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TOWER
& RENEWAL
REGENT
Khliden Lamparero
PARK
University of Toronto Scarborough
Undergraduate
GGRC54
Prof. André Sorensen

T O W E R R E N E W A L & R E G E N T P A R K
INTRODUCTION
Toronto is a city of towers. It contains the second largest concentration of highrise
buildings in North America with majority of these towers built during the
post-war boom of 1960's and 70's. It was initially built for middle-income families
who owns an automobile. However, this has not been the demographic of tower
neighbourhoods in the past decades. There are 1,189 high-rise buildings
throughout Toronto. These buildings serve as home to thousands of residents,
particularly new immigrants and low-income families.
These buildings are now aging and are inefficient for the environment because it
was built without the consideration for energy conservation. The open spaces
around these buildings were also not configured in a way that residents will get
the best use possible. This has resulted to residents being physically isolated
from community services, transit, and recreational space.
Therefore, the City of Toronto put forward the Tower Renewal Program as a
permanent initiative to address the living situation of thousands of Torontonians
living in tower neighbourhoods. The key objectives of the program are improving
the environmental, social, cultural, and economic status with the upgrade of
tower neighbourhoods and introduction of mixed-use space for the creation of
complete communities.
Regent Park is a neighbourhood located in downtown Toronto that has faced
tremendous changes with its revitalization that begun in 2005. The rebuild of
this formerly low-income concentrated neighbourhood will serve as an example
that illustrates the objectives laid out in the Tower Renewal Program. The
exploration of Regent Park will illustrate why it is important to improve tower
neighbourhoods, and how these changes can significantly increase the liveability
of a neighbourhood and the quality of life of it's residents.
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O W E R R E N E W A L :
T
A I N O B J E C T I V E S
M
For an arrival city like Toronto, which serves as home to thousands of
immigrants seeking a better life, the Tower Renewal Program is an important
key to the city's liveability. There are over 500,000 people living in Toronto's
older high-rise buildings, where 43% of it's residents are low-income families,
and 25% are newcomers. Therefore, making improvements to this fundamental
housing in the city requires a comprehensive plan of not only upgrading and
retrofitting the tower buildings, but also enhancing the neighbourhood around
it through the improvement of open space, and increasing the availability and
accessibility of amenities and community services. This will not only improve
resident's experience of their neighbourhood, but will also promote social
cohesion and community development.
Tower Renewal has 3 interlocking objectives:
1. Environmental - a cleaner and greener city
2. Social and cultural - Increased social and cultural benefits and stronger
communities
3. Economic - Improved local economic activity
Environmental: a cleaner and healthier environment
High-rise buildings consume high levels of energy per square metre. Combine this with the
energy inefficient construction of the buildings, this then poses environmental issues such
as rising utility costs and greenhouse gas emissions. These towers are now facing the end
of it's life cycle, and are in dire need of upgrades.
The Tower Renewal aims to reduce energy use through upgrades in the building. This
includes exterior cladding, replacing windows and balcony doors with double pane
windows and doors, updating heating and lighting systems, and more. These retrofits will
not only lower operating costs, but will also reduce our environmental footprint.
Findings based on Tower Renewal pilot sites shows that building upgrades results to more
than 50% of energy savings, more than 20% of water savings, an increase in waste
diversion of 30%, and an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emission of up to 5%.
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Social and Cultural: increased social and cultural benefits and
stronger communities
One of the biggest disadvantage residents in tower neighbourhoods experience is not
something within their apartment buildings, but outside of it. This is accessibility.
There are 2 types of accessibility issues in Toronto's tower neighbourhoods:
1. Lack of accessible amenities and community services, such as childcare, grocery
stores, greenspace, doctor's offices, restaurants, retail shops, etc.
2. Compromised accessibility to transit. The current design of tower neighbourhoods
limit people's mobility. It is surrounded by parking lots, fences that block shortcuts,
sidewalks that suddenly end, and long indirect walkways that are often unpaved and
turn muddy during rainy days.
it is not surprising that accessibility to services is an issue in tower neighbourhoods.
This is because most of the tower neighbourhoods are located in the City's 13 priority
neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods have been identified as being underserved
by the City's services and amenities. The lack of accessibility to these services have
significant implications to people's quality of life.
According to the City's apartment neighbourhood zoning bylaw, only dwelling is
allowed in tower neighbourhoods, and all other land use is deemed illegal. This
includes drug stores, bank, clothing stores, coffee shops, place of worship, and etc.
Fortunately, Tower Renewal has a key initiative that directly solves the issue of
accessibility. This is done through the implementation of mixed-land use within tower
neighbourhoods, called the Residential Apartment Commercial (RAC) zoning. This will be
further discussed under the Tower Renewal: Implementation Programs section. But
this zoning bylaw is key to the creation of complete communities.
Economic: improved local economy activity
Tower Renewal retrofitting projects will have important economic implications with
the creation of significant number of jobs in the construction and building industry. It
will also foster development of local businesses with the implementation of RAC
zoning, which will permit a number of small scale commercial and community uses on
apartment building sites. This also means that residents, particularly single parents,
can have the option of acquiring employment near their place of dwelling, and will not
have to travel far distances and spend so much time in transit. Instead, they will have
more opportunities to be with their family. The improvement in local economic
activity will contribute to the vibrancy of tower neighbourhoods, and the increased
quality of life of its residents.
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