Cities like Toronto and Minneapolis are moving away from single-family zoning, promoting multifamily housing developments to address housing shortages. For example, Toronto's ReHousing toolkit assists homeowners in exploring various housing modifications, such as adding apartments or building new units on their lots. This toolkit aims to empower citizens, referred to as 'citizen developers', by helping them understand renovation options and potential costs. Such innovative approaches are crucial as change in urban development often occurs slowly, necessitating tools that simplify the process.
What we have tried to do is develop some tools to help enable homeowners to be able to rapidly assess what options might be viable or interesting to them on a lot.
A postwar bungalow, for example, could be split into two main-floor apartments, or it could add a basement apartment or convert the garage.
The designs include some ideas that building owners likely wouldn't have considered. A two-story, semidetached house in downtown Toronto, for example, could potentially add extra space by building a third story on top of the roof.
No matter how desperately a city needs new housing units, change often happens slowly.
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