The city of Toronto released updated city wide Tall Building Design Guidelines on May 8 calling for tall buildings "to coexist with the rest of the city, by preserving certain views, honouring neighbourhood context and pedestrian experience," as summarized in an article that appeared in Metro News on Monday.
The updated and new guidelines build on design criteria first established in 2006, which initially prompted "push back" among the design and development communities, Ward 5 Etobicoke-Lakeshore Councillor Peter Milczyn, chair of the planning and growth management community, told Metro.
Metro writes, "The latest effort come [sic] after six years of watching what worked and didn’t work in the past. The general content is similar to existing planning documents, with more specific language and changes based on feedback from developers, ratepayer’s groups and citizens. One of the changes is a call for shorter base buildings, Milczyn says."
The new guidelines place an emphasis on neighbourhood consistency. If there's "a consistent height to neighbourhood buildings, the base of a tall building should be aligned with those. If there isn’t consistency, a building’s base should be 80 per cent as tall as the adjacent street — so that the opposite side of the street will have at least five hours of sunlight during the spring and fall equinoxes. If the building is located on a particularly wide street, the base height would be capped at 24 metres, or seven-storeys for a mixed-use building. The cap is new."
Additional information on the new guidelines, including a greater emphasis on heritage buildings, can be read in Metro's story
here.
To read the guidelines as issued by the city, check out the report
here.
Original source: Metro News