Podcast 19: What's the Impact Of All This Intensification In Toronto?
Podcast 19: What's the Impact Of All This Intensification In Toronto?
Toronto is a rapidly growing city. We are seeing approximately 100,000 new immigrants to the city every single year, yet we are limited by the lake and the greenbelt. So what's the impact of all this intensification that's happening around us?
Schedule your call now to discuss more.
https://www.broadviewavenue.ca/appointments
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Subscribe now to keep updated for more information. If you want to chat with us, do the following:
Send an email at ken+blog@broadviewavenue.ca; or
Send a direct message on my Instagram account below; or
Book an appointment for a 15-minute video chat using the link on our website.
If you’re not ready to reach out and just want to follow for more, find us online:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kennethyimhomes?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kennethyimhomes
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kennethyimhomes
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethyimhomes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BroadviewAvenue
Web: http://www.broadviewavenue.ca
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
PODCAST (VIDEO):
PODCAST (AUDIO):
LINKS TO PODCAST:
FOLLOW US HERE:
Web: http://www.broadviewavenue.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kennethyimhomes?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kennethyimhomes
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kennethyimhomes
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethyimhomes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BroadviewAvenue
-
Okay guys we're on welcome to another edition of Broadview table talks and we got the full team here we got Neil Michael and Michelle and Ken and we're gonna be talking about the pros and cons of the intensification testification of Toronto a growing city that's Michael's topic all right so what are you guys seeing as a pro and as a con so how do you want to do this pros and cons so as you guys know you know Toronto's rapidly growing city I saw it before Drake made it a city I don't know if it's like him being the right place right time you know because we also had Raptors doing well yeah Drake Came in the scene he says this is my city but really it's an exciting time it was but meanwhile this city just kind of grew on its own I think he just stepped into my city man it's my city you know so he's good I'm not a distance Talent first uh what what exactly is intensification so for people who just listen to this and they don't know what it is what exactly is it for a city good question intoxication deals with intensifying making it more intense making it dense more dense so densification intensification same thing it's like you were seeing like you know you if you go on vacation for like or you go leave the city for six months and you come back and all of a sudden you see all these cranes in the air like you know Toronto is the most number of cranes in North America in the world or whatever it is but you come back in six months and it's completely changed is because the city's growing out of nowhere you turn around like whoa where'd that come from right if you're not in tune with the pre-build or pre-construction industry and you don't know that these towers are coming all of a sudden you see this new like address on MLS or you see this new building out of nowhere that's what's happening people are moving to the city because of the 500 000 immigration targets that we're trying to hit every single year and they all need a place to live and people just naturally gravitates towards cities like like a magnet Metropolitan centers where everything is culture history food everything yeah Transportation well mainly it's first of all it's jobs that's why they come here for the jobs but then there's better Transit there's better food like food options like you're saying oh you know you can have diversity shops or whatever yeah carbon ice cream or whatever like you can't find all that yeah what's that and it's a vegan's paradise yeah yeah you find some vegan meat or something you know what I mean it's like crazy stuff here yeah just joking and then you have what else you have different diversity cultures yeah diversity we just came back from Mexico after for we were there for three weeks ago City Mexico City and one of the things that we missed the most was the diversity of Toronto when it comes to its people it's food like we missed all our favorite restaurants because we have such like a diverse selection here but Mexico City is like 30 million people or not more Mexico City is just overwhelming not a fan I was a fan for a day I haven't actually been I've only seen pictures I've been heard stories about well let's just say it takes three hours to get from downtown to downtown so we take that that's too much so they're taking you're saying it takes three hours one side of the other of frustration because of the traffic yeah what just traffic if you're driving I wouldn't suggest driving definitely take transit but even their transit system is way like more complicated than our little few lines that we have yeah so they have like trams like we do or Subways or they have everything buses trams Subways so there's no like direct route into like one side no you have to switch and if you're like us you get frustrated you're like okay I'm Gonna Save money I'm gonna take transit and then halfway through you're like no I'm gonna get in a taxi because our questions options suck and I think yeah like the problem with this and you guys know better is that it's you got to share the road with cars pedestrians bicycles public transit taxis whatever whatever right and a lot of the tree hookers I don't know what we call them but people out there want to have everybody taking transit public transit because it's the most efficient in terms of overall right or bikes for that matter yeah um but my problem is that I think I love it no I love it I love public transit I think it's most efficient for the environment I don't like single car drivers even though I am one of those people I have an electric car so it's better for the kind of anyway whatever debate um bicycles are great scooters are great and all that stuff it's just that they have way too much priority you know versus like a country like Taiwan for example where when you have cars at the light first of all you have these above ground passes which I know they're inefficient because you got to maintain them and they're expensive and all that kind of stuff but at least pedestrians don't block the traffic right they're so dang slow whereas you know when it's a red light green light like when it's red light to a green light first of all everybody prioritizes going right and left then the straight gets a go and then there's pedestrians that's how it should be because they're faster they get out of the way clear intersection yeah I don't understand why it's built the way we have it now yeah protection's the slowest gets go first why don't we have like pedestrian walk overpasses to make well they're I think there's maintenance especially because of the uh the the cold and Ice it's not very you know totally different accessible like if you're in a wheelchair or something right it's hard to do that yeah so and it costs it's really expensive to have elevators and they always break down and they have a homeless issue like for example Liberty Village you have the bridge over there too it's kind of right not nice yeah so some more pros and cons ensification well I'm a huge fan of intensification you know um being from Hong Kong you you kind of get used to being surrounded by concrete and glass but you make the most of it because you understand that you live in an urban center so you go to Parks you go to actual places where there are trees and there are uh playground equipment for children you you go specifically to do the things that you can't do if you didn't have a backyard for sure you kind of get used to that that's why people in Hong Kong actually don't spend that much time inside their units you know they spend a lot of time actually eating out or going shopping or going to a library or going to an art museum they do a lot of things outside the home and they use the home as a place to sleep and shower right and that's it yeah and and that's something that we have a big difference with Toronto because it seems like some people are a little bit hesitant to allow tall glass buildings to grow and I understand that because you want to maintain the character you want the Brownstones you want to be able to see the sky when you're walking around totally get it the history and the history right you don't want to like for me it's not the sky like I was saying I feel for me I don't I don't mind that unless of course I lived in a condo and then I had a beautiful view and then they built a condo in front of me I might be a little bit upset but for me it is getting rid of the original Toronto that's what upsets me like I'm all in favor of development and I even think that adds a certain element of character to our city like if we didn't have any condos it would be boring right but I feel getting rid of especially in the pockets of Toronto getting rid of the original brick gorgeous like Victorian homes and just like replacing those with condos if I ever live in a Toronto like that I wouldn't want to live here I wouldn't because it's erasing everything that Toronto is like I like the nitty-gritty parts of Toronto to me that's what makes Toronto like the red brick with graffiti sprayed on it like that is Toronto but at what cost though right like like I'm just gonna play The Devil's Advocate here because it's going to stop development it's going to slow down development I should say build on top of them I know not all of them can support huge condos on top of it but I feel like but preserve them somehow there needs to be something where we can build on top while still preserving I mean look at this look at distillery that's what they built on top of them and it's such a beautiful place yeah there's a Heritage preservation Society whatever so that's it's certainly good to have the preservation of our history for sure and I think it's definitely needed it's just a challenge of like our housing crisis right now that we're in the middle of and the problem is affordability it's affordability crisis right now where it's not affordable to be in the city and the problem with that is it becomes a playground for The Rich And when it's only rich people living here you're not going to have anybody serving you food you don't have anybody who serve any coffee making coffee for your doing and it also just wouldn't be Toronto we only had it wouldn't be Toronto right you need a diverse economic status of people to be able to do all sorts of various jobs that keep the city running yeah right so that is a problem and it all comes down to supply and demand and if we're trying to spend too much time preserving the brick and stuff like that we're not going to be able to have more housing for these people for everybody to live into for a country but on the other hand if you do that too much of you know changing things up you're not going to have the history so it's kind of like sucks yeah it's a balancing act it is like how far do you go with identification how far do you go with the historical preservation yeah right because I'm with you Michael I love the convenience of living in a condo in Hong Kong where you go straight downstairs and you have like this food and then bubble tea or whatever you have like all sorts of elevators everywhere you've got a subway station inside your condo great you've got like uh you've got you've got stores you've got restaurants you guys need to walk to a wet Market is right around the corner like everything's right there you don't have to leave your neighborhood yeah but the thing is like you have like you can walk everywhere within like a five minute radius and you have everything at your fingertips laundry service yeah right that's so cool you don't have to do your own laundry you bring your bag downstairs they wash it for you fold it for you and come back in like five hours whatever you get a folded bag of laundry yeah that's so cool that is cool in New York they actually bring it to you too which is super cool up to like four-story walk-up or whatever yeah yeah nice I love that I love that big city yeah so I wrote down some questions that might uh encourage some discussion so what are some infrastructure needs for a growing city that we need to have well one of the big problems that we have is transportation
especially public transportation you know sometimes it's unreliable especially when street cars break down our Subway Lines need to be fixed the number of buses that I see running along Bloor Danforth plus Young a little bit too high for my comfort because I know there's a subway line down there yeah and I'm surprised behind streetcars even the width of sidewalks sharing you know like on Esplanade right now people are complaining about the one-way road that they had to do in order to make room for a bus lane bike lane pedestrian lane two bike Lanes but I might add and then pedestrians and it's like why are there you know these the the neighborhood people are saying that they shouldn't prioritize people coming from out of the city taking our routes just to get in the highway the reason why they're ignoring the one-way street is because it's a bad design it's a horrible design like you should anyway whatever yeah too many of that okay and another thing we should talk about is the effects of population density on City Life um no I I was going to say like one of the one of the problems with intensifying for Toronto for example Toronto as you guys know history buffers it's a city of a bunch of cities old people no it's a city of a bunch of cities like this we collected all the boroughs right right Toronto grew kind of outwards so then six boroughs yeah yeah so then I guess one of the problems for for these people were like okay you're gonna build all these buildings here now and then you're gonna ruin these Pockets these neighborhoods and then you also have to provide service for this area for example like these areas can only service x amount of people so then now they got to build the infrastructure around that when it comes to servicing buses you got to create new commercial properties such as grocery stores convenience right so it just it becomes building outwards at least intensifying outwards going outwards is kind of hard for the city so I see why people the power's into homeowners but the I see why people in in neighborhoods where we are for example Riverdale they don't want to build these multiplexes and everything they got to service way more people well yeah also that you don't want to have a whole like if you're used to yours like people like change at the end yeah right and if you have a certain amount of people walking the streets whatever and all of a sudden you'd like double that or triple that and it's just so crazy busy it's like exactly everything where did my neighborhood go right yeah like people don't like that for sure the demographic changes so I that you know that might not be a problem to some it is a problem for the people living residing in that neighborhood and again it might lower their value so or it will some to a certain degree right so I I guess there's only two ways to grow the city it's either up or out right and out comes with a lot of problems with infrastructure and trying to get everybody into the City and all that kind of stuff and labor and horror urban sprawl is a big issue biggest belts and all that kind of stuff or going up it cause comes to challenges as well too shadows and like you know if you're used to having sunlight through the park wherever that's one of the big considerations to City books and also wind traffic schools well one big thing that happened a couple years ago was in CityPlace there was like a series of blackouts because the electrical grid just could not support all the condo buildings down there I think this was like five six years ago I can't remember exactly one but there was a series of time where you know I spent two or three days in my apartment with no electricity you live in the city place lived in a safe place oh no way I didn't know that I did that during a university I lived at uh 15 ice boat Terrace and 25 caprial oh wow poor you no I'm joking um it's a good experience it was good it was good as a student it was a good being there as a student and um I got to save a little bit on rent and that's how I saved up for my down payment for my first house right right I guess another challenge of a growing city I shouldn't go on to him I'll ask what the challenges you think are of a growing city but my challenge would be that nothing is Affordable anymore right there's no affordable real estate that's why there's no grocery stores that's why there's no more gas stations that's why there's no more parking lots because I guess at the end of the day the the basis of real estate is highest and best use of that land you get the most efficient use of that land that serves a greater amount of people so not having grocery stores is a problem right affordable grocery stores you have these little small little robbers and like small little micro City grocery stores where you call them but everything's expensive there toothpaste is expensive like if you go to New York City by a tub of toothpaste because you forget a tube toothpaste it's like seven bucks or whatever it's like what the heck yeah right yeah because the real estate is so expensive yeah right and because they have a monopoly on the real estate on it right yeah that's my challenge what do you guys see challenges or Pros cons whatever can it just be like a personal yeah whatever sure well it comes back like I'm not I wasn't born in Toronto this is my chosen home so I feel like if it does which inevitably it will if it becomes you know just a bunch of towers it's gonna lose What attracted me to Toronto in the first place where'd you come from I don't even know West Coast Vancouver
