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Toronto’s aging apartments lack proper insulation, and their exposed slab edges
(with their tell-tale “stripes”) make the buildings incredibly inefficient – 20
percent less efficient than a single-family home.
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One of the most effective ways to reduce energy consumption is thermal over-cladding;
it’s like a winter coat for a naked building. A new shell of insulation, rain screening
and exterior cladding, is applied over the existing building. The over-cladding can also
support high-speed internet cables, garbage separation chutes, or even clean energy
installations like photovoltaics.
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A typical 200 unit building is responsible for as much as 1,200 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Built in an era of cheap energy, where conservation was not a consideration, we must now make investments in these buildings to help in the fight against climate change.
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Aging concrete slab apartments are well-suited for green retrofits that will make significant carbon reductions and reduce operating costs. Clean energy installations, grey-water recycling, and “smart” metering are all options to be considered.
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Reducing greenhouse gas emissions isn’t the only concern. Rising energy prices make local and renewable energy solutions more important than ever before. Reducing our environmental impact not only helps the planet, it helps save money.
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Apartment Neighbourhoods – clusters of apartments close together – can be connected for district and renewable-energy installation, including geothermal heating and cooling or co-generation, turbine installations, solar hot-water heating, green roofs, storm water retention, and grey water recycling. At a district level, large installations could someday make it possible to take them off the city’s grid.
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Built for a young urban population during a period of incredible growth in the ’60s and ’70s, these buildings now house some of Toronto’s poorest communities. In many cases, large families are living in one- or two-bedroom apartments.
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Within the existing buildings, apartments could be combined both vertically and horizontally to create family-sized units, while open space presents the possibility for new housing. This would help reduce sprawl, and provide more options to allow residents to stay in their communities throughout their lives – from young families to seniors.
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Incentives from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation called for up to 90 percent open space around high-density developments. Today, the hectares of land surrounding these towers typically features surface parking and unused open fields surrounded by chain-link fence. They are abandoned – hardly the lush green spaces that were originally imagined.
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A generation ago, the open space in these neighbourhoods was used for agriculture. Food production could be combined with local composting programs, youth training, seasonal markets, and community kitchens. These communities could become places of production to offset what they consume.
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Nowhere else in North America will you find dense apartment towers mixed with suburban homes in every part of the city. But many neighbourhoods don’t have convenient access to the services and amenities they need, like fresh food, parks and ravines, child care facilities, community centres, or shops.
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Improved access to natural areas, parks and public spaces, and enhanced public meeting places all contribute to stronger communities. The addition of a mix of uses – new shops, restaurants, or markets – will provide new services, build stronger communities, and reduce the need for car trips.
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Toronto’s apartment neighbourhoods are on some of the busiest public transit routes on the city, but as the city has grown, we have struggled to keep up with demand. We need new investment to build high-speed connections across the city.
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Toronto’s Transit City plan will build a series of high-speed light rail lines along Toronto’s busiest surface routes, creating a network that reaches every neighbourhood in the city. New high-speed transit will promote growth, and support the thousands of residents who live there today.
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This presentation provides an overview on how to benchmark your building’s energy performance and quickly determine where you could be saving energy and cash. Topics covered l include:
- The key elements of a top performing building
- What you can learn from current utility bills
- What kinds of savings you can expect from a building upgrade
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This report represents the main findings and recommendations of the project team, including options for pilot implementation. While potential solutions for improved waste diversion are found in a number of broad areas including technology, building operations, outreach, education, incentives, and compliance, it became clear to the project team that the buildings most successful in diverting waste and reducing disposal costs did so through simple, operational adjustments.
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The retrofit projects envisioned by Tower Renewal are comprehensive and large scale, likely costing several million dollars per building. Since most of the buildings in question are in the hands of private sector persons, these projects must be demonstrated to be advantageous to building owners if they are to be undertaken voluntarily. A critical obstacle is financing, as it is unlikely that such major projects can be undertaken in the normal course of business by most building owners.
Financing must be both low cost from an interest rate perspective, and not consume high value building owner’s equity. These conditions rule out self-financing by building owners through cash on hand, mortgage financing, and unsecured commercial debt.
