Tag: alley

• The laneway love continues

  The momentum around wanting mixed-use laneways in Toronto continues, or the algorithms just know what gets me going. Either way, I continue to be both impressed and surprised by the number of “hidden” laneway-based businesses that exist in this city and that keep surfacing online.

  Here are some further examples:

  This cafe operates out of a laneway in Leslieville. Don't tell me it can't be done,@cityoftoronto and @CityPlanTO. #topoli pic.twitter.com/L9hVXtQaj7

  — Blair Scorgie (@BlairScorgie) December 13, 2023

  Great bakery operating out of a laneway behind St. Clair https://t.co/wZSFhIUF4w pic.twitter.com/SHOM5CucBF

  — @lloydalter@mastodon.social (@lloydalter) December 13, 2023

  I honestly think that someone should create a directory/mapping of these businesses. If anyone wants to do this or help do this, I own lanewaylove.com and I’ve been reserving it for projects just like this.

  I also think that this has the potential to become a hallmark of Toronto urbanism. It’s already somewhat endemic, it would seem. So imagine what will happen once we actually allow and encourage these uses to their fullest extent. Yes, once.

  If you know of any other laneway-based businesses, whether here in Toronto or in your city, please share them in the comment section below.

  2023.12.13

• Tiny Tower in North Philadelphia

  

  ISA Architects recently completed a project in North Philadelphia called Tiny Tower.

  It is a 6-level, 1,250 square foot single family home built on a small 12′ x 29′ lot. That’s about the footprint of two parking spaces. It feels like a house you might find in Japan.

  Its siting is on a secondary street, akin to a laneway here in Toronto. As you can tell from the above picture, the adjacent parcels are largely undeveloped and/or used for parking.

  The height of the house is 38 feet and the section looks like this:

  

  The kitchen is in the basement (along with a light well). The living room is on the main floor (entrance to the house shown below). The third level is a workspace. And the rest of the floors are bedrooms. There’s also a rooftop patio. All of the circulation happens on one side of the house.

  

  I don’t consider 1,250 square feet to be a small house and so this post is not about that. “Tiny Tower” does, however, feel like an accurate name.

  I like these kinds of projects because they are about taking something with little perceived value — in this case a small parcel of land — and creating something cool.

  That’s how you create the most value. You have to discover and do things that most other people are overlooking.

  Images: ISA Architects

  2019.03.17

• Introducing lanewaylove.com — my laneway house is back!

  One of the most widely read posts on this blog is this one here, called: Why it’s next to impossible to get a laneway house built in Toronto. Clearly, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in this housing type both here in the city and elsewhere.

  Since I wrote that past over 2 years ago, I have been bombarded with emails from people asking me the status of the project and if I could help them achieve something similar on their properties. And my response was always the same: sorry, the project is on hold.

  But over the last few years, things have changed. Home prices have risen dramatically in this city. At the beginning of 2017, the average price of a detached house reached almost $1.6 million – representing a year-over-year increase of nearly 30%!

  In part because of this, laneway housing has also entered mainstream consciousness thanks to groups and initiatives such as The Laneway Project, Lanescape, Evergreen, the University of Toronto, and so on. There are now Councillors advocating for them within City Hall, which was not the case even a few years ago.

  Given all of these changes, I decided that it was time to dust off my laneway house design and make a serious go at it. So I called up my architect friend Gabriel Fain and asked him if he would help me pioneer this new housing typology. He immediately said yes.

  Last week a revised version of Mackay Laneway House was submitted to the city, kick-starting the approvals process. Here’s a rendering showing the north elevation (view from existing house):

  

  The next step will be a trip to the Committee of Adjustment to obtain the necessary variances. But even with all of the momentum building in the city right now around more affordable housing solutions, this will not be a slam dunk. 

  So in parallel to all of this, we have also launched a new website called lanewaylove.com. Here you will find general information about laneway housing, as well as floor plans of the proposal. But most importantly, we hope it will serve as a tool to generate support for this and other laneway houses in Toronto.

  At the bottom of the site is a link that will allow you to support Mackay Laneway House by submitting your name, email, and postal code. The reason it also asks for your postal code is so that we can anonymously match supporters with specific areas of the city. We think this will be valuable information going forward.

  If you believe that Toronto would be well-served by more affordable and sustainable housing solutions, I would encourage you to sign your name at lanewaylove.com and share this post with your network. We would greatly appreciate your support.

  Here we go!

  2017.05.01

• 3 word addresses

  

  When I was in undergrad, I spent a summer in Taipei. One of the things I remember about that summer was how difficult it was to locate building addresses. Sure, there was the whole language barrier thing, but I swear that some of those alleys (which I loved) didn’t follow a consistent numerical logic.

  It turns out that a lot of the world is actually poorly addressed. Think about the favelas in Brazil. How are they addressed? (Not actually a rhetorical question; I’ve never been.)

  A company out of the UK called what3words is trying to solve this problem. What they have done is created a 3m x 3m grid of the entire world and assigned a 3 word address to each square. Apparently that translates into about 57 trillion squares.

  This is similar to long / lat coordinates, except that 3 words are far more user friendly than a string of numbers. They are more easily remembered and more easily communicated to other people. The front door of the Starbucks in my neighborhood looks to be migrate.stunner.racing.

