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

I’m writing this post from the Lakeview Lounge at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise. The view of the (frozen) lake and mountains is absolutely stunning (see above). I can totally see why people move to the Rockies and never leave. Frankly, I’m not sure how I’m going to ever go home ;)

This Chateau was first built up in the late 19th century by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Developed as a way to encourage ridership and fund railway expansion, its position on the eastern edge of Lake Louise was probably a fairly obvious choice (although only when accompanied by rail). It’s designed to take full advantage of the views of the lake and the mountains.

Chateau Lake Louise ~ by Carmen Brown on 500px

But it’s not always this easy to predict or select where development should happen and will happen next.

Yesterday I was quoted in a Torontoist article talking about the rise of Dovercourt Village in Toronto – which is a topic I covered here on ATC about a month ago.

The interesting thing about Dovercourt Village – and specifically Geary Avenue – is that they seem like unlikely places for new investment. Many of the buildings aren’t particularly beautiful. And there’s a rail line and a set of power lines running through the middle of it.

But if the buzz around Dovercourt Village proves to be true, then it could very well end up as a new yuppy enclave in the city. I’m not going to debate the merits of gentrification today, but I think it’s interesting how change can seemingly emerge out of nowhere.

If you rewind 10 years to before Ossington Avenue became the hotspot that it is today, many of you would have probably classified it as an unlikely place for gentrification. Located beside the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the area wasn’t considered desirable at the time. (CAMH has since undergone a lot of change.)

But oftentimes change can come out of nowhere. It just takes few enterprising pioneers who see something that nobody else does.