Townhouses on one side, retail on the other

[G W North]

Here's a few pics of what I talked about in City Discussions. This is just part of a much larger development, parts of which you can see in some of the pictures.

The south side of the structures: the front of townhouses:

Here they are again. In the background you can see a tower crane building another building in this development.

The townhouses with retail in the rear are on the right. On the left is just regular townhouses:

Almost all new townhouses in the Greater Toronto Area are at least 3 stories tall. Many newer ones are even 4 stories.

Here is where it gets interesting. This is the side of one of the townhouse/retail buildings. On the left (behind the little wall), you can see a townhouse entrance. In the centre of the structure though, you can see a retailer on the ground floor. Thus, the retailer is sharing a wall with living space in a townhouse unit. In this case, the "retailer" is a new barber shop.

Here I've labelled the same picture.

Here is the corner. The architecture and finishings are very nice, IMO.

This was built on a former industrial site that had sat fallow for quite a few years. Townhouses extend back from the main street all the way to the lake.

The development extends back...

The retail side. The townhouses are behind (and above) the retailers.

There are actually two fairly long townhouse/retail buildings. The great thing about this retail is that there is continuous sidewalk-oriented retail on both sides of this development. That means that this was a gap in the retail streetwall (on the south side of the street anyways), but that gap has now been filled.

I hope you find this development as interesting as I do.

[Rail Claimore]

I wish more crap like that was built in the US instead of sprawly culdesacs galore.

[Allan]

We need more development like that here. We'd probably have to completely rewrite zoning codes for anything like that to be built here, since most US codes basically prohibit anything anything like this, and encourage sprawl.

[G W North]

From what I've read, in some cities zoning not only encourages sprawl, but actually ends up, in essense, REQUIRING sprawl with things like density limits, minimum distances between land-use types, and prohibiting of mixed-uses.

[monsoon]