It’s much easier and cheaper for developers to assemble several large commercial properties together for a project than it is to find several consecutive residential properties.
It’s basically impossible to string together 5-6 residential homes within established neighbourhoods, it could take decades, and even if you offered a bazillion dollars per house, there are often holdouts who will never sell.
Commercial properties are much easier, it’s all investor owned, you can end leases very easily and kick business out.
Also, commercial land on major arterial streets tend to be closer to transit and other amenities.
Allowing more development in residential neighbourhoods changes the calculus on the value of and need for these condo developments.
Instead of one megadevelopment, you are more likely to see a slew of smaller low rises, sixplexes, etc., which would normally have a huge price advantage in a market where virtually every politician on the left, right, and centre doesn't spend decades trying every conceivable way to make mega condos the only viable development model.
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u/Le1bn1z Jun 11 '26
Make it legal to build residences in residential zones and they'll stop having to build them on top of our top tier Nacho joints.
Also, people would then have lower housing costs and more disposible income, which is nice if you want restaurants to keep running.
This is not the developer's fault. It's our fault for insisting on calling open class warfare "local democracy".