Greetings, fellow Scarborough residents.
We all have the good fortune to live in Scarborough. Some of us have the good fortune to work here too, but that’s at risk. The sharp rise in real estate values over the past two decades and the need for more housing have incentivized developers to build condos everywhere (and, more recently, high rise rental) and nothing else. We see this most vividly in the relentless bulldozing of our neighbourhood shopping plazas and in rezoning applications to build wall-to-wall high rises on our main streets.
It’s also affecting something else that tends to fly below the radar: the loss of our employment lands.
The Golden Age of Scarborough’s employment lands
Historically, Scarborough provided a lot of employment opportunities for our residents, especially in manufacturing. Those of us of a certain age will remember the Golden Mile in its heyday! Frigidaire, General Motors, Thermos, Inglis, SKF, Volkswagen, Warner Lambert, Alcan, and, of course, General Engineering Company (GECO), the munitions plant, home of the “Bomb Girls”, such a rich part of Scarborough’s history.
But it wasn’t just the Golden Mile. Industrial parks sprouted all across Scarborough. From the 1950s until the 1990s, Scarborough was a powerhouse contributor to the Ontario economy.
It’s very different today
That has changed profoundly since the 1990s, first due to free trade and the economic restructuring that came with that, followed by the consequences of sharply rising land values.
Today, only 12% of Toronto’s land area is zoned as employment areas. It’s been gradually falling for years. And that’s a problem. Employment lands provide 27% of Toronto’s jobs, many of them in light manufacturing and logistics. We need these jobs if we strive to have a balanced economy.
Employment lands aren’t pretty. That’s why they tend to be concentrated in industrial parks, separated from incompatible uses, like housing. Nobody wants to live next to a paper mill, an asphalt plant, or a manufacturing plant, where supplies are delivered around the clock, seven days a week. But we need the jobs these business provide, so we need to protect their ability to thrive.
An advocacy priority for SCRO
Employment lands could use a little love right now … and a few friends in high places! So, for the past few years, SCRO has taken this up as a priority area of focus.
Scarborough’s streetscapes are likely to change profoundly over the next 20 – 30 years. As this happens, we need to ensure there’s an appropriate place for our light manufacturing and logistics businesses too.
We need to stop the “death by a thousand cuts” scenario we have now, where employment lands are converted to housing, one planning policy exception at a time. Individually, these transactions fly below the radar.
Collectively, they are fundamentally reshaping Toronto as a place where there will (eventually) be lots of places to live but nowhere to work unless you work downtown.
On February 12, SCRO participated in an employment lands forum hosted by the City of Toronto. And it was held in Scarborough, at Centennial College, which was appropriate, as Scarborough is at the centre of this public policy issue.
Planning policies with teeth can make a difference
We need strong planning policies to push back against market forces. The “highest and best use” of urban lands will always be for high rise residential. No other use generates a better financial return for developers. But if market forces drive all planning decisions, most lands in the Toronto will eventually be converted to residential, leaving few employment lands, not much neighbourhood retail, and few community amenities. What an uninspiring outcome that would be for Scarborough.
Businesses need security of tenure. They won’t be motivated to make costly capital expenditures to renew or expand their facilities without the assurance that their tenure won’t be cut short by rezoning of their property or by high rise housing right next door that generates resident complaints and jeopardizes their ability to do business.
We have a “green belt”; why not a “jobs belt” too? We have collectively accepted the notion that green belt lands should be preserved in their natural state and that rezoning applications will not be considered. Why can’t we have the same kind of conviction for our employment lands? The jobs they create have some of the look-and-feel of a public good, as they create economic prosperity by supporting local supply chains and by creating local consumer demand. This would require a cultural shift in the way we think about urban planning.
What about time-limited rezoning? At the moment, developers are relentless in making applications for the rezoning of employment lands (and retail lands) for high rise residential, because there’s where they make their money, from the “land lift” that results from rezoning for high-density housing. But the 2024 Development Pipeline Report from the Chief Planner says we already have 854,898 proposed residential units in the pipeline, sufficient to accommodate Toronto’s 2051 population forecast. And yet more developer applications keep coming forward. What if rezoning applications were time-limited? Use it or lose it. That would significantly reduce the value of the “land lift” that developers receive from rezoned land, thereby diluting the market forces that incentivize developers to rezone for high-rise housing. This too, would require a cultural shift in the way we think about urban planning.
Protecting our employment lands is also crucial for creating an economy that gives greater prominence to serving our domestic market with less reliance on supply chains in the USA. Toronto won’t be able to contribute to this if we continue to allow our employment lands to be lost to rezoning conversions.
Some of this is likely provocative. And that’s the point. We need to get people talking about this. We need to think more boldly if we want employment lands and the prosperity they provide to be an important part of Scarborough’s future.
Larry Whatmore
President
Scarborough Community Renewal Organization
https://www.scro.ca Larry.Whatmore@rogers.com
(416) 562-2101
P.S. Our next Scarborough Walk of Fame induction ceremony takes place on April 15 at Scarborough Town Centre. Please join us to celebrate accomplished Scarborough residents from many walks of life. We’ll have an announcement in the next week or two regarding this year’s inductees!
