- Part 1: "Rumble on Craven Row"
- Part 2: "How About a Craven Row Challenge?"
- Part 3: "Thoroughly Modern Through-Lots"
- Part 4: "In Yer Face"
The Planners Proffer a Proposal
On September 9th, the City planners held a community consultation meeting titled "Zoning for Garden Suites: Parkmount Road / Craven Road."
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| Photo: More Neighbours Toronto |
I wanted to wait till the City mailed out their presentation slide deck, so I could post it here for those who weren't able to make it to the meeting.
I also thought it would be good to sit with the arguments raised in the Q&A so I could consider them more deeply, rather than posting a hot take.
Social media platforms score a quick buck from your outrage. Personal blogs can give you space to breathe and digest.
Last September when the garden suite issue first blew up, and again this month, I've seen some stuff on Reddit, Tiktok and X that I kinda wish I hadn't.
I'm not going to link to it, because over the past year (...decade ...week), it has felt more and more vital to make a deliberate effort to discuss a political issue like this without letting the algorithms polarize us further.
Social media billionaires take the money and run.
But the rest of us have to continue to live side by side once the flashpoint-of-the-moment has passed.
Quite literally, in this case.
So it's good practice to see if we can disagree, discuss, and even argue heatedly, without hating each other.
[More after the jump... lots more, but I think the ending is worth it...]
Below are the slides in which the planners set out the context for their review.
Craven Road is one of only two streets in the city with these two characteristics:
- Residential through-lots (backyards on one side of the street, fronts of houses on the other), and
- An extremely narrow right-of-way.
I was glad to see that the "uniqueness" of Craven Road has been pared down to these two points. Not the height of the houses. Not the lot sizes. Not a certain unquantifiable quaintness around which we could chase our tails forever.
Parkmount Road properties are all through-lots. As I argued in this post, that makes a key difference. A garden suite in a Parkmount "rear yard" is, effectively, also a house with a "front yard" on Craven.
And while its narrowness and west-side garages give Craven the look and feel of a back alley, it is classified as a street, not a laneway.
Those, I think, are the only two uniquenesses that matter. Through-lots and street width.
Review and Analysis
The slides describe the care the planners took to consider all angles and welcome all input:
I was not surprised to read on the slide above that the average front yard setback on Craven is 2.6 metres. That's a historical hangover from olden times, because in Toronto today, any new house must have a front yard setback of 4.5 to 6.0 metres.
I was also interested to read that the average lot depth on Parkmount is 37.7 metres (123.7 feet).
South of the train tracks, Craven Road faces the backyards of Ashdale Avenue. Judging by a half-dozen real estate listings, Ashdale's lots are a bit shallower than Parkmount's, at 36.6 to 37.1 metres (120 to 122 feet).
On this southern stretch, Craven was widened a century ago by expropriating from 2.74 to 4.2 metres off the rear of Ashdale lots, and separating the streets with an iconic wooden fence. Craven owners paid more than half the cost of this widening through a special assessment, and the City paid the rest.
Craven south has been 10 metres wide ever since. (Typical right-of-way for Toronto's local roads is 15 to 22 metres.)
Craven north's right-of-way remains 6.1 metres, because that 1916 widening did not extend above the train tracks.
But imagine if it had.
Parkmount lots would be shallower by around 1.1 metres, and we probably wouldn't be having this debate at all.
Distance and Design
Then, finally – drumroll, please – we get the big reveal.
Below is the City planners' recommendation for garden suites facing onto Craven Road:
The recommendation is to increase the "rear yard" setback of a Parkmount lot, which is also a "front yard" on Craven, by 1.1 metres.
This shifts the setback from the standard 1.5 metres to 2.6 metres, matching the average front yard setback on the other side of Craven Road.
The resulting facing distance of 11.0 metres is also, the slide points out, consistent with the City's low-rise design guidelines. You can see these in the illustration and table below:
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| Townhouse and Low-Rise Apartment Guidelines, 4.2 Facing Distances and Setbacks |
In addition to the distance recommendation, the planners also recommend encouraging architects to design garden suites in Parkmount's backyards with an understanding that they are, in fact, also fronting on Craven.
