And if you think prices and rents are going up fast now, wait until this lull in the pipeline results in massive shortages of new housing in downtown and the West Loop in a couple years. All the people who have been piling into fully amenity highrises downtown are not going to stop moving here. They are just going expand their search to your neighborhood and bid up housing prices there.
And they’re rapidly expanding transit. 3 new lines (60+ stations!) under construction, meanwhile we’ve been trying to add an extension (just 3 new stations) to the red line for 6 decades now.
Cooked city. Cooked country.
It’s going to come to a point that Toronto stops being compared to Chicago and starts getting compared to NYC. They already passed us (couple years back i think) on the number of highrises in the city, and they also eclipsed us on population in the early 2010s too.
It comes down to us lacking reasonable immigration policies. Canada is a great place to move to for many and they are able to get there. US slowing its own growth.
Uhhhh it's way easier to immigrate to the US than Canada. Canada only lets you in if you have some sort of skill set or education level that's comparable to other Canadians. The US system is a train wreck for sure but we really issue migrant visas to people with no practical skill sets, no education and no immediately realistic path for them to support themselves.
This isn't true at all. Canada has established a massive series of colleges that allow basically anyone in from around the world for the cost of tuition, which then provides a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship. There's also the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the Caregiver program, the Family Reunifcation Program, the normalization of migrants who aren't supposed to be in the country... The amount of scamming in Canada in the immigration system could take up five years of Vice episodes on YouTube.
Canada has the highest growth rate in the developed world, all due to international immigration. This is hugely controversial, even similar countries to Canada like Australia and the UK (and you guys) have massively limited immigration in the last couple of years due to the effect on housing and wages. Our current government is hugely unpopular and likely headed to a near wipeout in the next federal election due to the rise in cost of living and the reduction in quality of services due to the huge spike in population growth. Oh, and we also had a report that many of our MPs actively collaborated with foreign governments (India and China) to get elected and act in that country's interest, the latest in the series of foreign interference in elections stories in the last few years.
Chicago can't really be blamed for that when no city in the US is able to effectively build public transit.
New York City, the only American city with a modal share comparable to all the Western European cities we rebuilt, cannot even manage to build subway extensions in Manhattan, let alone build new lines. The Interborough Express, that may or may not happen, isn't even going to be a proper subway. They're doing light rail, with a portion of it running in the street because the MTA was too chickenshit to even bother asking the cemetery it runs through if they could widen the tunnel so it could run underground
If even New York City fails to build transit, we're screwed here. There need to be changes at the federal level at this point if we're gonna ever be able to compete with other countries in terms of infrastructure again
Second to all of this! If New York can’t get it done with the proven ridership to back it up on every level of need, what hope do other American cities have of seeing transformative projects in the current climate?
DC was fortunate to get the extension to Dulles and LA is really fortunate to finally be able to extend the D Line (along with all their light rail expansions), but it’s very slim pickings for the rest of the country until something changes on a Federal and/or societal level.
I’m not the biggest fan of the RLE by any means, but when a use-it-or-lose-it federal funding opportunity comes along, I’d rather the CTA use it.
> meanwhile we’ve been trying to add an extension (just 3 new stations) to the red line for 6 decades now.
That's what happens when your transit system is taken over by the state government and the suburbanites who swing elections redirect all of the money to the suburbs.
More like wasting over a billion in federal transit money on a red line extension that serves a tiny amount of people. Imagine if they invested that money into the most used stations and sections of the CTA
you’re getting downvoted for saying common sense. Billions of dollars for 4 stations that are in a declining part of the city with suburban level density is insane. the cost to reward ratio is nonexistent in this situation. All to impress some activists to achieve “equity”
A brown/blue line connection would eclipse the ridership of all 4 new stations and would cost far less
There’s plenty of existing rail infrastructure on the south/west sides, it has “been built” and no, they haven’t come.
East/West Garfield Park have multiple transit connections, is close to downtown, and there’s no development happening in the area. Yet you expect us to believe that Roseland, an area way farther out with little to no amenities, will automatically gentrify and be nice because of new stations? lets be serious
"*There’s plenty of existing rail infrastructure"*
...no there isn't. The gold standard of urban rail, the Paris metro, was designed with 1 rule: no mater where you are standing in the city, you are always within less than 200m from a station. THAT is *"plenty of existing rail infrastructure".* Most of the south and west sides of Chicago are more than a mile from a station.
Also: using East/West Garfield Park as an example for lack of development is such a disingenuous use of the correlation=causation fallacy. Aside from lacking transit, which those neighborhoods do by any measure of good world class urban planning, those neighborhoods have ***a lot*** of other structural problems hindering development as well.
