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In the five years between the last two national censuses, the city’s population grew by more than 62,000 people. But that growth has not spread evenly. It’s clustered in neighbourhoods that are already running out of space, with little choice but to reach up to add more homes.

It’s a repercussion of deliberate choices. Across huge cuts of the city, zoning rules – along with other planning decrees like height and floor space limits – dictate the only thing that can be built is detached or semi-detached houses, and any denser housing development will need to go somewhere else.

But pc28����is now teetering on the brink of major change. In the face of a historic housing crisis, city planners and some elected officials have been pitching a consequential shift in the way pc28����can grow. The idea is to allow “gentle” density to crack into these traditionally single-house areas – not super-tall condominiums, the thinking goes, but something in the middle like a duplex, triplex or in some cases, a walk-up apartment.

Some decisions are coming fast. In April, city staff expect to table their final proposal to allow up to four housing units on any lot in any pc28����neighbourhood. Later this year, staff are also expected to deliver a final recommendation on allowing four-to-six storey walk-up apartments along major streets in residential areas.

These kinds of reforms are not universally backed; in some corners, they face heated pushback from residents who argue against fundamental changes to the way their neighbourhoods have looked for decades. But a fast-approaching mayoral election may push the fight to centre stage. And whoever wins will inherit unprecedented new powers to shape the city hall agenda – and the map of pc28����– for years to come.

Where in pc28����are single-family homes the only option?

This map shows all the land in pc28����that is zoned exclusively for detached and semi-detached houses. Often labelled by the city in yellow, it's been dubbed Toronto’s “yellow-belt.”

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Toronto’s jagged growth is not a new problem.

Let’s look, for example, at the long-standing divide between the tightly packed, sky-reaching downtown east neighbourhood of St. James Town and the adjacent neighbourhood of Rosedale.

Back in the 1910s, apartments were seen as a kind of social ill – so much so that the city was allowed to bar them as a “noxious use” of land. According to researcher Richard Dennis, apartment dwellers back then were seen as transient, and the layout as a poor place to raise children that therefore posed a “threat to family life.”

But around the 1950s and ‘60s, pc28����started warming to the idea of attracting more people through apartment construction. This is the era when zoning bylaws were born, says chief city planner Gregg Lintern.

Developers began snapping up houses and assembling land to build apartment towers. St. James Town, as it now exists, began to rise. So did Yonge and Eglinton, around Mount Pleasant and Redpath, and High Park.

But this growth frustrated many homeowners. In 1972, residents of west-end pc28����jammed into council chambers in opposition to four apartment towers and 28 townhouses in High Park that would replace 100 existing homes.

“At some point, there was a political backlash … and they started to draw lines around how far people could go with that extent of development,” Lintern said. The kind of influence that Rosedale residents wielded likely stopped “further change and incursion” into the area, he said.

Concentrated opposition was bubbling up in other neighbourhoods at the same time. “Well-organized groups in the Annex, Rosedale, North pc28����and elsewhere can be counted on to speak out if apartments threaten to invade their areas,” a 1964 edition of the pc28����Daily Star recounted.

City planning, Lintern said, reflects the values of people with decision-making power. By excluding a type of housing, he said decision-makers were – in effect – choosing to exclude people of a certain income bracket.

“It’s clearly part of a political system. It clearly reflects when you look at it, biases and systemic biases.”

Especially today, the house-dominated neighbourhoods that were once accessible to middle-income families in pc28����are far out of reach for many younger households.

Proponents of zoning reform argue that allowing buildings like multiplexes would create smaller and less expensive housing in currently out-of-reach areas.

Of course, it’s not impossible today to build something outside of zoning rules. Property owners can apply for exceptions, and do all the time.

But getting permission means they have to make their case at pc28����City Hall. It can trigger an argument over whether the building fits in the “existing physical character of a neighbourhood”. It’s expensive, time consuming, and the outcome is never guaranteed.

That’s why Lintern wants to see changes made to zoning law on a broader neighbourhood level. By changing the rules across the board for larger parcels of land at once, it would allow more development as a right – meaning no applications for special permission required.

“That’s a significant bar,” he said.

Talk of density increases still prompts pushback. During consultations last year on allowing more multiplex homes in pc28����neighbourhoods, some residents raised concern that changes would benefit developers and investors without making a real dent against the city’s housing affordability crisis. Concern was raised, as ever, about whether there would be enough parking space.

Out of more than 130 emails city staff received about the drafted changes, nearly 80 per cent supported having multiplexes in low-rise areas. But supporting growth as a concept doesn’t always mean someone will support growth in their own community. In a recent Mainstreet Research poll, 47 per cent of surveyed Torontonians said the city wasn’t building enough housing, but only 27 per cent thought their own area could handle more.

In some parts of Toronto, the difference between low-rise and apartment areas is less intense. Take the area around Cosburn and Logan Aves. – a wide spread of single houses with a cluster of apartments in the middle.

These denser builds fall in a residential apartment and apartment-commercial zone – a neighbourhood designed for tower living, enshrined in city law and encircled by protected “house” zones with hard boundaries.

