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. 

Montreal is one of my favorite places on the planet. In fact, if I have one regret in life it’s that I didn’t do my undergrad at McGill University. Living in Montreal as a poor student would have been the best. Though I shouldn’t complain because I did spend quite a bit of time there when I was a poor student.

If you’ve ever been to Montreal, the image at the top of this post will look familiar. The urban landscape of Montreal–at least in the residential areas–is filled with exterior staircases. They’re all over the place. And this always strikes everybody as a bit odd given that it’s a pretty cold and snowy place a lot of the time. Nonetheless, those staircases are quintessentially Montreal.

Some people think it was done to minimize the amount of interior space that needed to be heated, but I’ve never really gotten a definitive answer. Either way, all those stairs are an interesting byproduct of Montreal's commitment to one predominant building type: the multiplex. A multiplex is essentially a small apartment building containing a handful of units. They’re usually only around 3 storeys high. And they’re all over the Ville de Montréal.

To be honest though, I don’t think I’ve ever really explicitly thought about this defining Montreal quality. But then last night I stumbled upon an interesting blog post called “