yeah yeah all right all right Neil isn't that wasn't that the same way Vancouver don't they have the same problems right now basically too much attention yeah yeah City I guess yeah yeah Vancouver City yesterday right thank you for still has a long way to go though it's like it's tiny um yeah yeah it's changed my problems were same to yours I was talking about servicing for that reason like who's really going to be creating and funding these these things not me probably yeah yeah as a taxpayer for sure for sure I think infrastructure for me mainly like the city services are strained as we know Healthcare is trained and transportation is trained like it's like a a battle against the uh the people that want change and want to adopt City Life against people who don't and you see that in every single aspect whether it's you know taking public transit versus driving whether it's building more units around the neighborhood whether they want to keep their detached homes and ultimately I think it's going to become about all of you know who has more power who has more control over the growth of City that's going to dictate where we head at the end of the day I don't think people like change but the one thing that's constant is that there's always going to be change so yeah you know so whether you like it or not it's happening is coming and I think change is great for the city having more people having more density is a good thing I was gonna say like uh for for a pro because we've all kind of said negatives um a pro for it is yeah our labor Market's gonna completely change we're gonna have so many experts come in here so many smart individuals and new Industries and new and for example we have world-class you know sick kids as a world-class Hospital World outstanding for for Children's Hospital Children's care and even like Princess Margaret for cancer research and all that stuff like we have the top top doctors in the world not to mention we have I don't know a big Financial Center Financial Hub a lot of Specialties a lot of micro specialty industries that you normally wouldn't get in like if you didn't have as much density that I saw it growing Through The Years people make money on YouTube especially exclusively as a job how the hell is that like you know what I mean like how's that a thing now you know that's kind of cool but like you wouldn't be able to do that if you were stuck in some small town or maybe you could maybe you have some sort of like but then they're going to move to a city most likely eventually right you just get more things so that's a good Pro for sure what else you guys see a pro diversity yeah diversity like yeah a little a little litmus test that I always do whenever I travel is I go on ubereats to see what's available in an area okay so Toronto you can get everything you can not only can you get Japanese food which is Sushi you can also get like Teppanyaki you can get udon you can get anything yeah whereas when we went down to Orlando a city like Orlando not to knock Orlando but like we had to drive out and look for food trucks to be able to get that stuff San Diego where they didn't close at 10 o'clock everything closed yeah good luck yeah there's not that much diversity and that's something that's beautiful because like sometimes you'll not crave eating Pho we'll just go out and get folks sometimes I want to eat Indian food I'll just go but I didn't get any food yeah let her know a fact about Michael maybe you know this or not but he grew up in Thailand of all places Bangkok so you've seen more advanced cities you've seen futuristic cities a war in Toronto is headed I mean we've all traveled the Mills seen like New York and Hong Kong and places like that what do you think is going to happen in Toronto what do you think we're gonna go well that alludes to my previous comment right now um I think that the city is between Crossroads we can go to either extremes and it's a little bit scary because it seems like there's no consensus as to how our city should grow like every single step that we take is met with opposition and battles like we're not on the same page that's always going to be the case because of everything Democratic Society of too much like voices everyone has too much yeah you know a left wing and a right wing and like Pro development anti-development is like ah yeah right like there are two extremes that I can extrapolate you know like City like Hong Kong all the old buildings that my parents grew up in are gone and in favor they've built really really tall condo buildings that's absolutely fine that's the character of the city whereas you have cities like Bangkok where urban sprawl is a significant problem um and it takes about two hours to drive Bangkok to Bangkok or you can take transit which will still take you an hour and a half because there's a lot of people actually lining up to actually take the transit but also takes you a really long time to travel that distance as well yeah because urban sprawl is such a huge issue yeah I couldn't believe when I walked into Bangkok and Manila and all that whatever travels big cities how many people there are like it's it's it was insane just seeing the just the subway terminal was bus terminals yeah it was crazy yep in Mexico City I can't imagine seeing that too yeah it was it was honestly overwhelming for me that's why I feel like Toronto is so perfect it's like this little bubble of Joy change is enough well remember when I was talking to he did a webinar with the people from India that came from Mumbai and uh came from like bigger cities in India and where he says it's crazy you walk up the street and people actually stop for you 200 meters down the road right where's over there he's like good luck yeah that's so true that's a cool thing to see about our city but uh I'm excited for the growth I don't know about you guys leave a comment below let us know what you think this is a controversial topic right like how it really is change is hard for people yeah it's very hard yeah and everyone's vision of change is different yeah yeah yeah I'm struggling right now to picture like how would it look like should we grow vertically or yeah sprawl outwards or girl or not grow those condos but build those condos in this area for example Riverdale but what we need is that kind of like almost agnostic stream of one party government like Asia where they say we're building Subway here get out right here's a couple books and move versus like you know something were in between where powers like Doug Ford or how the strong man errors have more strong Powers now to be able to make these changes because we are in a housing crisis and the only way to get out of it is to either increase Supply or decrease demand and decreasing demand is a very bad thing yep that's the last thing we want Detroit right disappointed you don't want that happening right so you don't want Mass Exodus of people you want to be able to include and incorporate a strong immigrant demand and a strong diversity of people include everybody economic and whatever classes are so it's a good thing I can't wait to see what the next 10 years has to hold and I'm looking for big changes exciting articles yeah yeah talk to you guys soon see you next episode bye guys consider subscribing if you like this by the way add it up