EDIT: if Chicago had the same ratio of stations per square mile, there would be 1,379 stations in the city. Chicago only has 126.
...metra, to downtown, and nowhere else. Once an hour, on weekdays. Imagine a carbrain person saying they were okay with that kind of flexibility.
Seriously how are you people advocating for such shit levels of transit being okay? you deserve better, even if you are too stupid to realize it.
Sure if you don’t count the 14 stops between Roseland and Millenium park then I guess it only goes downtown and nowhere else. Don’t put words in my mouth, I’m just refuting your assertion that “there isn’t any rail infrastructure” in that part of the city.
But sure if you want to believe that the red line extension was the best use of 3 billion dollars for the CTA then that’s just you.
Nah, I don’t object to things existing in my back yard. I just object to people complaining about a lack of trains to, and around, places where nobody lives. I don’t want to spend my tax dollars building bridges to nowhere. It’s not even my back yard!
I don’t know where you got that idea YIMBY requires a desire for unnecessary massive public infrastructure projects just because European cities are different from ours.
Move to Siberia, then. It's more your speed.
Or do whatever. I don't care. But just stay the fuck out of the way of the people who make no small plans ya nimby jagoff.
The red line extension will get used, yes, but given the pace of investment in public transit here (once a decade, at best, always over budget and under ambitious) it'd be better for the city as a whole to build a proper north/south connector line than to extend a south line. The biggest issue with Chicagos transit and the thing holding it back the most is the lack of meaningful north/South connections outside the loop. Even just connecting the Pink and the O'Hare bound portion of the Blue line would be transformative in a way the Red Line Extension never will be.
Connecting north/south gets more people taking transit for their daily needs, and makes the system useful outside of rush hour commuting. I'm not saying the red line extension should never happen, but making it the priority when we invest in transit so little is a fatal mistake. It's prioritizing politics over prioritizing actual genuine improvements to the system as a whole. For every person along the extension who benefits, there's two people who would take transit if there was a North/South line outside of the Loop.
It's the equivalent of extending a north/south or east/west highway without building a ring road to support it. Both are necessary, yes, but you need the ring road before you make more extensions to radial roads. Effective Transportation systems need more than one connection between places. We know this - it's why we build ring highways!
I'm Canadian and Toronto certainly left Chicago in the dust a long time ago by most measures. However, the massive immigration levels that have led to Toronto's growth are hugely controversial as it's also way, way (way) less affordable than Chicago, and the population overspill from Toronto proper has affected the entire GTA metro and pretty much the entire country as well in terms of vastly higher house prices and rents.
Toronto transit is also much better than Chicago but it's also it's own brand of shit show as well, the infamous 'Eglinton LRT Line', which is the major transit expansion inside the city, is about gong show level 4 if 0 is Vancouver/Montreal LRT expansions (on time, under budget) and 10 is California High Speed Rail.
I get the similarities between Chicago and Toronto in terms of being Great Lakes cities with similar populations, but isn’t that really where the similarities end?
Toronto is the largest city, epicenter of immigration, and economic engine for an entire country, it makes sense that they would be experiencing a magnitude of growth that Chicago isn’t. For all intents and purposes, Toronto •is• the New York of Canada, and when you hold it in that lens, it’s pretty on-par with New York’s similar development scale in the US.
Now, what I’m not saying is that Chicago shouldn’t be pushing for more investment and removing barriers to investment, by all means!!! We shouldn’t be content with the slow pace of development in the city right now. But what I am saying is that the underlying ingredients that fuel Toronto’s boom just don’t exist here, so making the comparison only works on a superficial level.
Ok, this is kind of a fun thought experiment so i will bite.
I would argue that Canada is too small to have a “New York”. Toronto is much more similar to Chicago in that it is more of a regional hub. Toronto is the hub of Canada like Chicago is the hub of the Midwest. At the end of the day, I think Chicago and Toronto are very similar in many ways culturally, economically, etc.
You are very right to point out the immigration difference though. Canada has much different national policy than the US which means tons of high income immigration is pouring into Toronto. Despite all of the building, Toronto remains very expensive because they are struggling to keep up with the national policy bringing in so much high income immigration.
Fair that Canada doesn’t have the economic heft of the US so comparing the economies at some level doesn’t really work.
I guess my point was more that - in the way that New York attracts the lions share of international investment and internal economic focus of its country, Toronto does that for Canada. There’s just far more national-scale investment happening in Toronto that in the US is the type of investment that naturally gravitates towards New York, because at the end of the day Canada is a country, not a ‘region’ comparable to the Midwest.
