtown Toronto districts known for their high pedestrian circulation vs. Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre, two suburban nodes developed on greenfield sites around a pre-existing regional mall. These two categories are distinguished by the portion of their surface that is covered by buildings. The footprint of buildings accounts for between 50.9 and 58.2 per cent of the land of downtown Toronto districts, while equivalent values for Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre are respectively 13.7 and 19.1 per cent.

The different morphology of the two types of study areas and of the likely impact on their inner dynamics is even more apparent in the dramatic variation in the street frontage that is occupied by facades built out to the sidewalk. For the four downtown Toronto districts, such facades represent 77.1 per cent of street frontage, with values ranging from 79.6 to 100 per cent for their main commercial streets. In contrast, only 5.6 and 6.8 per cent of the street frontage is occupied by facades in Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre.

The proportion of space taken by roads is higher in the downtown Toronto districts than it is in the two suburban nodes. Such a paradoxical finding is a consequence of the higher space consumption of roads in a tight grid pattern than in the suburban super-block configuration, where roads are wider, but less numerous.

Sidewalks also distinguish the two types of districts. Sidewalks are invariably present on both sides of the streets of the downtown districts and are wide on the main commercial streets. They occupy 7.5 per cent of the surface of these areas. In the Bloor-Yorkville and Queen Street West districts, this percentage reaches 8.5 per cent. In Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre, sidewalks occupy only 2.2 and 3.6 per cent of the space, respectively. This includes pathways, which are common in the Scarborough Town Centre. The limited space is given to sidewalks in the two suburban nodes because there are fewer roads than in central districts, many roads have sidewalks only on one side, and suburban sidewalks tend to be narrow.

Parking and green space also distinguish the downtown Toronto districts from the suburban nodes. Surface and decked parking represents only 10.6 per cent of the total area of the selected downtown Toronto districts. In Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre, surface and decked parking accounts for 34.4 and 39.9 per cent of the surface, respectively. In both these cases, the retail centres, mainly the regional malls, register the highest proportion of space devoted to parking. The residential sector of Scarborough Town Centre and some of the

office areas of Mississauga City Centre also contain large amounts of parking space.

While nearly absent from the downtown districts (covering only 3.9 per cent of their area), green space occupies a substantial proportion of the surface of Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre (29.7 and 20 per cent, respectively). Nodes make liberal use of green space for buffering, a technique commonly used to separate suburban land uses. In downtown Toronto, where space is at a premium, land uses co-exist side by side.

Like suburbs in general, suburban nodes are composed of specialized districts associated with specific functions and presenting distinctive layouts.¹⁵ An abundance of green space characterizes the campus-like area that covers part of Scarborough Town Centre and the high-rise residential cluster found in Mississauga City Centre, which adheres to the tower-in-the-park formula. Green space occupies 42.4 per cent of the surface of Scarborough Town Centre and 38.7 per cent of Mississauga City Centre.

The Civic Centre of the Mississauga City Centre also stands out within the two suburban nodes. It is characterized by a small amount of surface or decked parking, since most of it is underground, and by the amount of space devoted to plazas. Despite effort to de-emphasize the presence of vehicles and create plentiful space for pedestrians, the civic centre lacks the animation that mixed uses and street facades bring.

The land use statistics of the other two nodes, Yonge-Eglinton and North York Centre, tend to fall between the extremes of downtown Toronto on the one hand, and of Scarborough Town Centre and Mississauga City Centre, on the other. The building coverage of the Yonge-Eglinton node is higher than that of North York Centre, as is the proportion of land taken by parking. Green space coverage is identical in these two nodes, but more space is given to sidewalks in the Yonge-Eglinton node and more to plazas in North York Centre. (The space devoted to the plaza category in North York Centre is largely concentrated in a large central square.) There are also more construction sites in the rapidly growing North York Centre than in the more stable Yonge-Eglinton node. Finally, a higher presence of facades on the two main streets of the Yonge-Eglinton node (Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue) than on Yonge Street in North York Centre indicates a stronger inner-city character.

Downtown Oakville and downtown Kitchener present some similarities in the proportions of space taken by their land uses. The substantial differences in their economic fortunes are not reflected in land use statistics, with the possible exception of a lesser presence of facades on downtown Kitchener's King Street than on downtown Oakville's Lakeshore Road. The poor economic performance of downtown Kitchener is responsible for the deterioration, demolition, and non-replacement of buildings on the main street.

A number of measurements from these two downtowns are in the middle range among our study areas. This finding can be attributed to the lower density of the built environment and the presence of larger amounts of surface parking in the two small downtowns, which have lower land values than in downtown Toronto.

Table 15: Measurements of the built environment in investigated downtowns and nodes

Table 15: Measurements of the built environment in investigated downtowns and nodes (continued)

Notes

15. In light of this explanation of differences in suburban land uses, it is tempting to attribute the greater similitude that exists between the land uses of downtown districts to a relative consistency in inner-city environments, which would account for their high spatial connectivity. Although such consistency may explain some of the data in Table 15, it is important to remember that these districts were selected on the basis of common traits: their strong retail orientation and their walking-conducive environment.