# 4 predictions for Toronto's laneways By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) ยท 2024-03-08 architecture, gabriel-fain-architects, garden-suite, laneway-housing, laneway-suite, shim-sutcliffe-architects, toronto, toronto-laneways, urbanism --- Brigitte Shim (of [Shim-Sutcliffe Architects](https://www.shim-sutcliffe.com/)) invited [Gabriel Fain](https://gabrielfain.com/) and I to the [Daniels Faculty](https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/) this morning (at the University of Toronto) to talk about [Mackay Laneway House](https://www.globizen.com/mackay-laneway-house). It was for a class on laneway housing and, as it turns out, some of the students had been using MLH as a case study. That's pretty cool, although the primary lesson is probably "don't build next to large trees." Following the presentation, we had a good discussion about laneways, and it reminded me of some of the things that I believe to be true. More specifically, it reminded me of what I think will happen in the future: * **Bona Fide Streets**: Laneways will become bona fide streets. Meaning, they'll get real names (most don't have one today) and they'll get serviced. Today, laneway suites are typically serviced via the main/existing house. * **Severable Lots**: Laneway lots will become severable. Right now this is strongly discouraged, because the intent is to create new rental housing and not new for-sale housing. * **Market Inversion**: Once these lots become severable, the market will then be able to decide which frontage is most valuable -- the current street side or the laneway side. Maybe some get split right down the middle (50/50) or maybe some get biased toward one frontage. Either way, I think it will become common for the laneway frontage to be _more_ desirable given its intimate scale and pedestrian orientation. * **Mixed-Use**: Non-residential uses will become allowed. I have no idea when all of this might happen, but I believe it _will_ happen. So I wanted to write it down publicly. --- *Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/4-predictions-for-torontos-laneways)*