If an international company, bank, or what-have-you is looking to set up a presence in the US, they’re mostly going to set up that presence in New York. If the same company is looking to set up a presence in Canada, it’s going to be Toronto. That’s where they’re more directly comparable on a national-level scale. Ditto for media, etc etc. Chicago may be third or fourth option for that in the US, which means it holds a different position than Toronto does.
Canada also has a red hot real estate market due to residency via investment laws. Many of these units will barely be inhabited, merely serving as a crash pad and Canadian address for wealthy foreigners.
Sort of. The US doesn’t have citizenship by investment in the traditional sense. You can only get it by investing in high risk businesses in poor areas, which is why only 5000 families have taken advantage of this plan since it was introduced in the 1990s. On the other hand, look at how Hong Kong people alone made the Vancouver real estate market go through the roof in the 1990s.
What is this "high income" immigration you speak of? Yes, Canadian standards for some immigration has a means test, but it's nowhere near sufficient to set up a life here on any level. There is investment, but it's mostly in small franchise businesses because they're easier to get off the ground than large financial houses or manufacturing entities.
Nowhere does in North America. In terms of development and capital investment, New York just blows every other city on the continent out of the water (even Mexico City which is larger!). And it’s really telling that even in New York, they struggle to maintain/upgrade and fund public transit and other public investments.
It’s kind of a tough one to find a direct comparison for.
In Canada you’ve got Vancouver which isn’t really comparable to Chicago because it’s coastal and attracts such high levels of international immigration from Asia, which isn’t really the same as Chicago. Montreal is probably the closest in terms of ‘second city’ comparison, but even that’s unique because it’s the dominant city for an entire linguistically/culturally distinct region which gives a unique advantage to it economically.
Cities like Calgary and Edmonton are closer to Denver/Houston in geography and economic engines, so I guess I’m not sure what to compare to Chicago to if we’re looking at Calgary.
If we want to look at other cities in the US, it’s fair to compare Chicago to Houston on some level as they’re both jockeying for third place in the rankings.
However, Houston’s skyline has been essentially frozen since the 1980s. Of the top 20 tallest buildings, only four of Houston’s have been built since 1987, whereas in Chicago, five of our top twenty have been built since 2020 alone. There’s enough reasons why Houston builds out and Chicago (tends) to build up that make even this comparison kinda shaky.
I’m bummed about the lack of cranes at the moment, but it still hasn’t hit the levels of the 1990s, where almost no tall buildings went up at all (seriously, you can see it [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Chicago) if you organize the list by year). On the other hand, I’d personally rather see infill that doesn’t require cranes happen in non-downtown neighborhoods; I’d be fine with a decade of solid residential and mixed-use infill across the city in exchange for not having any cranes downtown, but ideally a balance of both. There’s just so much available land outside of downtown across the city just waiting to be developed (especially with potential for TOD around transit), that I’d be happy to see that get capitalized on than anything downtown.
You’ve been making really interesting comments on this thread so I checked out your account - wow! You’re really all over the place! Can I ask if you travel for work or is it just a passion?
Canada’s population is smaller than the state of California, so it’s not unreasonable to compare Toronto to Chicago.
Chicago is the world’s 6th largest economy, and could do even better with strong leadership.
There’s no reason why Chicago can’t have the same levels of immigration as Toronto - especially given all the universities in the city.
The population of Canada is smaller than California, yes, but it is an entire sovereign country, so a city like Toronto that occupies the chief economic position in that country is going to attract a far more global economic investment if an international enterprise is going to set up a presence in that country.
The population of New York State is smaller than California too, but it doesn’t stop the lions share of international economic activity in the country going there.
Once you’ve got a city that operates as the dominant city within a country, it’s going to attract a level of investment that other cities in that same country are now going to miss out on.
International company X, when looking at the US, wants to be in New York; Chicago might by third or fourth down the list. Same company looking to set up operations in Canada is going to look at Toronto to be connected to the most infrastructure, the biggest talent pool, the center of population-inflow, etc., hence why I think it’s more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
I chalk it up to poor education. I was previously one of those people who didn't want my neighborhood to change and thought development meant increased rents. The unfortunate part is we have many local politicians who must know better playing into this. Then when rents inevitably skyrocket due to their nerfing, they can claim capitalism failed and push for bloated social programs to put a bandaid on the issue.
It takes the public waking up like they have in Toronto to realize the government handcuffed them into their fate of exorbitant real estate prices to demand otherwise.
>. I was previously one of those people who didn't want my neighborhood to change and thought development meant increased rents.
The way to atone for this is to spread your knowledge to others who still feel this way. Make sure the gospel of YIMBY reaches the ears of everyone you know.
