An outgoing councillor seemingly trying to draw attention to a “too-tall building” instead brought focus on the city’s low density-zoned areas with critics and city planners saying the real travesty is not a 75-storey highrise in the distance but the lack of higher-density housing options in the city’s so-called yellowbelt.

Earlier this week, outgoing city councillor Janet Davis tweeted a picture of a stretch of the Danforth facing west, and expressed her displeasure with the view of a tall building about three kilometres away — the 257-metre-high mixed-use skyscraper at Bloor and Yonge Sts.

Public reaction was swift. Many on Twitter pointed out that the building, called One Bloor East, is far from Danforth and is located at a busy intersection where even taller buildings are bound to arrive. Others complained that Danforth itself has many too-short structures and should get more developments.

“Yonge/Bloor is one of the most transit connected intersections — that’s precisely where we need to direct this sort of development,” tweeted Brad Bradford, councillor-elect for Ward 19, Beaches-East York. “In a city with a housing crisis, we need to provide a variety of options for people. Some will be in tall towers. And that’s OK.”

Davis did not respond to the Star’s repeated requests for comment.

Urban planners and thinkers say Torontonians need to shelve any NIMBYism toward tall buildings — both nearby and in their sightline — in order to accommodate the city’s growing population.

“When I see people complaining that there’s a condominium or apartment tower too close to their $1.5 million home, that sounds to me like ‘I’ve got my situation figured out and I don’t really care if you have no entry into this neighbourhood, into this city,’” said Glyn Bowerman, Spacing magazine’s managing editor.

Last year a group of residents in The Annex, which included author Margaret Atwood, were up in arms against a proposal for a midrise condo development in their neighbourhood.

“We’re the fourth largest city in North America,” he said, adding we can’t all live in two-storey houses.

Bowerman said tall buildings springing up at the “dead centre” of a major city shouldn’t surprise anyone.

“No one complains about being able to see the CN Tower from their window,” he said.

Experts in urban planning say the height of buildings in the core has a direct correlation to the growth of the city and its population. Cities have to build up so that people don’t move out, said Richard Joy, executive director of Urban Land Institute Toronto.

“If height at the intersection of Canada’s two busiest transit lines is objectionable, one wonders where it is acceptable,” he said. “It’s quite essential that we allow tall buildings in the right places.”

He said there are a lot of things to be considered when tall buildings are being approved, such as good urban design and public realms at the sites. But, he said, Toronto’s ability to accommodate density in the core has made it a “particularly strong city” in comparison to other large metropolitan areas.

Urban planner and researcher Cheryll Case said instead of focusing on how tall a building is, the discussions should centre around spreading the density across neighbourhoods. Davis’s photo appeared to be taken from Greektown, an area made up of predominantly semi-detached houses.

Tall buildings in urban areas, she said, give residents access to retail, jobs, recreational amenities and walkability, and such opportunities need to be shared among various pockets of the city.

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“Maybe there needs to be more developmental housing in the Danforth area as well,” Case said.

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The city’s manager of community planning Kyle Knoeck said Danforth Ave. has been identified as a major street with an opportunity to intensify and accommodate growth, but only in the form of midrise development. Some of those developments have already begun in the eastern stretch between Coxwell and Victoria Park Aves., and planning studies for similar projects in the western portion towards the Don Valley Pkwy. are planned for next year, he said.

“It’s important to recognize that it’s not just planning policies that determine how the city grows and changes. There are also market forces there and the intentions of land owners,” he said.

“Someone might decide not to redevelop because they’ve got an existing building that works really well, and is well occupied by retail stores and is generating good income.”

Renowned urban planner and co-founder of Ryerson’s City Building Institute, Ken Greenberg, said the arrival of hyper-tall buildings is a reflection of a much-deeper problem: the extreme need for more housing options in and around the city.

“We are pushing developments into very limited areas,” he said about the growing concentration of highrise condo and apartment buildings in the downtown core. Just as One Bloor East is completed, another even taller building, The One, is under construction next to it on the west side of Yonge St.

“I’m not against density. I love density. I love Manhattan or Tokyo or Hong Kong,” he said.

“But we’re heading to an extreme kind of asymmetry in the way we’re developing because we’ve made so many areas off limits, either through regulatory frameworks or through a kind of NIMBY resistance.”

A healthier solution, Greenberg said, would be to unlock the so-called yellow belt — thousands of hectares that have been designated exclusively for single-family detached homes and lowrise developments, partly to preserve the character of neighbourhoods — and allow for more robust developments on the city’s main streets and into the inner suburbs. Areas such as Scarborough and North York could benefit from the amenities that usually come with new highrise developments, he said.

“We have to spread (higher density) development much more evenly. A whole different distribution strategy is needed to take the pressure off this extreme development that may not be sustainable in the long run,” he said.

“The odd tall building here and there is fine, but if we end up having such an overconcentration of development in so few areas, I think it ends up being problematic.”