There is, of course, part of me that admires what King Charles III has been trying to do in Poundbury (a small master-planned community on the outskirts of Dorchester, England). It is a community that has deliberately rejected the modern suburban in favor of traditional main-street urbanism. It is denser than you'd expect. It has a mix of uses. And it has been generally designed around people, rather than the car.

On the other hand, I could never ever live there:

To live here is to live under Charles’s rules (it is not clear whether William intends to be more flexible). Currently, Poundbury residents are embroiled in a debate about windows: The Duchy says that only wooden sash windows are permitted. Many residents would like to replace theirs with vinyl or fibreglass windows, which are easier to maintain and, crucially, more energy-efficient – and Poundbury is theoretically a ecologically advanced town. So far, the Duchy is not willing to budge.

The last thing I want in my life is someone telling me what kind of windows I can install and what kind of architectural styles are suitable. Messy and organic urbanism suits me just fine.

The latest issue of Designlines magazine is about how Toronto is -- finally -- embracing laneway life. And one of the featured homes is none other than Mackay Laneway House. Pictured above is architect Gabriel Fain sitting on the front steps.

As some of you will know, MLH took over a decade to get built. I first did a design for the house back in 2009. Laneway housing seemed like such an obvious opportunity, and so I designed a compact house that could fit neatly within the confines of my 25-foot-wide backyard.

Technically, it was perfectly workable. But I could tell I was too early. After speaking with city staff, I immediately got the impression that this thing was not going to get approved. At least not now. So I shelved the project until 2017.

By this time, it was clear that laneway housing was on its way to becoming a reality in Toronto. It was simply a matter of time. And so Gabriel Fain and I decided to come up with a new design and try our luck at the Committee of Adjustment (we needed, I think, over a dozen zoning variances).

But it turns out that we were still too early. The project was immediately refused. After the decision, I had a few planning lawyers reach and offer to help me with a pro bono appeal. But I decided to wait until the new laneway policies came into force and the home could be built without any variances.

And that's exactly what we did. In the fall of 2020 we submitted for a building permit, and about 6 weeks later it arrived. The home was then built that winter and it went up on the market for rent in March 2021. It rented right away, even in the midst of intermittent COVID lockdowns.

At this point, it's hard to imagine that this form of housing was once illegal. Hundreds of permits have already been issued and this number is only going to increase. In fact, I believe that the humble laneway house is destined to become a defining characteristic of Toronto's urban landscape.

Toronto is finally embracing laneway life.

I went out this morning to grab coffee from around the corner and, on my way back home, I ran into two people in the elevator that, from what I could glean, had hit the same button in the elevator and then struck up a conversation. He asked if she had just recently moved into the building. She responded with no, and that she usually doesn't see anyone else on their floor. He was surprised by this response and said that he knows everybody on the floor.

Nearly a hundred years ago, architect Le Corbusier, as well as others, had the idea of creating "streets in the sky." Perhaps the most famous example of this concept is his Unité d'Habitation in Marseille (pictured above). Now a UNESCO World Heritage building because of its role in the development of modernist architecture, the building houses five "streets", two of which were intended to be fully-fledged shopping streets. These streets house(d) things like shops, restaurants, galleries, and even a hotel.

Le Corbusier was famous for his desire to create machines for living in. And these streets in the sky were part of this philosophy. The idea was that by having all of the things you needed under one roof, you would then be able to live an efficient, productive, and enjoyable life. Architecture and design could do that for you.

Of course, the other reason for this thinking was that we needed to get people away from cars. As the car became more commonplace in cities, conflicts arose. And architects began to grapple with how best to separate people and cars. One obvious solution was to simply lift people up and off the ground so that the street could be freed up for cars to do their thing. This was going to be the future.

The pitfalls of this line of thinking have since then been widely documented. And today, I think it's pretty clear that most cities are in fact taking the opposite approach. Instead of removing people, they are removing cars through pedestrianization projects. Some of these projects are temporary, but many are also permanent. This happening almost everywhere from Toronto to Sao Paulo.

The other problem is that it's extremely challenging to make retail uses work way up in the sky. And that's why even second floor retail spaces often struggle compared to those on the ground floor. As I understand it, the non-residential tenancies in Marseille's Unité d'Habitation have naturally evolved from being retail-centric to being more office-like. Supposedly you'll now find architects and medical offices, which is not at all surprising.

But that doesn't mean that Le Corbusier's instincts weren't directionally right. We now have lots of examples of tall buildings housing an intense mix of uses and public functions. And in the case of multi-family buildings, the corridors do often serve as a kind of street. I happen to live off of one that houses our building's amenities. And so in addition to just running into neighbors, I'll often run into the odd birthday party or Sunday afternoon sumo-suit party. True story!

It may not be the Champs-Élysées, but it is a kind of street for living.

Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash