Yesterday Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal to my post about homes for families. His argument was that I missed a whole world of building typologies between single family homes and apartments. (Something that architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek calls “The Missing Middle”.)

Now he’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention it – other than provide an option in the survey for townhomes. And he’s right that it’s a tremendous opportunity for cities looking to increase housing supply and improve affordability.

But the reason I didn’t mention it in my survey is because, here in Toronto, we’re not very good at that middle scale.

I previously wrote a post talking about Toronto’s 3 stages of intensification. It went from high-rise to mid-rise, and then to low-rise intensification. And my argument was that we’re still in and figuring out the mid-rise scale. (There are challenges at this scale, but that deserves a separate post.)

Eventually though, I think we will get to low-rise intensification. And that will cover off many of the building typologies that Lloyd is talking about: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, my personal favorite, laneway houses.

This, of course, isn’t the case in every city. Many cities, such as Montreal, have a strong history of neighborhood-scaled apartments. Lloyd points that out in his article. But that’s not the case here in Toronto.

In fact, Toronto’s Official Plan explicitly designates these low-rise “Neighborhoods” as areas that are stable and should not see much intensification. And it was a great selling point for the Places to Grow Act: intensification here, but not there.

But I think this will change. Not because I’m a real estate developer and I think it should change, but because our current arrangement is causing a dramatic erosion of affordability at the low-rise/ground-related housing scale.

If it were up to me, and it most certainly is not, I would start with laneway housing. It’s a great way to intensify low-rise neighbourhoods without altering the character of the streets.

If you live in a single family neighborhood, I would especially love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. 

The garage shown above (with the pseudo green roof) is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of London. It measures about 11’ x 7’ and it – along with the site it sits on – is about to go up for auction.

It’s expected to go for more than £550,000 according to the DailyMail UK, which would make it the most expensive garage ever sold in the UK. The site area is 535 square foot – about the size of an average 1 bedroom condo in Toronto.

Below is an aerial view of the site. It basically looks to be residual land.

But as awkward as this site might appear, the expected value is being driven by the fact that planning permissions were granted to turn it into this:

It’s a 2 bedroom house that feels a lot like a laneway house. It certainly fits the description of “a house behind a house”, which is often how laneway housing gets described here in Toronto.

I wanted to share it because it supports my belief that, sooner or later, Toronto will come around to laneway housing. As property prices rise and affordability continues to erode, people will – quite justifiably – start looking in all sorts of new places for a decent urban home.

Many thanks to my friend Adrian for sending me the link.

Yesterday Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal to my post about homes for families. His argument was that I missed a whole world of building typologies between single family homes and apartments. (Something that architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek calls “The Missing Middle”.)

Now he’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention it – other than provide an option in the survey for townhomes. And he’s right that it’s a tremendous opportunity for cities looking to increase housing supply and improve affordability.

But the reason I didn’t mention it in my survey is because, here in Toronto, we’re not very good at that middle scale.

I previously wrote a post talking about Toronto’s 3 stages of intensification. It went from high-rise to mid-rise, and then to low-rise intensification. And my argument was that we’re still in and figuring out the mid-rise scale. (There are challenges at this scale, but that deserves a separate post.)

Eventually though, I think we will get to low-rise intensification. And that will cover off many of the building typologies that Lloyd is talking about: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, my personal favorite, laneway houses.

This, of course, isn’t the case in every city. Many cities, such as Montreal, have a strong history of neighborhood-scaled apartments. Lloyd points that out in his article. But that’s not the case here in Toronto.

In fact, Toronto’s Official Plan explicitly designates these low-rise “Neighborhoods” as areas that are stable and should not see much intensification. And it was a great selling point for the Places to Grow Act: intensification here, but not there.

But I think this will change. Not because I’m a real estate developer and I think it should change, but because our current arrangement is causing a dramatic erosion of affordability at the low-rise/ground-related housing scale.

If it were up to me, and it most certainly is not, I would start with laneway housing. It’s a great way to intensify low-rise neighbourhoods without altering the character of the streets.

If you live in a single family neighborhood, I would especially love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. 

The garage shown above (with the pseudo green roof) is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of London. It measures about 11’ x 7’ and it – along with the site it sits on – is about to go up for auction.

It’s expected to go for more than £550,000 according to the DailyMail UK, which would make it the most expensive garage ever sold in the UK. The site area is 535 square foot – about the size of an average 1 bedroom condo in Toronto.

Below is an aerial view of the site. It basically looks to be residual land.

But as awkward as this site might appear, the expected value is being driven by the fact that planning permissions were granted to turn it into this:

It’s a 2 bedroom house that feels a lot like a laneway house. It certainly fits the description of “a house behind a house”, which is often how laneway housing gets described here in Toronto.

I wanted to share it because it supports my belief that, sooner or later, Toronto will come around to laneway housing. As property prices rise and affordability continues to erode, people will – quite justifiably – start looking in all sorts of new places for a decent urban home.

Many thanks to my friend Adrian for sending me the link.