I recently read a discussion on LinkedIn entitled, “Another
win at Toronto’s Committee of Adjustment”. The issue concerned the
transformation of a single-family home into a six-family apartment, but little
detail was provided. The discussion focused on the lack of on-site parking, the
proposal’s dependence on parking in the public right-of-way as a substitute,
and the need to address the city’s housing shortage. There was no mention of
the change in use being an issue beyond parking deficiency. The request was
approved but the article prompted me to consider independent zoning regulations
written as isolated laws that distract attention from the correlated issues and
policy changes involved.
ZONING ADJUSTMENT
Zoning law seeks to define shelter design decisions with
absolute requirements, but physical design involves the correlation of many related
decisions. This means that they must be mathematically coordinated before their
combined implications can define leadership intent. This lack of mathematical
correlation, measurement, and evaluation has kept us from defining intent with
the language needed to consistently guide the shelter design decisions of many
toward common and accurately defined goals.
For instance, can a city permit 20 dwelling units per acre
and require that they provide 1.5 parking spaces per dwelling unit when the
combination does not fit on a given parcel in a properly zoned district because
the dwelling unit areas planned by the developer produce a combined building
footprint and parking lot area that is too large for the land available?
A developer can feel deceived when he/she cannot reach the
density permitted. A city can feel obligated to compromise with a “variance”
that grants an exception to its regulations. These exceptions reveal that there
is no consistent leadership intent because absolute, isolated quantity
requirements are not mathematically correlated to predict their combined
shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context implications. At the
present time these terms are not even defined mathematically. This makes it
impossible to express site planning leadership intentions in correlated terms
that accurately define intent long before building appearance becomes an issue.
CORRELATION
Table 1 is a forecast model illustrating the correlation of
design specification values that can be used to mathematically predict gross
building area options for a given land area when the building is served by a
grade parking lot around, but not under, the building on the same premise. I
have referred to this category of shelter options as the G1 Building Design
Category. Gross building area in this and any other category may be occupied by
any permitted activity. Gross building area is the envelope that contains activity.
The objective of Table 1 is to predict gross building area
capacity options for the land area given in cell F3 based on the design
specification values and optional floor quantities entered in the gray cells of
the table. The point I wish to make is that the gross building area predictions
in cells B44-B53 of the table will change when any one or more of the 26 values
entered in the gray cells of Table 1 is modified. These are the values that
must be correlated to consistently measure, predict, and/or regulate the shelter
capacity of land. (Shelter capacity is equal to gross building area
potential divided by the buildable acres occupied.)
Shelter capacity implications are calculated from the design
specification values entered in the gray cells of Table 1. Correlated line-item
implications calculated from these values begin at cell A44 of the table.
There is no measurement and evaluation research that defines
acceptable parameters of shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context
for a given building design category and land use activity group based on comprehensive,
correlated design specification values. Until they are established, debate will
continue to be distracted by isolated details that cannot be placed in
perspective.
The internal capacity of the gross building options
predicted for a given activity is a separate issue. Land area determines the scope
of gross building area potential. Gross building area determines the scope of
potential internal activity. The combination of capacity, intensity, activity,
and location determines economic potential.
Zoning districts determine permitted activity relationships
within a designated area. Forcing the land to produce excessive shelter
capacity for activity is a desperate option that produces excessive intensity
and compressed, congested context, but these are parameters that remain to be
measured and defined by every city. They were initially debated when the
tenements and congestion of the 18th and 19th centuries
produced city planning and zoning to protect the public health, safety, and
welfare, but “welfare” was never defined with the shelter capacity, intensity,
intrusion, and context values that can protect a city’s “quality of life”. The
concept was “minimum standards” for shelter development that have proven to be
contradictory and ineffective definitions of leadership intent.
The values entered in the shaded cells of Table 1 are not
recommendations. They are simply illustrations of the table’s ability to
correlate diverse but related site planning information with its algorithm. If
in actual use, a city would need to define the design specification parameters
it would be willing to accept for each of these gray cell topics in every zone
of permitted activity when a G1 Building Design Category was involved. The gross
building area results would be a clear indication of comprehensive intent
related to a land area of any size in a zone. The occupant activity and
economic potential of the land and its shelter capacity are separate issues.