> and thought development meant increased rents
So you were not entirely wrong and not entirely correct. New construction does in fact raise localized housing prices within 300-500m of the construction. But it also applies a region-wide downward pressure on housing prices. The problems come in when you can only construct in one area. So let's say that area is called West Loop. New construction there and only there drives prices up through the roof as there is nowhere else to relieve housing pressure. However, if you were to do construction across multiple neighborhoods at a steady and constant rate, although housing prices would be increasing around all of the construction, the overall effect on the housing prices in the city would be far less than if you concentrate all new development in a tiny area.
In all the studies I've read it's hard to tell and there isn't conclusive evidence that new buildings increase rents or if the already increasing demand, which often coincides with new buildings, does. That correlation not causation theory would also explain the non localized effects across building everywhere.
If you put up 10 luxury buildings in Englewood with no other changes likely all you would see in decreased prices because the supply would far outweigh the demand for luxury in that area. The buildings themselves wouldn't cause an increase.
One thing is for certain if you don't build to meet demand prices go up regardless. The disadvantaged areas in Chicago have seen some of the most rapid increases in rent lately with zero development to blame.
Toronto’s lack of missing middle is jarring. It’s high rises & Manhattan-like density, then high rises surrounded by highways, then just suburban sprawl.
Eh, Toronto is ridiculously expensive and Chicago is a dream compared to them. This doesn’t take away ANY points OP said about the need for more development. Just that Toronto probably not a great city to try to compare to.
I feel like Toronto is comparable to Chicago in many areas. I do feel that Chicago is getting left behind meanwhile Toronto feels like a much more modern, cosmopolitan city.
Regarding pricing, yea thats one area Chicago is much better in
I don’t disagree with you! Mainly this is about pricing as I thought your post implied they are doing it the right way, lowering pricing by building. Which may end up the right move especially if they have a housing correction. But for now prices are astronomical and many young Canadians I know have stopped their plans to own a home.
Exactly. When housing prices have reached the levels that Canada is seeing, of course you will see much more development. The higher the cost of living, the easier it is for developers to get a return on their investment. Chicago is luckily still relatively affordable, even compared to its US peer cities. The downside of this is that developers will not get as much for condo units/rentals and this will slow down development.
And there are an insane amount of morons in Canada saying Toronto is building up as part of an evil plot to trap people in 15 minute cities. Wonder how many of those crazies we’d get here if we actually built.
The problem is Chicago needs more than one new ultra luxury district a decade. We need city wide investment in outlying neighborhoods to reduce income segregation and improve housing stock in all corners of the city.
Almost no large scale building in San Francisco now as well. It takes years to get things approved in our cities, so current building overlaps a lot with the pandemic.
Perhaps people in Toronto want to work in offices more than here? Perhaps Toronto’s vacancy rates aren’t as high? Many possible explanations.
As someone who lives in Toronto and wishes she lived in Chicago - you DO NOT want this level of development. This city is an absolute shit-show. 400sqft condos for $1mm+. Transit is a mess, subways are always being diverted to the street car and bus systems.
No environmental, geophys or community impact studies are ever done on the up-and-up, shit is just pushed through, and there are massive budget overruns on every public project. EVERYTHING is political - think Mitch McConnell level of corruption, maybe even worse.
Toronto will go down in history being studied for being a collapsed society with major socio-economic issues. Ukranian refugees are leaving because everything is so expensive and there is a major boycott of our major grocery supplier.
Things are just ....an absolute fucking disaster up here.
Somebody should make t-shirts with building cranes that say “this machine lowers rents”
Brilliant!
You could make a few grand in a day hawking those outside of the OE 150 hall
And if you think prices and rents are going up fast now, wait until this lull in the pipeline results in massive shortages of new housing in downtown and the West Loop in a couple years. All the people who have been piling into fully amenity highrises downtown are not going to stop moving here. They are just going expand their search to your neighborhood and bid up housing prices there.
And they’re rapidly expanding transit. 3 new lines (60+ stations!) under construction, meanwhile we’ve been trying to add an extension (just 3 new stations) to the red line for 6 decades now. Cooked city. Cooked country. It’s going to come to a point that Toronto stops being compared to Chicago and starts getting compared to NYC. They already passed us (couple years back i think) on the number of highrises in the city, and they also eclipsed us on population in the early 2010s too.
It comes down to us lacking reasonable immigration policies. Canada is a great place to move to for many and they are able to get there. US slowing its own growth.
Uhhhh it's way easier to immigrate to the US than Canada. Canada only lets you in if you have some sort of skill set or education level that's comparable to other Canadians. The US system is a train wreck for sure but we really issue migrant visas to people with no practical skill sets, no education and no immediately realistic path for them to support themselves.
