Tall Buildings exist in many parts of the City, in the Downtown, in the Centres, along parts of the waterfront, at some subway stops and in clusters around the City. These individual buildings and groups of buildings can be seen rising above the forest cover and the City's low scaled residential and employment areas.

Tall buildings are desirable in the right places but they don't belong everywhere. When appropriately located and designed, tall buildings can support and draw attention to the city structure, visually reinforcing our civic centres and other areas of civic importance. In the context of Toronto's relatively flat topography, tall buildings help define the City's image. When the quality of architecture and site design is emphasized, tall buildings become important city landmarks.

When poorly located and designed, tall buildings can physically and visually overwhelm adjacent streets, parks and neighbourhoods. They can block sunlight, views of the sky and create uncomfortable wind conditions in adjacent streets, parks and open space, and create traffic congestion. For these reasons, tall buildings come with larger civic responsibilities and obligations than other buildings.

Summary of the Tall Building Guidelines

The Tall Building Guidelines provide guidance to the form of tall building development that will achieve joint Official Plan goals of enhancing the public realm and fitting in with neighbouring development. The Guidelines identify and compile the key urban design criteria that should be considered in the evaluation of tall building proposals, and specify how the applicant will demonstrate that these criteria have been satisfactorily addressed. The guidelines organize tall building design criteria under five principal headings: Site Context; Site and Building Organization; Building Massing, Pedestrian Realm, and Sustainable Design.

The Tall Building Guidelines focus attention to the design of tall buildings on a site. Issues related to the appropriate location for new tall buildings, from a City-wide perspective, are addressed within the Official Plan, Secondary Plans, or other area-specific policies.

Download a copy of the Tall Building Guidelines (PDF 2713KB)

Study Area

The Tall Building Guidelines have City-wide application.

Background

Section 3.1.3 of the City’s Official Plan addresses built form policies for tall buildings. The prominence of tall buildings imposes larger civic responsibilities and obligations on their design. The Official Plan policies on tall buildings are general, relating to the form of the building itself and considerations of neighbourhood context and fit. It was anticipated that more detailed urban design guidelines, linked where possible to measurable criteria and qualitative indicators, would be required to assist City staff in the review of tall building applications and the implementation of the Official Plan’s built form policies.

The City of Toronto retained Urbana Architects/HOK Canada in October, 2003 to assist in the development of planning and urban design criteria for the review of planning proposals involving tall buildings. City Council adopted the resulting study, titled “Design Criteria for the Review of Tall Building Proposals” at its meeting of July 25-27, 2006. In adopting this report, Council authorized implementation of the Tall Building Design Guidelines for a test period of 1 year. 

City Council subsequently extended this test period by an additional two years, to January 2010, in order to allow for a greater period of testing through the review of tall building development proposals.

In May 2010, City Planning staff provided City Council with an evaluation of the Tall Building Guidelines. This report recommended the guidelines continue to be used in the evaluation of tall building development proposals throughout the City. The report was adopted by City Council, who directed staff to continue applying the Guidelines when reviewing tall building development proposals.

Next Steps/Implementation

The current Guidelines were produced in 2006. Since this time, they have been used by staff to assist with the review of numerous tall building proposals in all districts of the City. Through this application, and through feedback provided by other stakeholders including the design and development industry, the need for some improvements to the guidelines has been identified. An example of some suggested improvements are as follows:

• Provide more ‘suburban’ examples and scenarios, in response to feedback that the Guidelines are too ‘downtown’ focussed;
• Increase  the amount of diagrams, photos or illustrations, in response to feedback that the document is too descriptive and lengthy;
• Standardize the layout with the City of Toronto consolidated urban design guidelines template; and
• Provide more information about sustainable building design practices.

City Planning staff are currently examining how the Tall Building Guidelines could be improved through these and other potential changes with the intention of reporting back to Council with regard to these improvements in the second or third quarter of 2012.

Relationship to the "Downtown Tall Buildings Project"

"Tall Buildings, Inviting Change in Downtown Toronto" was an area-specific Consultant's Study undertaken with the understanding that the Downtown is experiencing unique pressures related to the development of tall buildings. The Study consisted of two components. Firstly, it addressed issues of where tall buildings should be located in the Downtown. Secondly, it included a set of "performance standards" relating to how buildings should be designed to fit appropriately within their Downtown context. City Planning is currently seeking City Council adoption of a "vision" and a set of performance standards for Downtown tall buildings applications that have been informed by this Study. Once adopted, the Downtown-based Tall Building Guidelines will be consolidated with the City-wide Tall Building Guidelines, as part of the update that staff have undertaken to report back to Council about, in the second or third quarter of 2012.

Send Questions/Comments to tallbuildings@toronto.ca.