Yesterday morning I had coffee with a good friend of mine and fellow city geek. We don’t connect nearly as often as I’d like, but when we do we always have great conversations about cities and about Toronto.

One of the things he asked me was whether I was still loving Toronto. And I responded by saying absolutely. We then both agreed that there are a lot of exciting things happening in the city right now. 

But I qualified this statement by saying that I wish we were bolder. I wish we took more chances. Because while it’s great that we’re doing things like building more bike lanes and intensifying our growth centers, lots of other cities are doing those things as well.

To be a leading city, you have to be prepared to do things that other cities think are wrong or won’t work and that are truly remarkable. Whether you’re city, company, or an individual, following trends is never enough.

Take for example the dramatic anti-pollution measures that were recently announced by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo:

By 2020, no diesel fuel at all will be burnt within Paris. Regular cars will be banned outright from its more polluted roads, which will be open solely to electric and hybrid vehicles. Meanwhile, the city’s most central districts (the first four arrondissements) will be barred to all but residents’ vehicles, deliveries, and emergency services, transforming Paris’ Right Bank core into a semi-pedestrian zone. As a counterbalance, the number of cycle lanes will be doubled by 2020, while the city will fund an extended electric bikeshare scheme to encourage more people to get on two wheels. “I want us to be exemplary” Mayor Hidalgo has declared. 

That’s how you win hearts: by being exemplary.

As always though, I’m incredibly optimistic about the future. Toronto has a new leader at its helm and I know that there are a lot of passionate people in this city who care deeply about its future. I am certainly one of them.

Image: Not my actual coffee (via Flickr)

It feels really good to have shared the details about my laneway project yesterday. It’s a project I’ve been working on for a few years now, and – though I’ve spoken to architects, engineers, and city staff about the project – I hadn’t really gone public with it. And I’m happy I did.

I got a lot of great feedback from the twittersphere. In fact, I didn’t receive one negative comment about the idea of a laneway house in Toronto. Everyone seemed to think it was a great idea and many expressed their dismay with the city’s reticence to formally support them.

I also received a number of encouraging emails, one of which was from a resident of the Toronto Islands. And he raised a really great point: Toronto already has a very successful community of laneway-like houses and it’s called the Toronto Islands.

The streets are no wider than the laneways we have here on the mainland (and even smaller in some cases) and yet there are about 250 houses serving a population of roughly 750. He went on to mention that they even have “downsized garbage trucks”, which are used to navigate the small, car-free streets of the Toronto Islands.

What this reinforces is that our aversion to laneway housing is not because we can’t figure out the logistics of how to service them. We can and are already doing that. If we can figure out how to do that on the islands, I’m pretty sure that we could also figure out how to do it on the mainland. 

So what this really comes down is that there isn’t the political will to make this happen. And there isn’t that will, I’m guessing, because there’s a fear of upsetting the established neighborhoods. That’s why Ontario’s Places to Grow Act (2005) was deliberate in concentrating growth in specific areas of the city – it meant that we could say that the rest of the city would receive little to no growth.

We’ve since revised that position with the push to intensify our Avenues with mid-rise buildings. But just as we went from high-rise to mid-rise intensification, I think it’s only a matter of time before low-rise intensification starts to also happen.

I firmly believe that the demand is already there for laneway housing (the Lanehouse on Bartlett pretty much sold out in one evening). It’s simply a matter of now figuring out the supply side of this equation.

Image: Ward’s Island (Toronto Islands)

Earlier this week my good friend Gabriel Fain emailed me a bunch of photos from his recent trip to Melbourne. Gabriel and I went to architecture school together here in Toronto and we often go back and forth on city building issues.

Here are the photos he sent me of Bourke Street in Melbourne:

The comparison he drew in his email was to that of Bloor Street in Toronto, except with a few major differences: Bourke Street is pedestrian only (except for a tram running down the middle of it). It has no curbs. There’s lots of inviting seating. And the connecting cross street laneways are fully activated. He then ended by saying that "Toronto is light years behind Melbourne and Sydney in the terms of the quality of the public space.“ 

I replied and asked if I could turn his email into an ATC post. He responded by saying that he was hoping I would, and then sent me another photo – this time of one of the laneways:

Melbourne’s laneways and arcades are celebrated around the world. What was once just residual space, became a catalyst for the revitalization of the city’s central business district in the 1990s and a major tourist destination. But all it really took was a change in thinking. It took somebody to believe that the space used for garbage collection, could also be used for a thriving culture of intimate al fresco dining.

In Toronto, I think we’re headed in the right direction in terms of our thinking, but that we’re not yet being bold enough. The recent revitalization of Market Street in my neighborhood (St. Lawrence) is a wonderful example of putting pedestrians first and a wonderful street overall. Like Bourke Street, it also doesn’t have curbs (this is how you know pedestrians matter). But it was also a prime candidate for a pedestrian-only street. Especially given that Market Lane to the north is already one (though in desperate need of renewal). 

For a number of reasons though, pedestrian-only streets are difficult to accept here in Toronto. I’ve been shot down many times in real estate meetings for arguing that we should have them in our city. Oftentimes people say it’s because of our harsh climate. But in my view, that’s all the more reason to have them. When the weather is nice, we should be enjoying our public spaces to the fullest. Why only build to the worst case scenario? Plus, they work in Scandinavia.

We’ve also done it before. In the early 1970s (when I wasn’t around), a portion of Yonge Street was piloted as a pedestrian-only mall – a remarkably forward-thinking achievement for that era of city building. So I’m confident that it can be done and that we’ll one day do it again.