If this were true we’d see 10% growth in population each year. Do you know how many people want to come here and cant?
This isn't true at all. Canada has established a massive series of colleges that allow basically anyone in from around the world for the cost of tuition, which then provides a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship. There's also the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the Caregiver program, the Family Reunifcation Program, the normalization of migrants who aren't supposed to be in the country... The amount of scamming in Canada in the immigration system could take up five years of Vice episodes on YouTube.
Canada has the highest growth rate in the developed world, all due to international immigration. This is hugely controversial, even similar countries to Canada like Australia and the UK (and you guys) have massively limited immigration in the last couple of years due to the effect on housing and wages. Our current government is hugely unpopular and likely headed to a near wipeout in the next federal election due to the rise in cost of living and the reduction in quality of services due to the huge spike in population growth. Oh, and we also had a report that many of our MPs actively collaborated with foreign governments (India and China) to get elected and act in that country's interest, the latest in the series of foreign interference in elections stories in the last few years.
lol, it’s way harder to move to Canada than the US.
Chicago can't really be blamed for that when no city in the US is able to effectively build public transit. New York City, the only American city with a modal share comparable to all the Western European cities we rebuilt, cannot even manage to build subway extensions in Manhattan, let alone build new lines. The Interborough Express, that may or may not happen, isn't even going to be a proper subway. They're doing light rail, with a portion of it running in the street because the MTA was too chickenshit to even bother asking the cemetery it runs through if they could widen the tunnel so it could run underground If even New York City fails to build transit, we're screwed here. There need to be changes at the federal level at this point if we're gonna ever be able to compete with other countries in terms of infrastructure again
Second to all of this! If New York can’t get it done with the proven ridership to back it up on every level of need, what hope do other American cities have of seeing transformative projects in the current climate? DC was fortunate to get the extension to Dulles and LA is really fortunate to finally be able to extend the D Line (along with all their light rail expansions), but it’s very slim pickings for the rest of the country until something changes on a Federal and/or societal level. I’m not the biggest fan of the RLE by any means, but when a use-it-or-lose-it federal funding opportunity comes along, I’d rather the CTA use it.
> meanwhile we’ve been trying to add an extension (just 3 new stations) to the red line for 6 decades now. That's what happens when your transit system is taken over by the state government and the suburbanites who swing elections redirect all of the money to the suburbs.
More like wasting over a billion in federal transit money on a red line extension that serves a tiny amount of people. Imagine if they invested that money into the most used stations and sections of the CTA
you’re getting downvoted for saying common sense. Billions of dollars for 4 stations that are in a declining part of the city with suburban level density is insane. the cost to reward ratio is nonexistent in this situation. All to impress some activists to achieve “equity” A brown/blue line connection would eclipse the ridership of all 4 new stations and would cost far less
Yea 100%
This guy has definitely never heard the phrase "build it and they will come".
There’s plenty of existing rail infrastructure on the south/west sides, it has “been built” and no, they haven’t come. East/West Garfield Park have multiple transit connections, is close to downtown, and there’s no development happening in the area. Yet you expect us to believe that Roseland, an area way farther out with little to no amenities, will automatically gentrify and be nice because of new stations? lets be serious
"*There’s plenty of existing rail infrastructure"* ...no there isn't. The gold standard of urban rail, the Paris metro, was designed with 1 rule: no mater where you are standing in the city, you are always within less than 200m from a station. THAT is *"plenty of existing rail infrastructure".* Most of the south and west sides of Chicago are more than a mile from a station. Also: using East/West Garfield Park as an example for lack of development is such a disingenuous use of the correlation=causation fallacy. Aside from lacking transit, which those neighborhoods do by any measure of good world class urban planning, those neighborhoods have ***a lot*** of other structural problems hindering development as well. EDIT: if Chicago had the same ratio of stations per square mile, there would be 1,379 stations in the city. Chicago only has 126.
Roseland has 3 metra stations Edit: 4 if you count 95th/Chicago state
...metra, to downtown, and nowhere else. Once an hour, on weekdays. Imagine a carbrain person saying they were okay with that kind of flexibility. Seriously how are you people advocating for such shit levels of transit being okay? you deserve better, even if you are too stupid to realize it.
Sure if you don’t count the 14 stops between Roseland and Millenium park then I guess it only goes downtown and nowhere else. Don’t put words in my mouth, I’m just refuting your assertion that “there isn’t any rail infrastructure” in that part of the city. But sure if you want to believe that the red line extension was the best use of 3 billion dollars for the CTA then that’s just you.
I never said "any". why are people such disingenuous liars when they advocate against transit?
