The Missing Mid-Rise

From the windows of our West End office, downtown skyscrapers – and construction cranes – unfold across the horizon in dramatic peaks, framing a foreground of low-slung houses. Our city leads the continent in high-rise residential construction, and it shows. And as towers transform Toronto, the two diametric extremes of soaring condominiums and single-family dwellings are beginning to characterize the city. Enter the residential mid-rise.

Mid-rise buildings are a transitional presence bridging the urban divide, offering transit- and pedestrian-friendly density at the human scale. Significantly taller than the celebrated “missing middle” typologies (like stacked townhouses and duplexes), these structures