Sustainable Cities

The newest research centre at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering will develop innovative ways to meet the urgent and growing need for infrastructure – without further exacerbating the climate crisis.

The Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment brings together seven researchers from across U of T, as well as a dozen companies in construction and related industries. The goal is to identify strategies that will lower the environmental footprint by reimagining how new infrastructure is designed, where it is built and what materials are used in its construction.

“In Canada and around the world, we have a huge housing and infrastructure deficit – there’s a big social need to build much more than we have right now,” says Shoshanna Saxe, associate professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering and Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure.

“At the same time, construction resource use accounts for up to a third of total global greenhouse gas emissions each year, a problem that is getting worse. It’s been estimated that if we continue current ways of construction, by 2050 the emissions due to new housing alone will cause us to blow past two degrees of global warming,” she adds. “If we want to avoid that, let alone reach net zero by 2050, we need to find ways to do more with less.”

Saxe and her collaborators – Evan Bentz, Chris Essert, Elias Khalil, Heather MacLean, Daman Panesar and Daniel Posen, all fellow U of T researchers – plan to approach this complex challenge from several different angles. Some efficiencies can be found by looking at where new housing is built, as well as what it looks like.

“The average person living in a city consumes fewer resources than the average person living in a suburb, because in a city you have more people per kilometre of sewer, road or electrical infrastructure. There are big rewards for well-designed cities,” Saxe says.

“The shape and types of buildings we build is also important. For example, Toronto has a lot of long skinny apartments, where a lot of the space is in the hallway. If we design differently, we can better use that space to provide more housing, or avoid [extra space] all together and save materials, emissions and cost.”

Saxe and her team have also shown that large concrete basements account for a high proportion of the emissions due to construction – building more of the structure above ground could improve the environmental bottom line. Other potential solutions involve alternative building materials, such as new types of concrete that are less carbon-intensive.

The multidisciplinary team – whose researchers cover a wide range of expertise, from carrying out life-cycle analysis of construction projects to defining national carbon budgets – will address issues well beyond the traditional bounds of engineering. For example, the group plans to explore the legal frameworks that translate established housing rights into practical built spaces.

“It’s absurd to say that the right to housing means that everyone has to live in a space the size of a closet,” Saxe says. “But it’s also absurd to expect everyone to have their own 3,500-square-foot house. Can we find a middle ground where everyone can live in dignity, without consuming in a way that threatens the planet?”

The research collaboration includes 12 external partners in the construction sector: Colliers; the Cement Association of Canada; Chandos Construction; Mattamy Homes; Northcrest; Pomerleau; Purpose Building, Inc.; ZGF Architects; Arup; SvN Architects + Planners; Entuitive; and KPMB Architects.

By working closely with this core group, Saxe and her collaborators aim to speed up knowledge translation, ensuring that the insights gained through their research can be applied in industry.

“The conversations we have with our partners can inform their design and construction, as well as the conversations they then have with their clients, raising everyone’s level of knowledge and awareness,” she says.

“We hope that by giving people – policymakers, designers and builders – the tools they need to address these challenges of building more with fewer emissions, we can improve outcomes across the built environment and create a more sustainable future for everyone.”

U of T experts' creative solution to Toronto's housing problems: laneway homes

Romi Levine — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 14:49:02 +0000

U of T experts' creative solution to Toronto's housing problems: laneway homes

Romi Levine Fri, 03/03/2017 - 09:49

Cutline

Award-winning architect and U of T Professor Brigitte Shim lives in a laneway house in Leslieville (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

On Location

Smart Cities

Sustainable Cities

Subheadline

“What happens in architecture schools should not be seen as a project... but as a way of projecting a different future for our cities”

Twenty-five years ago, award-winning architect Brigitte Shim was scoping out a location to build her home.

“It was a derelict lot with six abandoned cars, and weeds that were shoulder height,” she says.

Shim, a professor at University of Toronto at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, decided the laneway in what is now Leslieville was the perfect space to design and build her dream home.

“In the end, I felt it was a really amazing experience to actually have gone through, not only the design process but the municipal approval process,” she says. “After building it and living in it, I actually thought that it was a really interesting territory for future densification in our cities.”

Today, laneway housing is seeing a renewal.

As housing prices and the cost to rent in Toronto continue to rise, architects like Shim, city councillors, community groups and the University of Toronto are exploring different ways to make the city more liveable and sustainable – and laneways have been a popular starting point.

U of T is hoping to build around 50 laneway houses in the Huron-Sussex neighbourhood – across the street from Robarts Library. While it’s still in the planning stages, the university hopes to kick-start a pilot project by 2018 to build two laneway houses in the alley located just west of Huron Street and north of Glen Morris Street.

“It provides a different texture to the neighbourhood. Because these units will be smaller, it does add to a range of options for housing so not just in the Victorian homes that are scattered through the neighbourhood but also the opportunity for smaller-scale and more affordable living,” says Christine Burke, director of campus and facilities planning at U of T.

According to the Laneway Project, there are 2,400 publicly-owned laneways in Toronto, stretching over 250 kilometres. While there are a few laneway houses, most of these narrow streets are lined with graffiti-covered garages and garbage bins. Building a home in a laneway is only currently permitted on a case-by-case basis by the city, and it could take a while to get the right permits.