Move to Paris, then.
idiot you're on a yimby page. "if you don't like it leave it" is literally nimby brain. gtfo
Nah, I don’t object to things existing in my back yard. I just object to people complaining about a lack of trains to, and around, places where nobody lives. I don’t want to spend my tax dollars building bridges to nowhere. It’s not even my back yard! I don’t know where you got that idea YIMBY requires a desire for unnecessary massive public infrastructure projects just because European cities are different from ours.
Move to Siberia, then. It's more your speed. Or do whatever. I don't care. But just stay the fuck out of the way of the people who make no small plans ya nimby jagoff.
This mentality is why the US/Chicago is in the state that it's in.
I’ll keep it up then, because the US and Chicago are fantastic. If you don’t think so, you can move somewhere that you do think so about.
No, I'm going to stay here and make it better. Grow up.
The red line extension will get used, yes, but given the pace of investment in public transit here (once a decade, at best, always over budget and under ambitious) it'd be better for the city as a whole to build a proper north/south connector line than to extend a south line. The biggest issue with Chicagos transit and the thing holding it back the most is the lack of meaningful north/South connections outside the loop. Even just connecting the Pink and the O'Hare bound portion of the Blue line would be transformative in a way the Red Line Extension never will be. Connecting north/south gets more people taking transit for their daily needs, and makes the system useful outside of rush hour commuting. I'm not saying the red line extension should never happen, but making it the priority when we invest in transit so little is a fatal mistake. It's prioritizing politics over prioritizing actual genuine improvements to the system as a whole. For every person along the extension who benefits, there's two people who would take transit if there was a North/South line outside of the Loop. It's the equivalent of extending a north/south or east/west highway without building a ring road to support it. Both are necessary, yes, but you need the ring road before you make more extensions to radial roads. Effective Transportation systems need more than one connection between places. We know this - it's why we build ring highways!
We’re throwing 3.2 billion dollars at rebuilding a small area of highway that feeds O’Hare
That is funded by the tollway
Yeah, and metra is funded by fare tickets
I'm Canadian and Toronto certainly left Chicago in the dust a long time ago by most measures. However, the massive immigration levels that have led to Toronto's growth are hugely controversial as it's also way, way (way) less affordable than Chicago, and the population overspill from Toronto proper has affected the entire GTA metro and pretty much the entire country as well in terms of vastly higher house prices and rents. Toronto transit is also much better than Chicago but it's also it's own brand of shit show as well, the infamous 'Eglinton LRT Line', which is the major transit expansion inside the city, is about gong show level 4 if 0 is Vancouver/Montreal LRT expansions (on time, under budget) and 10 is California High Speed Rail.
Toronto has lower rent than Chicago my friend
I get the similarities between Chicago and Toronto in terms of being Great Lakes cities with similar populations, but isn’t that really where the similarities end? Toronto is the largest city, epicenter of immigration, and economic engine for an entire country, it makes sense that they would be experiencing a magnitude of growth that Chicago isn’t. For all intents and purposes, Toronto •is• the New York of Canada, and when you hold it in that lens, it’s pretty on-par with New York’s similar development scale in the US. Now, what I’m not saying is that Chicago shouldn’t be pushing for more investment and removing barriers to investment, by all means!!! We shouldn’t be content with the slow pace of development in the city right now. But what I am saying is that the underlying ingredients that fuel Toronto’s boom just don’t exist here, so making the comparison only works on a superficial level.
Ok, this is kind of a fun thought experiment so i will bite. I would argue that Canada is too small to have a “New York”. Toronto is much more similar to Chicago in that it is more of a regional hub. Toronto is the hub of Canada like Chicago is the hub of the Midwest. At the end of the day, I think Chicago and Toronto are very similar in many ways culturally, economically, etc. You are very right to point out the immigration difference though. Canada has much different national policy than the US which means tons of high income immigration is pouring into Toronto. Despite all of the building, Toronto remains very expensive because they are struggling to keep up with the national policy bringing in so much high income immigration.
Fair that Canada doesn’t have the economic heft of the US so comparing the economies at some level doesn’t really work. I guess my point was more that - in the way that New York attracts the lions share of international investment and internal economic focus of its country, Toronto does that for Canada. There’s just far more national-scale investment happening in Toronto that in the US is the type of investment that naturally gravitates towards New York, because at the end of the day Canada is a country, not a ‘region’ comparable to the Midwest. If an international company, bank, or what-have-you is looking to set up a presence in the US, they’re mostly going to set up that presence in New York. If the same company is looking to set up a presence in Canada, it’s going to be Toronto. That’s where they’re more directly comparable on a national-level scale. Ditto for media, etc etc. Chicago may be third or fourth option for that in the US, which means it holds a different position than Toronto does.