The "rear wall" of the garden suite could be made to look like the front of a house, with windows and doors instead of a blank wall, and landscaping to give a sense of a "front yard".
The "On Craven Road" Blog Non-Hot-Take
Personally, I was very impressed with the presentation and the suggestions. I don't have a horse in this race, as I'm south of the tracks, where these guidelines would not apply.
But as someone who has spent waaaaay too much time exploring the history and geography of Craven Road, I could see that these planners have put thought and care into grappling with an edge case that they could have just dismissed, but instead understood was worth considering.
Some folks who spoke up during the Q&A were not as pleased.
There were Craven residents who felt the 2.6 metre setback was not enough, and would have preferred height limitations as well.
And there were Parkmount residents, and allied urbanists/housing advocates, who felt that any change to the city-wide guidelines was unacceptable.
I can empathize with the Parkmounters who feel unfairly treated.
I also absolutely stand with urbanists who want to see an abundance of new homes built.
But in my first post on the dispute exactly one year ago, I wrote, "there must be a way to find a compromise that works for everyone. I don't believe this needs to be a zero-sum game, as much as it looks that way right now."
For the Craven residents, it is my hope that they can come to see the planners' recommendations as the best possible give-and-take, a compromise that doesn't make either side happy, but gives a little something to each. To me, it seems like a kind of Judgement of Solomon, in which they have the choice to be the mother who insists on all or nothing, or the mother who is willing to sacrifice in order to keep the baby alive.
For the Parkmount residents and their allies, if I understand correctly, the main arguments against treating Craven as a "unique context" are:
- Anything more than the standard 1.5 metre rear-yard setback would infringe on Parkmount owners' property rights. They should have the same rights as property owners everywhere else in Toronto.
- The fact that this recommendation took almost a year (too much) suggests that City planning resources were wasted.
and/or:
The fact that this recommendation adds only an additional 1.1 metre of setback (too little?) suggests that City planning resources were wasted. - Laneway suites can be built with a narrower facing distance than 11 metres, so giving Craven Road an 11-metre facing distance treats laneway suite residents as second-class citizens.
- Even a 1.1 metre additional setback is enough of a burden to discourage Parkmount residents from building garden suites, and in a housing crisis, Toronto needs every additional dwelling it can get.
- Granting any neighborhood-specific exemption or "bespoke policy" starts a slippery slope. It would set a dangerous precedent, inspire NIMBYs across the city, and gravely undermine Toronto's hard-won garden suite policy.
Here are my thoughts on these arguments.
1. Property Rights
A year ago, independent urban planner Sean Galbraith of Galbraith & Associates was interviewed on a CBC segment about the dispute. He said, "Set them back a few feet, in accordance with the bylaw. Don’t ban them outright. This is a solution in search of a problem."
In this month's meeting, in response to the new proposal to set Parkmount garden suites back a few feet, a speaker during the Q&A used the same phrase: "a solution in search of a problem."
Now, not liking the City planners' new proposed solution is a valid opinion to hold.
And I agree that Parkmount residents should be able to build garden suites, both because it doesn't seem fair or necessary to ban them outright, and because Toronto is in a housing crisis and garden suites are a (small) part of the mix.
But if you're in search of the problem, you don't have to look far.
Parkmount lots are through-lots. Most property owners everywhere else in Toronto don't have double-fronting properties like these. The vast majority of lots front on a single street, and back onto another back, or a laneway.
That's what makes Parkmount lots special. They're pushmi-pullyus: "An imaginary creature resembling a llama or antelope, but with a head at either end of the body, pointing away from the torso, so that the creature always faces in two directions at once."
Fronting on a city street gives you advantages (like breathing room from the folks across the street), and responsibilities (like setting a new build far enough back to give the folks across the street breathing room).
Fronting on two streets should give you those advantages and responsibilities on both ends.
These twin arguments suggest that this recommendation took almost a year (too much time) to return a suggestion of just a 1.1 metre setback (too little change), and that therefore City planning resources were wasted.
