State of Housing: Jason Thorne, Toronto’s Chief Planner, Talks City-Building

FEATURES STATE OF HOUSING
October 31, 2025 by Craig White   361 

State of Housing: Jason Thorne, Toronto’s Chief Planner, Talks City-Building

Throughout October UrbanToronto is featuring a special State of Housing editorial series to examine the pressing housing challenges facing Toronto and the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

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UrbanToronto sat down recently with Jason Thorne, Toronto’s Chief Planner, to talk about how the City’s Planning Department has been amending its structures of late to address the current housing crisis.

UrbanToronto: Hi Jason, thanks for agreeing to talk with us.

To set the stage, for years now, if you wanted to redevelop a site in Toronto at nearly any scale larger than a single family home, you were faced with an arduous rezoning process, as successive City Councils had failed to rewrite zoning by-laws to accept higher densities that could help address population growth pressures and create more housing. As land and other costs ballooned, development proposals grew in size to amortize the costs over more units, so larger proposals have needed a raft of amendments to the zoning by-law. When then City either turned down a proposal or failed to respond within a time limit set by the Province, as was often the case, appeals were made to the Ontario Land Tribunal (or its predecessors), where the outcome was rarely a sure bet for either side. 

Recent moves by City Council however — with their hand having been forced at times by the Province — means we now see a clear direction for greater density, especially when close to major transit stations, along the avenues, and to a degree, even in established neighbourhoods as well, with each situation now accepting larger building typologies. Many readers will be familiar with some of these, but it seems that few people have an overall view of the changes that the last several years have brought. Can you give us an overview of what’s changed recently and how it has begun to play out across Toronto?

Jason Thorne, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

Jason Thorne: There has been a lot of change over the last three or four years. The policy environment with the City of Toronto has fundamentally changed. I’ve characterised it before as the DNA of the City being rewritten, if you think about the zoning, the policies, the regulations as a bit of the DNA that makes up the city. If you layer on all of the different initiatives (we can talk about them in a minute), there’s very few properties in the city that permit residential that have not had some redesignation, rezoning, through one of the initiatives over the past couple of years. So it’s a significant amount of change. 

It’s also a pace of change, and a focus of change, that’s not just the way that planning worked over the past decade or two in Toronto, but in other cities as well. “Let’s just concentrate our planning efforts on a few nodes and a few corridors as the growth anchors of the city” and that’ll be the end of it, was the previous effect. Much of the effort over the past couple of years has been looking at increasing housing permissions in neighbourhoods, on major streets (the avenues), in some of the major centres as well, but it has been across the city and across the housing spectrum. And that pace of change and that comprehensiveness of change is not something we’d seen in quite a long time.

UrbanToronto: What are the policies now in place to dictate redevelopment at major transportation nodes, along the avenues, and in neighbourhoods? What can people expect as of right, versus what’s still driving rezoning applications?

Land Use Designations, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

Jason Thorne: There’s been a number initiatives. Some of the bigger ones being the work that we’ve called the expanding housing and neighbourhoods, which has looked a lot at, what traditionally people refer to as the yellowbelt, an area that for quite a long period of time, much of it only permitted single detached housing or low density housing. Now we’ve introduced permissions around around multiplexes, around garden suites and laneway suites. This type of sort of gentle density within the neighbourhoods. expanding out to major streets where you now have your 6-storey, 60-unit as of right development, expanding out along the avenues. We’ve now added just over 280 kilometres of new avenues. Most recently, we finally have our decision increasing densities around major transit station areas so there’s this spectrum of change and different scales of change across across the city. Those, I would say, are some of the more significant initiatives that have been undertaken over the past couple of years. 

There’s still work to do. On the avenues and on the major transit station areas, we have to match all of the new official plan policies with as the right zoning, so that work is underway. The major transit station area work has just begun as of the minister’s announcement this summer. We’ve set up a very aggressive timeline. To rezone 120 station areas all over the city is the kind of thing that usually can easily take a year or two or more, and we’re targeting late Spring/early Summer next year. That’s moving quickly because we know that it’s important to not just have the policies in your official plan, it’s important to match it with as of right zoning permissions.

Major Transit Station Areas and Protected Major Transit Station Areas in Toronto, August 2025, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

UrbanToronto: You’re foreseeing a time when developers are going to know from the outset what they can build, so they’ll be able to avoid having to go through rezoning for every project, like they do at the moment.

