What Does the Future Hold?

It’s hard to find yourself in a new year without wanting to peer ahead and consider what the future may bring. In Toronto, it seems certain to bring higher-still house prices.

Demand doesn’t ever seem to wane, and Toronto is just getting more and more desirable as a place to call home, with an average of 25% to 30% of new Canadians landing in the Big Smoke. As with any place that’s in demand, prices continue to climb along with population, and the Toronto Real Estate Board says prices on resales were up about 2% overall, with a 9% gain year over year in December. There doesn’t seem to be a ceiling in sight.

I read recently that the average price of an apartment in Paris in 2012 was €8,270 per sq. m, according to GlobalPopertyGuide.com. That’s nearly €830 a square foot, just over $1,200 Cdn. A resale condo in Toronto in 2013 would cost you just over $400 a square foot; a new one, about $600. Imagine prices that are more than twice as much as they are now!

Of course, home prices (and, as they’re connected, income) are only one barometer of a city’s “worth.”

The Economist Intelligence Unit uses such criteria as crime levels, threat of conflict, quality of medical care, level of censorship, temperature, schools, and transport links to measure the “liveability” of a city, and their top 10 list tends to include a bunch of Australian cities, a few Canadian cities, and a token European or two. At a quick glance, we certainly would seem to fare well in all those categories (temperature aside), but there are several less tangible features that make a city desirable. After all, Paris never makes anybody’s list of most liveable cities, but surely it’s one of the greats. Atmosphere, history, architecture, night life, shopping, dining, arts and culture, even the essence of the people who live there all contribute to a city’s desirability.

There are numerous trends afoot here that lead me to believe that we are destined not just for “liveability” (how boring), but to create a city that offers a fun, varied, lucrative daily life.

I look around Toronto the last couple of years and see the explosion of urban agriculture, with a natural extension into farmers’ markets. What could better connect you to the city you call home than eating food actually grown in it?

I see already-established pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods like Distillery District boom, and several in the planning stages, like Canary District, that promise to continue a trend towards less of a focus on traffic. I see bike paths and bike share programs, and more good reasons to get out of the car. Again, it’s about connection — once you’re out of your car and walking among your neighbours, it’s a lot harder to be a crabby, disenfranchised malcontent.

I think community-wide connectivity is another important trend, and while it may seem counterintuitive — connecting online means, to some, disconnecting offline — I think it’s an important community-builder too. Anything that gets us thinking as a community is a good thing, but it also encourages entrepreneurism. New portals like Bazinga and New Blue Edge help bring neighbours together.

I’m a fan of live/work condos that encourage small business (and help people stop spending so much time in their cars), and with their proliferation in emerging neighbourhoods like Leslieville, it doesn’t look like they’re going away anytime soon.

All in all, I think we’re on the right track. Already one of the world’s most liveable cities, I look forward to 2014 being part of our continued evolution into an exciting, community-focussed Toronto that has lots of that je ne sais quoi.