Councillor Saxe did the most magnificent job fighting for the Annex at this past Monday’s Planning and Housing Committee meeting – a committee on which she doesn’t actually sit. We’ve got an articulate legal mind as our representative. If you’ve got some time, then watch the YouTube archive of the meeting to watch the discussion as it unfolds and to see her champion our interests.
The stunning Academic Wood Tower has started to take shape in the Bloor Street cultural corridor, where it will serve as a beacon for green architecture – and provide high-quality spaces for three of the university’s faculties and schools.
Construction edutainment outlet The B1M recently released a video rounding up what it considers to be the most exciting projects due to complete in 2024.
Among them, the monolithic 91-storey skyscraper under construction at Yonge and Bloor, known as The One, took the #7 position and was the only North American construction project to make the top-ten ranking.
The 2020s will be remembered as a historic period of transformative change in Toronto thanks to the forthcoming completion of new transit lines and some of the tallest buildings under construction in all of Canada. But that’s just the bigger picture, and a handful of specific neighbourhoods can expect some big changes in 2024. Here …
The city of Toronto has no shortage of rules and regulations. According to a bylaw registry on the city’s website with information that dates all the way back to 1844, Toronto has 164,323 bylaws on the books, with more always coming: Toronto city council tacked on 1,334 more bylaws last year.
What there is a real shortage of, though, is an effective strategy to enforce many of those bylaws.
The livability of the City is being eroded by excessive unrestricted noise and a lack of enforcement for the rules that we do have.
This review is important in order to address some of the deficiencies in the 2019 update and help create a policy that establishes clear, meaningful limits on noise and adequate, efficient enforcement. ABCRA did attend multiple community consultations and submitted comments and concerns that we hoped would be addressed through the staff recommendations.
More than a third of Toronto residents who took part in a prebudget online survey want to boost funding for affordable housing and shelters and cut funding for police, according to a partial copy of the survey obtained by the Star.
The survey was part of a new prebudget consultation process introduced by Mayor Olivia Chow and led by budget chief Shelley Carroll. According to the city, a total of 16 in-person and virtual public meetings were held and an online survey conducted during November 2023.
Toronto staff are recommending a nine per cent hike to the city’s residential property tax — the largest single-year increase since amalgamation in 1998 — as they look to fill a nearly $1.8 billion budget shortfall in 2024 and a grim long-term fiscal outlook.
With the recommendation of an additional 1.5 per cent increase to the city building tax, property owners could see their tax bill jump 10.5 per cent this year if the figures go unchanged during five weeks of scheduled budget debates and consultations. The city building tax is a special levy introduced in 2016 that goes toward major transit and housing projects.
The sales rep on the phone is reassuring. He works for a property management company that specializes in short-term rentals, and he says Toronto’s bylaw is easy enough to get around.
Yes, you need to register if you want to list your place on Airbnb now, and you need to say that you live in the condo, he says.
But if you don’t, all you have to do is change the address on your driver’s licence.
Density is the name of the game when it comes to the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) urban planning agenda – especially in areas surrounding current and upcoming public transit hubs. With new provincially-passed legislation as a driving force behind it, these neighbourhoods are in store for a drastic transformation in the not-too-distant future.
“Not another condo,” exclaim countless Toronto residents daily, as they throw up their arms and shake their heads in disbelief at news of yet another towering new development.