Jason Thorne: That’s the goal; that future development applications can go straight to site plan so they don’t need to go through a rezoning for the scales of buildings we’re talking about on our major streets, avenues, transit station areas, the multiplexes in the neighbourhoods. We’d like to see more of that not having to go through a rezoning process. Anytime you do a citywide initiative, you’re not looking at every individual property, so I expect there will still be cases where we’re going to see site specific applications for various reasons, but our goal is to create a base set of permissions that are ambitious, that are reasonable, that are appropriate, that are viable from the standpoint of the economics of development, and so that builders who want to build within those zoning envelopes are able to save time.

UrbanToronto: There’s public engagement process tied to rezoning applications, with consultations that are required. With just site plan, that’s not that situation. At the same time, the Province has limited appeals to the OLT recently, ostensibly to make sure they are not a frivolous. How do you see a public engagement changing over the next while?

Jason Thorne: it’s a good question. It is important to have engagement when you’re establishing upfront policies and when you’re establishing standards because they do become as-of-right permissions for future development. So I know sometimes there are people who think that they’d like those types of initiatives to move more quickly, but I think consultation is really important to have at the stages of policy making, and regulation setting, because then they do establish something that does not have consultation when it’s an individual specific application. I think a good time to engage the community is at the front end, when you’re doing a secondary plan, when you’re doing an initiative like the work we’re doing on the avenues. (We’re doing consultations on the 1st set of avenues right now.) Those are important conversations because they do create a set of permissions that we certainly hope developers will take advantage of in the years to come.

UrbanToronto: In regards to the Avenues, we’ve gone through a big change in the City’s mid-rise design guidelines in the last while as well. Previously, they required terracing, or what some call a wedding cake style, down to adjacent low-rise neighbourhoods. That’s no longer the case. Can you talk a little bit about that? And what you would like to see out of Avenues buildings?

Example diagram from Mid-rise Design Guidelines Draft, iamge courtesy of the City of Toronto

Jason Thorne: Design guidelines is something that should evolve over time. We’ve seen that over many years the guidelines evolve in the response to, changing priorities, changing understanding. There’s very interesting recent work done around the mid-rise guidelines and what their impacts are in terms of climate change and embodied carbon, and these kinds of things that we’re talking about more now than we did a decade ago. Those have been important changes as well for the city. Obviously, there’s still some big pieces of work we have to do from a zoning standpoint, the major transportation areas being a big one, the avenues being a big one. That’s continued work about permitting more types of housing in more parts of the city. 

But, what do we need to do to actually turn all the new permissions now into actual housing, because that is the goal. An updated policy or plan or zoning by-law doesn’t actually result in new housing getting built… So my staff and I meet with builders and developers, architects and planners, a lot around the current state of the market — it is a concern — and what are the continuing barriers to actually getting shovels in the ground? A lot of the conversation more recently has been around, ‘okay, we’ve got permissions, and that’s great, and that was the necessary first thing to do… but now, what are the standards, the regulations, the requirements, the processes, that may be adding cost to development and impeding the delivery and impeding turning those permissions into housing? 

So some of the work we’re looking at, especially focused at the moment around the mid-rise scale — because a lot of the recent permissions around major streets around avenues have been at that mid-rise scale — what do we need to do to unlock mid-rise development now that we have these new permissions in place? And so here you start to get into a much more granular set of discussions around issues like internal amenity space requirements, design details, how you do loading and garbage collection, all of these kinds of things that are, somewhat maybe smaller issues individually, but in the aggregate can have an impact on whether or not a development is is viable and whether or not you can actually build the thing that the zoning says you’re now allowed to build? And so that’s where a lot of our attention is going to be in the months to come. There’s a lot of work there to be done. There’s a lot of good research that we can build on, but, that’s where people can expect to see some of our planning activity in the coming months.

Toronto Avenues Designations, Existing and Additions, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

UrbanToronto: So, the focus is get more housing built…, but it can’t be the department’s only concern as liveability has got to be behind everything? I’m wondering how you see the planning department playing a role in creating a more liveable city as we densify.

Jason Thorne: In any conversation about housing, that’s such a high priority these days. The way I’ve put it before is it can’t just be about the quantity of housing we’re building, it’s got to be about the quality of neighbourhoods we’re creating. And that’s a big part of what the role of city planning is. Yes, we need to make sure that we have the policies and the process is in place to unlock a lot of housing. But I believe very strongly that design absolutely still matters, that climate resiliency and energy performance absolutely still matters, that all of the elements of a quality neighbourhood — the walkability, the vibrancy of the streets — those are all things that we have to make sure are part and parcel of the development that’s happening. 

