I promise that this post won’t be all about laneways.
This afternoon Erin Davis of Torontoist published a post called: Are Laneway Suites a Solution to Toronto’s Housing Crisis?
There’s a quote in it from yours truly:
Brandon Donnelly, a 34-year-old real estate developer, has submitted plans to the City to build a laneway home behind the house he owns in the St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street area. “Look, nobody is claiming that laneway housing is going to solve all of our affordable housing woes. But it will do two important things. One, it will unlock new ground-related housing, which is precisely the kind of housing that we’re no longer able to build at scale. And two, it will create additional rental housing,” says Donnelly.
But I particularly like this one from Christopher Hume – urban affairs columnist at the Toronto Star:
“But the City has all kinds of rules against it—‘You can’t do it for this reason, you can’t do it for that reason; oh no, we can’t have that!’ Why? Says who and for what reason?
This morning my friend Alex Bozikovic also published a piece on Toronto’s new 1.75km of public space under the Gardiner Expressway called The Bentway. It’s currently under construction and will open this winter.
The timing of his article is actually quite serendipitous because I was in the area last night and as I walked past the construction site I couldn’t help but think to myself: “This is going to be absolutely brilliant once it’s done. Complete game changer for the area.”
My point with these two examples is that in both cases we are rethinking – or at least trying to rethink – neglected urban spaces. It’s about finding value where no additional value was thought to be found. And I love that.
Conventional wisdom has told us that our laneways and the spaces under our elevated Gardiner Expressway are not spaces to be celebrated. They are utilitarian at best and they are to be completely ignored at worst.
But when The Bentway opens this winter I have no doubt in my mind that it will prove conventional wisdom entirely wrong. Who wants to hang out under an elevated highway? Watch the entire city.
One day I believe that we will also look back on our laneways just as we look back at the The Bentway before it became The Bentway. We will ask ourselves: How did we overlook this for so long?
Image: PUBLIC WORK via the Globe and Mail
Today I learned that Councillor Ana Bailão and Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon have put forward a motion to the June 13, 2017 Toronto and East York Community Council. It asks the Chief Planner and City Planning to undertake further public consultation and report back in Q1 2018 with an implementation strategy for laneway suites in this part of the city.
This is an insanely great step forward. Here is the summary from the motion:
We have been working with Lanescape and Evergreen since early 2016 to advance the dialogue around ‘laneway suites’ in order to put forward a set of responsible performance standards that address the aspirations, sensitivities and needs of residents in our communities.
As part of the work undertaken by the team, we engaged with over 3,000 residents though an extensive consultation process that included an online survey, written feedback, in-person consultations in Wards 18, 32 and a public consultation at the Evergreen Brick Works. The feedback received has been overwhelming positive and the team has taken steps to address the key issues raised by residents as part of the recommended performance standards.
Throughout this process, the team met with relevant City Divisions to seek feedback on how best to address the technical requirements for laneway suites and we have also sought to include your feedback into the performance standards that have been developed. We are also grateful to the City Planning and other Divisional staff who have provided their advice and feedback as the team worked to prepare this independent report and set of performance standards.
Toronto has more than 2,400 publically owned laneways, covering more than 250 linear kilometers of public space, which have the potential to become much more active, useful spaces in our urban fabric. Laneway suites can transform underutilized spaces such as rear garages and parking pads, into sensitively scaled housing, utilizing existing infrastructure and respecting the form and character of the dense, walkable neighbourhoods in the Toronto and East York District.
Laneway suites represent an important step forward in addressing the need for more “missing middle” housing and have the potential to add much needed rental units into the market. They can reshape our thinking about secondary suites, looking beyond the traditional basement apartment as a way to provide extra income or as a place for adult children, empty nesters and care-takers to live close to their family support networks.
We want to eliminate the excessive red tape and unnecessary costs associated with building a laneway suite in the current context by proposing thoughtful and sensitive policy changes for Toronto to join the other municipalities in Canada who have already allowed for laneway suites to be built.
We believe that the time has now come for Toronto to allow for laneway suites and therefore recommend the following.
What they are recommending is a set of performance standards for laneway suites. You can download the full report here. It’s called Laneway Suites: A new housing typology for Toronto, and it was prepared by Lanescape and Evergreen. I’ve mentioned both groups many times before on the blog.
I haven’t read through the entire report yet, but I’m thrilled to see this housing typology moving forward. I’ve been arguing for over a decade that laneway housing is an inevitable outcome for this city and it’s finally starting to feel a bit more real.
A big kudos and thank you to Councillor Ana Bailão, Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, their teams, and the folks at Lanescape and Evergreen for putting in the effort and sticking their neck out around this important initiative. We’re going to look back on this one day and wonder why it took so long.
But keep in mind that it’s still early days. So I would encourage you to visit this page, click “Submit Comments” on the top, and fire off a comment directly to Community Council. Tell them you love laneway suites to bits.
I’ve never been to Australia, so take everything I’m about to say in this post for what it’s worth. I also don’t know much about Sydney and Melbourne, other than the fact that I’ve studied the latter’s laneways and the tremendous impact they’ve had on revitalizing the CBD.
However, recently I’ve had a few close friends visit these cities for the first time and, since then, I have started noticing a trend. All of them come back and tell me the same thing, that they prefer Melbourne to Sydney. They say: “Yeah, Sydney is nice and beautiful and all, but it’s not all that exciting. Melbourne feels way more dynamic. Oh, and have you seen their laneways? You would love them.” That’s what they tell me.
So that’s what I have in my head when I read that Melbourne is now the fastest growing city in Australia; that it’s one of the most liveable cities in the world; and that by as early as 2031 it could take Sydney’s place as the biggest city in the country. Below is a chart from The Australian. If you can’t see it, click here.
#Melbourne could be bigger than #Sydney as early as 2031. What pulls population towards Melbourne? Cheaper housing!? https://t.co/rUg9rlXMP1 pic.twitter.com/iDFeJ737SB
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) May 26, 2017
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Some argue that this is happening because housing is cheaper in Melbourne (median dwelling price of ~$700,000 versus ~$1 million). And some argue it’s because the jobs are there and the city has become a cultural and sporting destination. Whatever the case may be, net migration is estimated to be somewhere around 100,000 people per year.
My own view – and I’ve made this argument before on the blog – is that we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of cool shit when it comes to cities. People vote with their feet more than ever today. And for a growing segment of the population, cities are a consumer good.
Indeed, in 2001, Edward Glaeser, Jed Kolko, and Albert Saiz penned a research paper called the Consumer city, where they argued precisely that. The premise was that historically we have tended to think of cities as being centers of production, but we should also be thinking about them as places of consumption.
Here’s an excerpt:
“But we believe that too little attention has been paid to the role of cities as centers of consumption. In the next century, as human beings continue to get richer, quality of life will become increasingly critical in determining the attractiveness of particular areas. After all, choosing a pleasant place to live is among the most natural ways to spend one’s money.”
This is why those coffee shops and cool laneways matter. Some cities have unfair natural advantages. Los Angeles has weather. Vancouver has mountains. Montreal has poutine. But for the rest of us, the amenities typically form part of the built environment. They are a product of our choices.