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Overall, the positive impacts that Tower Renewal can generate are dramatic. Water and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be drastically reduced; the production of renewable energy can be achieved; social networks, a sense of safety, and the ease of traveling in the community can be considerably strengthened; and significant economic growth through job and local business creation realized.
http://www.toronto.ca/city_manager/pdf/tr_implementation_book.pdf
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The Community Energy Plan (CEP) prepared by ARUP Consulting investigates ways to improve energy use in residential communities identified through the Mayor’s Tower Renewal project. At a broader scale, the CEP is intended to support achieving wide-ranging environmental, social, cultural and economic benefits and dramatic city-building. The focus of the CEP is to identify and promote energy efficiency projects as a vehicle for rehabilitation of tower buildings and improving sustainable transportation options, which will reduce energy costs, improve comfort, and provide other benefits - including a significant contribution toward achieving Toronto’s sustainability goals of reducing Greenhouse-Gas (GHG) emissions and creating local “green” jobs.
The findings and recommendations described in the CEP will serve to provide information about the energy efficiency and transportation enhancement opportunities that exist for Tower Renewal projects, as well as the funding requirements, funding mechanisms, regulatory changes, and other issues which will likely need to be addressed before Mayor’s Tower Renewal can attract the interest, and ultimately the participation of Toronto’s residential tower owners.
http://www.toronto.ca/city_manager/pdf/tr_arup_cep.pdf
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Tower renewal, the retrofit of high-rise apartment buildings, represents an opportunity to create a variety of employment opportunities. The scale and duration of tower renewal projects have the potential to employ local hires from Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods. In some cases new types of jobs specific to tower renewal may be created that are suited to existing skilled trades, but that may require special training and education. There is a need to plan ahead in order to expedite tower renewal initiatives and capitalize on these opportunities, thereby strengthening Toronto’s local economy.
The key objectives of this study are to identify tower renewal employment opportunities and to forecast future challenges to the recruitment, training and education of the tower renewal workforce. This report also looks ahead to the longer term implications of building infrastructure revitalization on the Toronto construction industry.
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Edited by E.R.A. Architects, the Mayor’s Tower Renewal Opportunities Book compiles research conducted over the past several years by the University of Toronto and E.R.A. Architects. Outlining in further detail the information that has been released on towerrenewal.com in the previous months, the Opportunities book examines the origin to Toronto’s modern planned apartments, and their future potential in a green and equitable Toronto.
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Applied research aimed at helping to ensure the full benefits of Mayor’s Tower Renewal are achieved.
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The Mayor’s report to Executive, which establishes the Mayor’s Tower Renewal Office
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Toronto is a city of more than 1000 towers. But we rarely hear from the people who live in them.
Equipped with digital cameras and powerful personal points-of-view, six Toronto residents are documenting their own vertical lives against the backdrop of the city’s ambitious Tower Renewal effort. Their photo stories are the first installment of the National Film Board of Canada’s long-term collaborative documentary project, HIGHRISE, witnessing the human experience in vertical living across the globe.
http://highrise.nfb.ca/?p=136
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This Map will allow you to find the location of Industries that provide goods, materials and services that are used in Tower Renewal Projects.
If you want your firm to be added to this Map please contact tower@toronto.ca.
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The ERA Architects Tower Renewal Blog.
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Housing Opportunities Toronto (HOT) Website
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The Toronto Bike Plan establishes a vision for cycling in Toronto. To "shift gears" towards a more bicycle friendly city.
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Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation Website
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Mayor's Tower Renewal is a program to drive broad environmental, social, economic, and cultural change by improving Toronto's concrete apartment towers and the neighbourhoods that surround them. The Toronto region contains North America's second highest concentration of these buildings, but only in Toronto will you find them integrated with both urban and suburban neighbourhoods. They are some of the city's most inefficient buildings, and they present us with an incredible opportunity.
This website outlines our vision and principles, shows how energy efficiency can be a means to community revitalization, and explains why we must act now. It will track our progress, and share what we have learned. Together, I know we will make Mayor's Tower Renewal a success and a city-building legacy.
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