As a growing number of individuals and families settle in Toronto, the city has been undergoing a major housing construction boom in a decade. From 2014 to 2018, the municipal government of Toronto had issued nearly 183 thousands of building permits, authorizing various kinds of projects on constructions, from alerting the plumbing of a house to taking down an old building. More than half of the permits allowed constructing new buildings, and more than 70 per cent of new building projects were for residential housing purposes.
More than 7,000 permits for new residential buildings since 2014
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Residential buildings were erected in most of the city, with the exception of downtown Toronto, which had been fully developed decades ago and hosts most historically preserved neighborhoods.
The northern side of the city has witnessed a larger amount of constructions. Enjoying its easy access to Highway 401, Bedford Park-Nortown in North York has 409 new houses stood up in the latest five years, the largest number among 140 neighborhoods of Toronto.
Measuring from the standard of per capita, Weston-Pellam Park built almost 70 new houses per square kilometer, the highest density in the city. Most of them are single-family dwellings bounded by Old Weston Rd and Weston Rd.
New housings in Toronto by the structure types
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More than half of the constructions are single-family homes, clustering mostly in the Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough districts. The biggest groups of single-family houses spread along sides of the green belt consisting of G Ross Lord Park, West Don Parkland and Sunnybrook Park. The apartment buildings, particularly high-rise residential towers are scattered in the inner city, continuing to change the skyline of downtown Toronto.
Technical notes: Data are available through the Toronto Open Data Portal. You can find the analyzed data and GIS files on my Github page.