City Councillor Ana Bailão for Ward 18 and Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon for Ward 32 are working with community groups Evergreen CityWorks and Lanescape to explore different policy options to make laneway housing more widespread.

“Together as a group we're trying to change the conversation and push forward recommendations to the City of Toronto on how to make laneway suites doable in the city,” says Jo Flatt, U of T alumna and senior project manager at Evergreen.

The university is working closely with the Huron-Sussex Residents Organization, the City of Toronto, Evergreen and Baird Sampson Neuert Architects to ensure that all parties are involved in the vision for the neighbourhood’s future.

“There's a profound understanding of the need to do something with lanes throughout the city, and this is a good place to start and show how it can be successfully done. That's our hope,” says Andy Vice, vice-president of the Huron-Sussex Residents Organization. “It's a chance to shine a light and lead by example.”

From left to right, Huron-Sussex Residents Organization members Béatrice Lego, Julie Mathien and Andy Vice (photo by Romi Levine)

The neighbourhood has a high turnover rate because a large proportion of residents are students, and visiting faculty members and their families. Members of the Residents Organization hope new housing options will allow residents to stay longer either as homeowners or on longer-term leases.

“If there's more housing, there won't be the imperative to keep moving people through,” says Julie Mathien, president of the Residents Organization.

Shim hopes more neighbourhoods in Toronto embrace laneway housing.

“Development doesn't mean tearing down all the buildings and starting from scratch. As homeowners need more space, more flexibility, it's something that can be additive and doesn't need to be a razing of the block,” she says.

Other cities around the world including Vancouver and London, England, have already embraced laneway housing, creating models Toronto can emulate, says Shim.

U of T’s architecture talent can play a big role in shaping the way we think about housing, she says.

“What happens in architecture schools should not be seen as a project, a hypothetical situation, but as a way of projecting a different future for our cities,” says Shim. “We can tackle big questions like this and keep pushing on them. Student projects become real projects where we actually can reshape the future of our cities.”

What is public transit's effect on the environment? A U of T researcher crunches the numbers

ullahnor — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 15:30:56 +0000

What is public transit's effect on the environment? A U of T researcher crunches the numbers

ullahnor Wed, 03/01/2017 - 10:30

Cutline

Professor Shoshanna Saxe analyses the environmental and social impact of large public transit infrastructure projects, equipping policymakers with data as they decide which investments to make (photo by Tyler Irving)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Public Transportation

Greenhouse Gas

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Sustainable Cities

Smart Cities

Subheadline

The latest extension of the London Underground “turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag,” and Toronto's Sheppard subway line initially struggled to provide greenhouse gas savings with low ridership

The benefits of building public transit include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, relieving traffic congestion and expanding a growing city. Yet each transit project is unique, and often the immediate environmental benefits can be a mixed bag.

Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Shoshanna Saxe crunches the numbers on existing infrastructure to provide key decision-makers with a reality check on the environmental and social impacts of today’s transit investments.

“Engineers usually aren’t involved in policymaking, and policymakers usually aren’t involved in engineering,” says Saxe. “I’m trying to bridge that gap.”

Read about her work at the Toronto Star

Saxe joined U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering in August 2016.

Before completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, she spent three years at a major consulting engineering firm in Toronto, working on projects such as the Eglinton Crosstown transit line and the Toronto-York Spadina subway extension.

“I love design – it’s amazing,” she says. “However, when you’re building things that people are going to use, you have to stay well within the limits of what you know for sure. I was curious about questions that we didn’t already know the answers to.”

During her PhD, Saxe conducted a detailed analysis of the London Underground’s extension of the Jubilee Line, which was completed in 1999. She gathered data on the greenhouse gases produced during construction and operation of the line, then used transit and land-use surveys to estimate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to people using the line and living near it. By combining the two, she could calculate the net environmental benefit of that transit project.

“It turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag,” she says. “If you make some optimistic assumptions, you could say that it broke even in terms of greenhouse gas emissions around 2012 or 2013. If you are more pessimistic, you’re looking at a greenhouse gas payback of twice as long.”

Saxe says that the Jubilee Line extension sees approximately 175 million trips per year. On projects where ridership is low, the environmental payback period can be much longer.

Saxe also studied the Sheppard subway line in Toronto and found it initially struggled to provide greenhouse gas savings with a much lower ridership. Over time, the Sheppard Subway Line has benefited from the decreasing emissions associated with electricity in Ontario. The results of the Sheppard Subway study were recently published in the journal Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment.

“If you’re at Don Mills station, and you want to go north, east, or even southeast, the network doesn’t serve you yet,” she says. “We still see people from that area driving 70 per cent of the time so unfortunately there’s just a lot less opportunity for savings.”

Saxe says that her dream project would be to follow a major piece of infrastructure such as a new transit line from conception through construction and use for 20 or 30 years.

“I want to answer questions like: why did we originally build it, how did we originally build it, how did it perform over its lifetime, how did we maintain it and what did it need?” she says. “If we know how our present decision-making affects things decades from now, we can make better decisions.”