DENSITY VS. LEADERSHIP
Density is not a leadership measure. It does not guide the
palette of design specification topics and decisions that are related to a
building design category. Density is derived from the correlated shelter
capacity and activity decisions mentioned. Ignoring the correlation required
has simply been a recipe for the confusion and contradiction surrounding our
current attempts to provide shelter capacity for the activities of growing
populations within geographic limits capable of protecting both their quality
and source of life.
PARKING VS. CIRCULATION
Parking serves the Shelter Division of the Built Domain and
is intended to improve convenience. Streets serve the Movement Division
and are intended to improve circulation. Compromising one for the other
simply obstructs city anatomy and efficiency that may already be compromised.
The problem is city patterns that do not easily adjust to change and adjacent
activity that often reacts to single project proposals as foreign infections. It
might help to begin by painting the broad picture involved even though it may
appear academic.
DIVISIONS OF THE BUILT DOMAIN
There are two worlds on our planet, and the Built Domain is
slowly consuming agriculture and the Natural Domain in the belief of some that
growth can be unlimited. Others are searching for sustainable, symbiotic
solutions; but this is a topic beyond the scope of this essay.
Classification of the Built Domain begins with its Rural and
Urban Phyla. Each contains a Shelter Division served by Movement, Open Space,
and Life Support Division arteries. The Shelter Division contains cells we
refer to as parcels, lots, property, and so on. Each cell contains one or more
of six building design categories. Each category is composed of a consistent
list of mathematical design specification topics. These topics interact and the
interaction is translated by a design category master equation to predict gross
building area options based on the design specification and floor quantity
options entered. When the gross building area options in sq. ft. are divided by
the buildable land area in acres derived in cell F10, the result is a list of shelter
capacity options in cells F44-F53 related to the floor quantity options entered
in cells A44-A53 and the optional design specification values entered above. Line-item
implications are presented on lines 44-53 and shelter capacity options are specifically
shown in cells F44-F53 of Table 1.
In other words, all forecasts in the Planning Forecast Panel
and Implications Module of Table 1 are implications calculated from the design
specification values entered in the gray cells of the Land and Core Modules of
Table 1. This is how the Shelter Division responds to stimulus in the anatomy
of the Built Domain. A definition of intent is simply equal to a limitation of
the line item implications calculated.
Please forgive me for repeating an earlier paragraph. “There
is no measurement and evaluation research that defines acceptable parameters of
shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context for a given building design
category and land use activity based on their design specification values.
Until they are established, debate will continue to be distracted by isolated
details that cannot be placed in perspective.”
URBAN DESIGN PLANS VS. PROJECTS
The impact of a shelter project on the anatomy of the Built
Domain can be magnified when piecemeal project distraction replaces comprehensive
urban design site planning over the larger neighborhood, district, and city
areas needed to reconcile shelter capacity with the movement, open space, and
life support arteries that serve it.
The issue becomes more complex when an exception to activities
permitted in a zone is granted on a lot-by-lot basis. Additional exception
requests inevitably follow on a random basis that dismantles the concept of a
plan and encourages fragmentation.
Planning-by-exception simply produces unanticipated results
downstream, further annexation, sprawl, excessive intensity, confusion over the
scope of necessary adjustment, and continued debate over the definition of
freedom and minimum regulation that cannot clarify intent.
CONCLUSION
The LinkedIn discussion that prompted this response was a
good summary of the relationship between public fear of change and private
initiative based on opposing abilities to anticipate. It is the curse of
transformation, and no one can be sure where it leads without long term
evaluation of the "change" implied. People's lives are being
affected. It is an impossible situation that can only be reconciled with better
ability to predict the future implications of current decisions.
I continue to wonder if professional opinion will have
anything better to offer until it begins to pursue Tegiministics. (If curious,
please see my essay, "Pursuing Urban Design and Zoning Knowledge" on
my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com)”
Walter M. Hosack, August 2025
- picture credit: ©
Enoch Leung 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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