There are about 2,000 working hours in a year. If the City planners spent all those hours on these suggestions, then yeah, they took way too long. That works out to a setback cost of 0.55mm per hour.
A bigger setback would improve the math, but I'm guessing that's not the point.
I'm also guessing that this project was interspersed with hundreds of other projects the planners worked on during that year.
A year ago, one Parkmount resident said that "This is being rammed through… without any prior notice or discussion with affected homeowners, and no opportunity to provide meaningful input." I hope they were as glad as I was when the result of the first community consultation was a motion "Allowing Time for a Thorough Review."
Sometimes we want more time for consideration.
Sometimes we don't want an issue to be considered at all.
It usually comes down to which we think will deliver the result we want.
3. Laneway Suite Comparison
As much as Craven looks or feels like a laneway, it simply isn't. It's a road.
Suggesting that Craven Road residents are trying to get special treatment that laneway suite residents don't get is like saying apples want special treatment over oranges. Roads are one category, laneways are another.
And implying that Craven residents actually believe laneway suite residents "should enjoy less space" is just... a very pretzel-ish logic-leap. Their future neighbours on the west side of the road will be in garden suites – wouldn't they enjoy the facing distance the east-side folks are arguing for just as much? And how exactly does this enjoyment come at the expense of laneway suite residents elsewhere in the city?
It feels like this insinuation, along with similar suggestions some have slipped into the debate, stems from an impulse to frame Craven's advocates as malevolent avatars of all the ills of our current housing crisis.
Those ills are real.
But Craven residents are house-on-road residents, not laneway-suite residents. By asking for house-on-road setback, they are not throwing any shade on laneway residents' dignity.
A Footnote
(I should add here that I now understand better where housing advocates are coming from in taking on Parkmount/Craven as part of their fight.
Since being caught by surprise by the heated comments of non-locals in the first online community meeting last September, I've watched and read and listened to a lot of urbanist videos and articles and podcasts to try to fit this little strip's rumble into the wider North American context.
Huge challenges are making it difficult for many of our fellow humans to find places to live.
Some of those challenges are structural, including population growth and the financialization of housing. Some of those challenges are human, including humans questioning the addition of X or Y in their backyards.
I can understand how people who are deeply frustrated by unaffordability or abuses of the consultation and appeal system could see any question raised as a future razed.
Even if a questioner might be sharing a genuine concern for the first time, to those who've been in the trenches long enough, they simply look like part of a pattern – and part of the problem.
Folks with a sense of history may also believe they know better than the questioner what's really going on when they hear terms like "neighbourhood character."
However, folks with a sense of rhetoric also know that accusing one's opponents of ugly motives is a time-honoured way to discredit and dismiss them, or even frame them not as adversaries but as enemies.
The healthiest debates are conducted using the principle of charity, "interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation."
I'm trying my best not to straw-man the arguments in this list. I hope I've articulated these objections fairly, before offering my responses as respectfully as possible.
Good fences make good neighbours.
But good faith doesn't hurt either.
End of footnote.)
4. An Extra 1.1-Metre Setback Will Discourage Building
The City points out that "The recommended amendments are related to standards such as setbacks, and not a prohibition on garden suites for Parkmount Road homes."
That was a major change from the initial motion in July 2024 to consider "removing zoning permissions for garden suites from properties that back onto the portion of Craven Road."
The new suggestion adds 1.1 metres to the current 1.5-metre minimum setback.
But some opponents argue that this extra distance might as well be a prohibition, because it will discourage Parkmount owners from building garden suites at all.
Here are the current garden suite guidelines:
The only garden suite application to date on Parkmount was turned down at the Committee of Adjustment because "In the opinion of the Committee, the variances" it requested were "not minor."
One of those variances was a zero-metre setback from the rear lot line, because the plan incorporated an existing garage built right up to the edge of the road:
Thanks to that zero-metre rear setback, the plan preserved almost 12 metres of backyard between the garden suite and the main house – or 9.6 metres if you measured from an existing addition half the width of the house.
