I Grew up without a Backyard and Turned out Ok. Your Kids Will Too.

Family Day is supposed to be about spending time with our families. But because we think that raising a family must mean having a backyard, we spend the rest of the year commuting.

One of my greatest surprises when I moved to Toronto, was, "how come there are so many single-family houses in the downtown?" Because outside of North America, there is no such thing as detached and semi-detached in the city centre or right next to a subway station. But here, single-family homes are the way a family should live, and if you don't raise your kids in a house, with a backyard, something must be terribly wrong.

There are two sides to this cultural perception. The mild side of it is that people would choose to raise children in a house even when the personal price to pay is very high. We lived in an apartment in a central area and were repeatedly told that "when you have children, you will understand why you need to be in a house." When I worked on a residential high-rise building, still new to Canada, I discussed with a colleague architect if some of the units could be made larger to work for families. He was bewildered by the idea, saying that “condos are not for families; it's just boxes."

And it's no huge surprise that people think single-family houses are the only right way to live. Not only was it the norm for so long, but the system worked well in providing affordable housing: single-family houses were built on farmland, cheaply and quickly.

But in large cities, this model had broken down when all the easily-accessible developable land had been consumed and traffic congestion increased. As a result, building single-family houses is no longer a viable way to achieve affordability. The only effective solution for many people is family-friendly housing in multi-unit buildings, in medium and high densities.

Now for some, condos, or "boxes," would never be an acceptable option. Some of my friends moved to single-family homes once they had children. And as housing prices were going up, the locations where they moved were increasingly further from their workplaces and accessible transit. For me, when you have children, choosing a distant area that is poorly served by transit seems like the illogical choice: you will have much less time to spend with your kids when you have a long commute, and when they grow, their independence will be extremely limited by the need to be chauffeured around.

But that’s their choice, and they are willing to pay the price for it.

For the rest of us, who don’t care about a backyard or can’t afford a house anyway, condos are the simple and obvious solution to the affordability issue. At a higher density, a piece of land can accommodate more units, allowing us to easily build enough housing for everyone in the most accessible, most desirable areas.

But in reality, this alternative does not exist. Few condo units are large enough for families, and when they are, they are very expensive and have very high condo fees. The large condos are really a product for the rich, not for families. So it's not as simple as giving back on the backyard. As much as cultural acceptance of raising families in condos is critical, it's far from enough.

Why are these large condos so rare and why are they expensive to buy and to maintain?

There are two answers. The first answer is about economics, which is quite simple to explain. Condos in large cities are expensive because our planning systems only allow them in a handful of locations; they are also expensive to build because we require expensive underground parking and indoor amenities. And, since condos are expensive in general, developers don't build large units since they are hard to sell.

If the reasons for the problem were just economical, it would be easy to solve by adjusting our density. We could allow development in all the areas with transit access, and remove requirements for parking and amenity areas.

But the issue is not economical. The second and deeper answer to the inaffordability of family units is our cultural bias against condos. Because the thing is, this bias is not limited to people’s decisions about where they are going to live. It goes much deeper: to deciding for other people that they need to live in houses, and, if there are going to be condos, then they should be away from the good people who do live in houses, maybe in some leftover place facing the freeway.

"Enough with the condos. Build real houses for real people." This is a real response from a person to a development proposal in their area, but the attitude is so prevalent that it is almost generic. And this attitude is what defines our approach to planning growth in our cities - the big focus is on preventing development near single-family houses.

The fact that in Canada (outside Quebec) we built single-family houses in prime central locations in the first place is just a historical coincidence, just the result of Canadian Cities experiencing their explosive growth in the age of the car and the streetcar.

But today, we "protect" these houses from intensification and maintain the status quo in a time of crises of housing affordability, congestion and municipal infrastructure funding. This is the manifestation of the same approach that "real" housing for "real" people is single-family houses with backyards, this time by people who make the decisions for us.

Now of course, if you want to live in single-family home, you are welcome to do it. Most of the land in Canadian cities is not central enough or well-connected enough to justify much else but single-family homes. But don’t assume that is the only right way to live. And if you live in a single-family home in a large city and have access to good transit – congratulations, you live in real luxury. But you’re not entitled to preventing others from making more of this limited resource.

If Family Day is about spending time with your family, how about the freedom of not fixing something in your house every weekend, and instead, getting a membership to the nearby museum? Or, how about not spending three or four hours per day commuting, just so that you can live in a house?

But more importantly, how about not assuming you should control how other families are allowed to live? And how about not forcing other families into long commutes since allowing condos near where you live is not to your taste?