In Azure Magazine, Kelly Alvarez Doran and Mitchell May explore how Toronto’s car-centric design standards and loading regulations are reshaping the city’s retail landscape. Their analysis highlights how requirements like Type G loading spaces and parking ramps are consuming valuable ground-floor space in new developments, displacing small businesses and diminishing the vibrancy of Toronto’s iconic commercial streets.

Toronto is often described as a city of neighbourhoods. The most multicultural city in North America is home to 158 distinct “villages,” “littles,” and “towns,” each reflecting the cuisine, cultural traditions, and civic institutions of its surrounding residents, and each self-identifying through a clustering of businesses, banks, bars, grocers and more that punctuate Toronto’s otherwise monotonous grid of avenues.