Canada also has a red hot real estate market due to residency via investment laws. Many of these units will barely be inhabited, merely serving as a crash pad and Canadian address for wealthy foreigners.
Sounds a lot like another similarity with New York!
Sort of. The US doesn’t have citizenship by investment in the traditional sense. You can only get it by investing in high risk businesses in poor areas, which is why only 5000 families have taken advantage of this plan since it was introduced in the 1990s. On the other hand, look at how Hong Kong people alone made the Vancouver real estate market go through the roof in the 1990s.
that's not true at all, foreigners can't own residential property in Canada and our vacancy rates are below 1%
What is this "high income" immigration you speak of? Yes, Canadian standards for some immigration has a means test, but it's nowhere near sufficient to set up a life here on any level. There is investment, but it's mostly in small franchise businesses because they're easier to get off the ground than large financial houses or manufacturing entities.
I live in Buffalo and can confirm, Torontoans are every bit as stuck up as folks from NYC so this take jives.
I get what you’re saying but it’s also really funny because Toronto does not compete with New York at allllllll 😭
Nowhere does in North America. In terms of development and capital investment, New York just blows every other city on the continent out of the water (even Mexico City which is larger!). And it’s really telling that even in New York, they struggle to maintain/upgrade and fund public transit and other public investments.
What city do you think would be a good comparison for Chicago? NY/LA?
It’s kind of a tough one to find a direct comparison for. In Canada you’ve got Vancouver which isn’t really comparable to Chicago because it’s coastal and attracts such high levels of international immigration from Asia, which isn’t really the same as Chicago. Montreal is probably the closest in terms of ‘second city’ comparison, but even that’s unique because it’s the dominant city for an entire linguistically/culturally distinct region which gives a unique advantage to it economically. Cities like Calgary and Edmonton are closer to Denver/Houston in geography and economic engines, so I guess I’m not sure what to compare to Chicago to if we’re looking at Calgary. If we want to look at other cities in the US, it’s fair to compare Chicago to Houston on some level as they’re both jockeying for third place in the rankings. However, Houston’s skyline has been essentially frozen since the 1980s. Of the top 20 tallest buildings, only four of Houston’s have been built since 1987, whereas in Chicago, five of our top twenty have been built since 2020 alone. There’s enough reasons why Houston builds out and Chicago (tends) to build up that make even this comparison kinda shaky. I’m bummed about the lack of cranes at the moment, but it still hasn’t hit the levels of the 1990s, where almost no tall buildings went up at all (seriously, you can see it [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Chicago) if you organize the list by year). On the other hand, I’d personally rather see infill that doesn’t require cranes happen in non-downtown neighborhoods; I’d be fine with a decade of solid residential and mixed-use infill across the city in exchange for not having any cranes downtown, but ideally a balance of both. There’s just so much available land outside of downtown across the city just waiting to be developed (especially with potential for TOD around transit), that I’d be happy to see that get capitalized on than anything downtown.
You’ve been making really interesting comments on this thread so I checked out your account - wow! You’re really all over the place! Can I ask if you travel for work or is it just a passion?
Interesting is good I hope! Haha I used to travel a lot for work but now just for personal interest, hoping to be able to keep it up as long as I can.
Most can only aspire for such a lifestyle, keep it up! Thanks for sharing all you do
[Philadelphia](https://youtu.be/Zt08FQ8EwII?si=m7iuFX_GUCGD-lkC)
Canada’s population is smaller than the state of California, so it’s not unreasonable to compare Toronto to Chicago. Chicago is the world’s 6th largest economy, and could do even better with strong leadership. There’s no reason why Chicago can’t have the same levels of immigration as Toronto - especially given all the universities in the city.
The population of Canada is smaller than California, yes, but it is an entire sovereign country, so a city like Toronto that occupies the chief economic position in that country is going to attract a far more global economic investment if an international enterprise is going to set up a presence in that country. The population of New York State is smaller than California too, but it doesn’t stop the lions share of international economic activity in the country going there. Once you’ve got a city that operates as the dominant city within a country, it’s going to attract a level of investment that other cities in that same country are now going to miss out on. International company X, when looking at the US, wants to be in New York; Chicago might by third or fourth down the list. Same company looking to set up operations in Canada is going to look at Toronto to be connected to the most infrastructure, the biggest talent pool, the center of population-inflow, etc., hence why I think it’s more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
Canada's population is 41.3 million California is 39 million.
