Brigitte Shim (of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects) invited Gabriel Fain and I to the Daniels Faculty this morning (at the University of Toronto) to talk about 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.
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