That's significantly more than the 7.5 or 5 metres minimum separation distance required by the garden suite bylaw.
It's understandable that the Parkmount owner wanted to maximize their backyard by pushing their garden suite as far as possible toward Craven.
However, the average lot depth on Parkmount is 37.7 metres (123.7 feet).
Shifting the exact same garden suite closer to the main house by the 1.5 metres of the standard setback, plus the newly suggested 1.1 metres, would still leave between 7 and 9 metres of backyard for the residents of the main house and garden suite to enjoy.
And the garden suite residents would also be able to enjoy their 2.6-metre "front" yard on the west side of Craven.
That space is not lost, it just moves to the other side of the new building.
If a Parkmount owner wants to build a garden suite, it seems hard to imagine that an additional 1.1 metre westward shift should be a deal-breaker.
If a Parkmount owner wants to build a garden suite, it seems hard to imagine that an additional 1.1 metre westward shift should be a deal-breaker.
5. The Slippery Slope
The final argument suggests that any "bespoke policy" like the one proposed for Parkmount/Craven will create a slippery slope, inviting an avalanche of special pleading for carve-outs from every neighbourhood and street across Toronto.
Maybe some will indeed try their luck. But if City sets the bar high enough, it doesn't have to entertain all chancers.
"In a 1998 case, a bike courier convinced the federal court that the extra food he ate for energy was a legit business expense — like gas for a car. The CRA doesn't usually allow food write-offs, but this ruling set a rare precedent."
That precedent did not open the floodgates to every Canadian being able to write off their lunch. Some people probably tried. But our federal government requires tax filers to defend their claims, and it has the capacity to distinguish between the reasonable and the ridiculous.
Our municipal government also has the capacity to distinguish between fair and frivolous requests for adjustments to the garden suite guidelines.
Craven Road has two rock-solid arguments for its "uniqueness" claim: (a) garden suites facing this road are, well, facing a road – see our two-faced friend the pushmi-pullyu, above – and (b) since Craven is unusually narrow, those faces are unusually close to one another.
The City already has tools for measuring the second claim. Here are its road classification criteria in action:
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| 2018 Update to the Road Classification System |
If you zoom in, below, you can see that local roads have a typical right-of-way width of 15 to 22 metres. Craven Road's right-of-way is 6.1 metres. That's one-half to one-third the normal width.
(Right down at the bottom, there's also a note that laneways or back alleys "are not part of this classification" at all.)
In addition, our municipal government manages to change the classification of certain roads, through careful consideration of specific criteria, without the whole city-wide system falling apart. Take a look at this 2018 update:
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| 2018 Update to the Road Classification System |
City planners consider the width of sidewalks just as carefully as the width of streets.
The majority of roads in Toronto have sidewalks on both sides. The City's Missing Sidewalk Program aims to add them to roads that have none, even in the face of opposition, in neighbourhoods like Etobicoke which were "built in the 1950s and 1960s when the car was king."
An extra 1.1 metre setback on the non-sidewalk side of Craven seems like a reasonable addition when compared with the widths in this fun graphic from Toronto's Complete Streets Guidelines:
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| Toronto Complete Streets Guidelines, Ch. 4: Street Design for Pedestrians |
Conclusion
I've probably taken far too long with this blog post, but it feels good to get all the thoughts out of my head and onto the page.
The anger in the Q&A of that community meeting really stayed with me, partly because it seemed, in a very small way, to echo the alarming acrimony we're all watching south of the border these days.
Of course the Parkmount/Craven tensions are in no way actually comparable, but whenever our local debate has tilted toward contempt for the other side's perspectives, it's reminded me how essential it is for citizens in a democracy to work as hard as we possibly can on persuading each other with reasons, instead of allowing frustration and anger to simmer into hatred.
I hope the City planners' suggestions go through. It's a good compromise, ensuring that Parkmount garden suites will become an enhancement to Craven, rather than an encroachment.
After all, as any pushmi-pullyu would tellyu, the best argument for keeping a respectable distance is that llamas can spit up to 10 feet.
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| Tintin in Tibet (1960) |
