Planning for Mixed Use: Affordable for Whom?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Mixed-use zoning is widely advocated to increase density; promote active transportation; encourage economic development; and create lively, diverse neighborhoods. We know little, however, about whether mixed-use developments affect housing affordability. We question the impact of mixed-use zoning on housing affordability in Toronto (Canada) between 1991 and 2006 in the face of waning government support for affordable housing and increasing income inequality due to the occupational restructuring accompanying a shift to a knowledge-based economy. We fi nd that housing in mixed-use zones remained less affordable than housing in the rest of the city and in the metropolitan region. High-income service occupations experienced improved affordability while lower wage service, trade, and manufacturing occupations experienced stagnant or worsening affordability. Housing in mixed-use zones is increasingly affordable only to workers already able to pay higher housing costs. Our findings are limited to Canada's largest city but have lessons for large North American cities with similar urban economies and housing markets.

Takeaway for practice: Mixed-use developments may reduce housing affordability in core areas and inadvertently reinforce the sociospatial inequality resulting from occupational polarization unless supported by appropriate affordable housing policies. Planners should consider a range of policy measures to offset the unintentional outcomes of mixed-use developments and ensure affordability within mixed-use zones: inclusionary zoning, density bonuses linked to affordable housing, affordable housing trusts, and other relevant methods.

Keywords::

• housing affordability
• mixed use
• occupational polarization
• Toronto
• zoning

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher's website.

Notes

1. Enumeration areas and dissemination areas are census data collection units that are normally equivalent to one or more adjacent blocks within a census tract.

2. GIS analysis was used to spatially disaggregate and weight census data collected at the enumeration area and dissemination area levels and reallocate these data to mixed-use zones as defined using the 2005 City of Toronto zoning boundaries. A detailed account of this procedure is provided in the online Technical Appendix.

3. The same basic trends were evident when household income was used.

4. We excluded a tenth National Occupational Classification for Statistics grouping, occupations unique to primary industry, from the study because the group accounts for less than 1% of the Census Metropolitan Area workforce and annual income values are often suppressed because of sampling error.

5. Census Metropolitan Areas, by definition, represent regional labor markets with minimal intraregional variability. In Toronto, there are limited wage differentials within the regional labor market (Bourne et al., 2011); thus, this was not viewed as a limitation.

6. Similar results were obtained when costs were expressed per bedroom rather than per room.

7. Maps of the geography of housing affordability by occupational group are available online.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Markus Moos

Markus Moos ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo (Canada)

Tara Vinodrai

Tara Vinodrai ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo

Nick Revington

Nick Revington ([email protected]) is a ­doctoral candidate in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo

Michael Seasons

Michael Seasons ([email protected]) is an urban planner with Dillon Consulting Limited in Toronto (Canada).