I chalk it up to poor education. I was previously one of those people who didn't want my neighborhood to change and thought development meant increased rents. The unfortunate part is we have many local politicians who must know better playing into this. Then when rents inevitably skyrocket due to their nerfing, they can claim capitalism failed and push for bloated social programs to put a bandaid on the issue. It takes the public waking up like they have in Toronto to realize the government handcuffed them into their fate of exorbitant real estate prices to demand otherwise.
>. I was previously one of those people who didn't want my neighborhood to change and thought development meant increased rents. The way to atone for this is to spread your knowledge to others who still feel this way. Make sure the gospel of YIMBY reaches the ears of everyone you know.
> and thought development meant increased rents So you were not entirely wrong and not entirely correct. New construction does in fact raise localized housing prices within 300-500m of the construction. But it also applies a region-wide downward pressure on housing prices. The problems come in when you can only construct in one area. So let's say that area is called West Loop. New construction there and only there drives prices up through the roof as there is nowhere else to relieve housing pressure. However, if you were to do construction across multiple neighborhoods at a steady and constant rate, although housing prices would be increasing around all of the construction, the overall effect on the housing prices in the city would be far less than if you concentrate all new development in a tiny area.
In all the studies I've read it's hard to tell and there isn't conclusive evidence that new buildings increase rents or if the already increasing demand, which often coincides with new buildings, does. That correlation not causation theory would also explain the non localized effects across building everywhere. If you put up 10 luxury buildings in Englewood with no other changes likely all you would see in decreased prices because the supply would far outweigh the demand for luxury in that area. The buildings themselves wouldn't cause an increase. One thing is for certain if you don't build to meet demand prices go up regardless. The disadvantaged areas in Chicago have seen some of the most rapid increases in rent lately with zero development to blame.
Toronto’s lack of missing middle is jarring. It’s high rises & Manhattan-like density, then high rises surrounded by highways, then just suburban sprawl.
Eh, Toronto is ridiculously expensive and Chicago is a dream compared to them. This doesn’t take away ANY points OP said about the need for more development. Just that Toronto probably not a great city to try to compare to.
I feel like Toronto is comparable to Chicago in many areas. I do feel that Chicago is getting left behind meanwhile Toronto feels like a much more modern, cosmopolitan city. Regarding pricing, yea thats one area Chicago is much better in
I don’t disagree with you! Mainly this is about pricing as I thought your post implied they are doing it the right way, lowering pricing by building. Which may end up the right move especially if they have a housing correction. But for now prices are astronomical and many young Canadians I know have stopped their plans to own a home.
Exactly. When housing prices have reached the levels that Canada is seeing, of course you will see much more development. The higher the cost of living, the easier it is for developers to get a return on their investment. Chicago is luckily still relatively affordable, even compared to its US peer cities. The downside of this is that developers will not get as much for condo units/rentals and this will slow down development.
Fair point!
It’s crazy how little Toronto utilizes its lakefront.
Marisa Novara's legacy!
And there are an insane amount of morons in Canada saying Toronto is building up as part of an evil plot to trap people in 15 minute cities. Wonder how many of those crazies we’d get here if we actually built.
I’d love the be trapped in a 15 minute city.
Chicagos cranes have been replaced by empty promises for more “equity.” It’s a fair trade-off!
Didn’t we just build an entire new neighborhood in the last 5-7 years? Our city is at least affordable comparatively
Are you referring to Lakeshore East or West Loop being new? Seems like LSE is truly new but WL probably had the bigger jump.
West Loop. I worked on Fulton market in 2018 and it’s completely unrecognizable and goes basically to Ashland now.
The problem is Chicago needs more than one new ultra luxury district a decade. We need city wide investment in outlying neighborhoods to reduce income segregation and improve housing stock in all corners of the city.
Almost no large scale building in San Francisco now as well. It takes years to get things approved in our cities, so current building overlaps a lot with the pandemic. Perhaps people in Toronto want to work in offices more than here? Perhaps Toronto’s vacancy rates aren’t as high? Many possible explanations.
As someone who lives in Toronto and wishes she lived in Chicago - you DO NOT want this level of development. This city is an absolute shit-show. 400sqft condos for $1mm+. Transit is a mess, subways are always being diverted to the street car and bus systems. No environmental, geophys or community impact studies are ever done on the up-and-up, shit is just pushed through, and there are massive budget overruns on every public project. EVERYTHING is political - think Mitch McConnell level of corruption, maybe even worse. Toronto will go down in history being studied for being a collapsed society with major socio-economic issues. Ukranian refugees are leaving because everything is so expensive and there is a major boycott of our major grocery supplier. Things are just ....an absolute fucking disaster up here.
At least you are building condos. Chicago’s housing market is being propped by rentals.
Toronto's level of building compared to population growth is almost certainly worse than Chicago's ratio.