Condo construction in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood in August, 2025. Within a 200-metre radius of transit stations, 30-storey towers are now permitted under certain circumstances.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
The Ontario government, alongside Toronto City Hall, recently announced planning reforms in Canada’s largest city that would legalize larger apartment buildings around most transit stations.
Ontario Housing Minister Rob Flack and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow jointly announced the changes on Aug. 15. They alter Toronto’s official plan in 120 mass transit station areas, or MTSA, around transit stations or stops.
Within a 200-metre radius of stations, 30-storey towers are now permitted under certain circumstances, and six-storey apartments are allowed even on side streets. Within approximately 800 metres of a station, four-storey apartments are now permitted. Fourteen more MTSA zones remain under negotiation.
The announcement “definitely indicates a change of direction in Toronto,” said planning consultant Blair Scorgie. “It increases the baseline for density. But there is uncertainty about how the city will actually implement this.”
City council needs to pass these changes before construction begins, and they are likely to provoke debate in the lead-up to next October’s municipal election. Experts also say other tax and policy shifts are required to revive the city’s stalled housing sector.
Toronto and other major cities are facing pressure from higher levels of government to facilitate construction and address the country’s housing shortage. Mr. Flack said the new approach would allow for 1.5 million more homes to be built in Toronto over the next 25 years.
Toronto must still answer to the federal government for its commitments to planning reform. The city could forfeit about $30-million in federal funding if it does not legalize six-unit apartments across the entire city. The sixplex change was one of several requirements Ottawa set for Toronto in exchange for funding from its Housing Accelerator Fund. Last week, federal Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson met with Ms. Chow; the two declined to comment on that dispute.
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The MTSA news does, however, resolve a standoff between the city and the province. In 2019, the Ford government defined 180 mass transit station areas in Toronto, requiring the city to set certain density targets to take advantage of that transit infrastructure. Toronto then created new zoning for those areas, but the city’s response was widely criticized as inadequate. The provincial government did not sign off on most of Toronto’s proposals, leaving the city in limbo.
Jason Thorne, Toronto’s chief planner, said the new density reforms were negotiated by city and provincial staff. Queen’s Park was “looking for a more ambitious approach to planning around the station areas,” he said. “We welcome the decision. We think these densities are appropriate.”
For the new Toronto policies to be fully implemented, the city will need to draw detailed maps of the transit station areas, and get new zoning approved by council. “We are working very quickly to address that,” Mr. Thorne said. “Normally this would take a year or more for each area, so we are very conscious of the timeline.”
Mr. Thorne’s department aims to complete the zoning work by next spring.
“It’s not a done deal,” said Alex Beheshti, a senior research associate with the Missing Middle Initiative at the University of Ottawa. “Chow will need to shepherd this through city council, and she doesn’t have a great record of that.”
Mr. Beheshti referred to a June vote where city council compromised by allowing sixplex apartments in some wards, but not the whole city, and Ms. Chow didn’t speak during the debate. “She’s not going to be able to remain silent on this.”
The new changes provide some good news for progressives: The city’s “inclusionary zoning” comes into effect in most MTSA areas. Under this policy, which has been championed by left-leaning councillors and Ms. Chow, condo buildings of 100 or more units will need to ensure five per cent of them are affordable rentals.
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However, for private development projects already in the works, this presents a new, potentially prohibitive cost.
“While enabling the city’s use of inclusionary zoning is overdue as a tool to deliver meaningful affordable housing, the timing of the Minister’s decision will delay and potentially negatively impact certain projects,” said lawyer David Bronskill, a partner at Goodmans LLP who often represents private developers in negotiations with the city.
“Unfortunately, inclusionary zoning only works if development projects actually proceed to construction.”
Inclusionary zoning policies exclude purpose-built rental buildings and all buildings with fewer than 100 units. Mr. Scorgie suggested this could create an incentive for smaller development projects and smaller builders.
For these kinds of projects to work, though, he said governments “will need to take a hard look at other kinds of reform.” That could include city regulations about the size and shape of structures, and building codes that forbid European-style buildings with one set of exit stairs.
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The policy differences between the province and the city reflect larger tensions within planning in Ontario. Since 2005, the province has focused on new growth as “intensification” within cities. Municipal governments must then implement zoning – regulations for each specific site – that brings that policy to ground level.
In Toronto and other high-growth cities, zoning has generally not allowed apartment buildings or large commercial buildings by default. Instead, developers and builders typically negotiate site-by-site to amend city regulations. This often involves an appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
These new reforms could make for a more straightforward process in some cases, Mr. Beheshti said. Previously, areas near transit “were identified for greater density in provincial policies, but the specifics weren’t there,” he explained. For builders, “there was a yes at the end of the tunnel, but you had to run a gauntlet of ‘no’ to get there.” For some properties, Mr. Beheshti said that will now become less arduous.
However, he pointed out: “Next year is an election year, and the mayor is in a precarious position. How things shake down at city council could be very different.”