Likewise, we have to make sure that it’s not just housing that’s getting created. We have to make sure that we have employment uses. We have to make sure that we have the parks and the rec centres and the libraries and the transit investments, and that’s what I hear probably most of all when I’m out speaking to neighbourhood groups, which I do quite often. A lot of the questions I get asked are, ‘Okay, we’ve got all this growth coming to our city and to our neighbourhood. Are we going to have the parks? Are we going to have the transit investments?’ So a lot of what my team does and what city planning does is we work with all of our partners and other parts of the City who deliver those services and make sure that we’re aligned in terms of where we see the growth happening, how they’re doing their parkland strategy, how they’re doing their recreational facilities masterplan, all of these important elements, which to me are as much, certainly as much about city building and even as much about housing as anything else we do because, if we want people to want to live here, and if we want people to stay here, then we have to make sure that we’re, complementing that growth and aligning that growth with all of these other things that make for great neighbourhoods.

Bike lanes and sidewalk patios, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

UrbanToronto: 

We’ve had a couple trunk subway lines for years and we’re getting a lot more rapid transit soon through new LRT and subways, but we’re also going to have a little bit of a revolution over the coming years as GO switches from commuter rail to regional rail. GO’s been seen as a way for people from Mississauga, Richmond Hill, or Oshawa to get downtown, whereas it’s going to become a part more part of the average Torontonian’s transit trip as improvements come. When a GO train is going to show up at 1) more stations within the city, and 2) frequently enough where people will consider it a good option, how do you see that changing Toronto?

Jason Thorne

I’ve moved around the city, from one part to another, on GO Transit or on UP Express, as well as on TTC, as well as on my bike. I mentioned earlier how in some ways, the, DNA of the city is being rewritten. Part of that, I think, is some of the work we’re doing around zoning and policies. Transit is also part of that DNA. And that’s fundamentally changing. We are seeing an unprecedented level of investment in transit right now, very little of which is actually open yet. So for the most part, right now, people have experienced transit as construction projects. But very soon, we’re going to actually experience transit as new services and new connections. I don’t think we’ve started to really see and grasp the impact that all of that investment is going to have in the city. And I think the combination of of those 2 things, the transit investment, the kind of the opening up of of zoning and policy permissions for new development. I think we’re going to see a more distributed growth pattern in the city than we have seen historically. I think that the growth centres, key nodes, and corridors will continue to be magnets for growth, but we’re going to see other opportunities start to open up. I think we’re going to see Toronto continue to evolve into into a more urban place. And I think that’s pretty exciting.

We do fundamentally have to think about what does the mobility system and the mobility network of 4 million people look like? Because, you know, not be long before we’re a city of 4 million people, and that does mean we have to think very carefully about what are the most efficient ways to move people around? We can’t move a city of 4 million the same way we’ve moved a city of 3 or 2 million, which is why to me, those transit investments are so important. Why the design of new buildings and neighbourhoods and streets to encourage walkability is important and why cycling is so important.

Exisitng and Future Transit Network, image courtesy of the City of Toronto

UrbanToronto: We’ll get deeper into cycling another time, but is there anything you would like to underline before we wrap up bring up this talk?

Jason Thorne: In any discussion around housing right now, we have to acknowledge that we’re in a really tough market environment, a tough economic environment, and I think it’s something that we think about every day here in City Hall and in the Planning Department, and it’s always important for planners and developers and builders and architects to work together to find solutions, now probably more than ever. Also, I’ll pay a compliment to your website around the importance of design and recognising the importance of good quality architecture, both whether it’s buildings, whether it’s public spaces, whether it’s parks. I know that’s something that you guys promote in your work, and celebrate when projects come forward. It’s important because the buildings we build today are going to be here for a very long time, so we want them to be cherished 50, 60, 70 years from now. We want to build the kinds of buildings today that heritage preservationists are going to fight to protect 50 years from now. It’s also important, though, in terms of communicating to our residents that taller buildings, that towers, that multiplexes, that mid-rise buildings can be beautiful buildings. And I think that will go a long way to building more sort of acceptance and frankly excitement about the opportunity for the growth that we’re seeing. This is fundamentally important. I do appreciate that that’s something you guys typically call out and celebrate!

UrbanToronto: Thanks for your time, Jason. Catch you again!

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UrbanToronto’s research and data service, UTPro, provides comprehensive data on construction projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe—from proposal through to completion. Other services include Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.​

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Thank you to the companies joining UrbanToronto to celebrate State of Housing Month.