This was not a decision of today’s Toronto, says city hall zoning director Kyle Knoeck. When the rules were laid out, East York was its own municipality, and it wanted population growth – the kind that would reflect in its tax assessments. So it began to build up in places like Thorncliffe Park, Crescent Town and the Cosburn area.

To Knoeck, the area of Logan and Cosburn is a good example of integrating density in a cohesive way.

It’s tidy, well-proportioned to the street, had public spaces and a close proximity to amenities along Pape, he said. He and Lintern agreed that the area exhibits many traits they aspire to in a “complete community.”

In some areas, mixed density has long been the prevailing rhythm – with single houses abutting walk-up apartments and multiplexes in a gentle undulation. Many examples fall within the old metropolitan Toronto.

The Annex’s historic, low-rise Audley Court Apartments, located on Kendal Ave., is a jewel in the streetscape – and was highlighted recently as a sort of poster child for gentle density, on the front of an anthology on Toronto’s housing woes called House Divided.

The three-and-a-half storey 1912 building’s ornate, heritage façade includes elegant balconies and a front door carved with the building name. This building, which has since been converted into condo units, offers space for eight households on a street filled with single-family homes.

The area is governed by more permissive zoning – what’s called the “R” zone, which still has restrictions like maximum heights, but allows a wider range of homes like multiplexes and apartments.

Having this zoning doesn’t guarantee density, Lintern cautions, since property owners don’t always build to the full size they’re allowed. Indeed, throughout R zones in the city, single-family homes still proliferate.

But it opens the door.

The Kendal apartments would be hard to rebuild in the same area today, he said, because of height limits and other standards that layer on top of zoning. The local height limit is 12 metres, or roughly three storeys. But generally, the building represents the kind of “missing middle” homes at the heart of the current public debate.

Just last week, pc28����staff tabled their roadmap to zoning and density overhauls over the years ahead – with city planners’ final multiplex recommendations expected to land next month, their apartments-on-major-streets recommendations expected by year’s end, and a host of other reports and proposals, from expanding mixed-use areas to allowing more mid-rise buildings along avenues, expected to land throughout next year.

This roadmap was requested by council in December with the backing of then-mayor John Tory, who threw his weight behind densifying neighbourhoods as an objective of his third term. With Tory’s recent and abrupt resignation comes new questions about the path ahead. While the vote on allowing multiplex housing in neighbourhoods will likely take place under interim mayor Jennifer McKelvie, whoever succeeds Tory in June will inherit “strong mayor” powers to shape the city’s priorities moving forward, as city staff intend to bring forward further recommendations – and not everyone sees density overhauls as good change.

In December, for example, Coun. Stephen Holyday (Ward 2-Etobicoke Centre) suggested during a council debate on housing that adding density to suburban neighbourhoods would be disturbing to existing residents.

pc28����has already introduced some gentler density options in recent years, like garden suites and laneway suites. And the conversation has rippled up to Queen’s Park, with the provincial government also endorsing more neighbourhood density through its recent Bill 23, which dictated that up to three housing units per residential lot should be allowed without needing special planning approvals from a municipality.

While that kind of change won’t pave the way for options like fourplexes – and some critics say the changes didn’t go far enough – the idea is to allow options like garden suites in areas long been protected for houses alone.

It’s an approach that many housing advocates, planners and experts have backed for several years.

“People are probably familiar with monster houses ... maybe it’s six, seven thousand square feet,” Lintern told the Star in 2021. “We think, inside that box, you could have three or four units as an alternative ... You would carve it up differently, and actually be able to house a greater diversity of people.”

Boosting an area’s density is a way to keep local businesses thriving, local schools from closing, and local transit running where populations might otherwise be in decline, Lintern says. He doesn’t envision a future pc28����without low-rise areas generally; he still pictures them, along with mid-rise and high-rise heavy zones.

But the idea would be a gentler mix within those lower-rise neighbourhoods, many of them located in suburban Toronto, in order to accommodate a bit more of the city’s rising population than they do today.

For now, pc28����remains a city of sharp contrasts – with places like North York Centre that boast sky-high towers that suddenly drop into a sea of low-slung houses. To Knoeck and Lintern, North York Centre feels like a success story – with its bustling patios in the summer, and mix of residential and commercial spaces.

It came, they said, from a decades-ago effort to decentralise development from the metropolitan downtown. Former mayor Mel Lastman wanted North York to have its own downtown hub, and Lintern sees it as having meaningfully “re-urbanized” a pocket of the city. But a circular road around the bustling centre became a delineation point – a political solution, as Lintern paints it, to assuage residents’ concerns about traffic.

With the density changes Lintern and his team hope to see in the years ahead, he says the idea is to create less harsh boundaries, with more “blurring of the lines” between the city’s low-rise and high-rise areas – more mixed use builds along transit lines, more permission for multiplex housing in house-dominated areas.

At its core, Lintern sees the job of a city-builder today as one of opening up doors – and giving a chance for more Torontonians to call its varied neighbourhoods home.

“We want an inclusive city.”