  

  One service that has built upon the what3words platform is a bike taxi service in Delhi that offers female drivers for female customers. It’s called Bikxie Pink and the 3 word addresses aim to solve the safety problem of inefficient pick-ups and drop-offs.

  Even in places where addressing isn’t generally a problem, I could see what3words helping. Interesting platform.

  Images: what3words

  2016.10.30

• Make Way for Laneway

  I was speaking with a friend this morning and he told me that he had a Pavlovian association between me and laneways. That made me happy. 

  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve heard me go on and on about the great potential of laneways and laneway housing (accessory dwelling units) in Toronto, as well as in other cities around the world.

  So I won’t do that today. Instead, I’m going to link to a report that was just released by the Pembina Institute called Make Way for Laneway: Providing more housing options for the Greater Toronto Area.

  The report is obviously about Toronto, but there’s no reason that the lessons and ideas won’t also apply to your city. So I would encourage you to give it a read.

  For those of you who have emailed me about my own laneway house, the project is still on hold. And it will likely remain that way until the city becomes a bit more accepting of this housing typology. Hopefully that will happen soon.

  2015.10.23

• The Laneway Project is looking for a Fundraising Coordinator

  

  Speed Bump by Jason Cook on 500px

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  As many of you know, I advise a non-profit called The Laneway Project. The goal of the organization is to change Toronto’s relationship with its laneways and help create laneway friendly policies and procedures.

  It’s something that I’m incredibly passionate about. I believe that our laneways represent a missed opportunity, both from a public space standpoint and a real estate standpoint. And I’m confident that Toronto will eventually figure that out.

  If you’re also interested in this space, now is your chance to get involved. The Laneway Project is currently looking for a Fundraising Coordinator to help develop its operational funding strategy and to help with actual fundraising.

  Since it’s still early days, this is a volunteer position (with an honorarium). But it’s a great opportunity to get involved early with a passionate group of city builders. So I hope you’ll consider applying. Click here for the full job description.

  2015.06.23

• The missing middle will come, eventually

  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. 

  2015.06.03

• Red stripes, iceberg homes, and laneway houses

  This morning I was reading a CityLab article talking about a homeowner in London’s wealthy Kensington neighborhood who painted her house in red stripes after the city and her neighbors derailed her renovation plans. I’m thinking it is supposed to be symbolic of government “red tape.”

  She had hoped to add a two-floor “mega-basement” to her home, which is curiously enough a thing in London due to how restrictive traditional home expansions can be. Locally they are called “iceberg homes.”

  What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that it shows you how far people will go to find and/or create the space they want in the neighborhoods they want to live in. Kensington is an incredibly wealthy area and so one has to assume that she is not without other housing options.

  As another example, here’s how the article describes her house:

  The candy-striped home in question, for example, is actually a mews house, a kind of outbuilding running along an alley behind a great house, originally intended as a place to tidy horses, carriages and maids away from the main residence.

  So not only did she want to create an “iceberg home”, but she wanted to do so in what was previously a back alley. In Toronto, this home would be called a laneway house.

  What this tells me is that as real estate values rise, people will naturally start to seek out overlooked spaces to repurpose. They will look for some way to carve out a home. And it’s for that reason that I think laneway housing is an inevitable outcome here in Toronto.

  2015.05.11

• The Laneway Project: Engaging In-Between Spaces

  

  A few months ago I was asked to join the advisory committee of a small Toronto-based non-profit called The Laneway Project. The goal of the organization is to create a network of vibrant, safe, and people-oriented public spaces throughout the city by leveraging our extensive, yet underutilized, network of existing laneways. 

  If you’re a regular reader of ATC, you’ll know that I have a huge interest in laneways and laneway housing. So not surprisingly, I was thrilled to be a part of the project.

  It’s still early days, but we are getting ready to actively fund raise. And we’ve also just announced our first event. It’s called Engaging In-Between Spaces, and it’s going to consist of 5 speakers giving super fast presentations on the potential of Toronto’s laneways (think 20 seconds a slide type of thing). There will also be a moderated discussion, and drinks, I’m sure. So mark your calendars for the evening of Thursday, November 20th – more details to follow.

  In the interim, you can show your love for Toronto’s laneways by subscribing to The Laneway Project. Happy Friday everyone!

  Image: Flickr

  2014.09.26

• Why constraints can be a good thing for design

  

  I was reading the New York Times this morning and I stumbled upon an interesting article about Shubert Alley. I wasn’t aware of Shubert Alley, but I’m sure many of you probably are. It’s a 300-foot long pedestrian-only alley in the theater district of New York. It connects 44th Street and 45th Street and runs west of Broadway.

  And apparently it’s a big deal in the theater world – or at least according to Richard Hornby in 1991: “In New York, the desirability of a theatre is inversely proportional to its distance from Shubert Alley.”

  But what you may not be aware of is how the alley–which today serves as a public gathering space–was actually created. In 1913 when the Shubert and Booth theaters were built, the fire code dictated that theaters had to have separate fire exits on the sides of their buildings that connected directly to a main street. 

  Most of the time this led to blank sidewalls, but in this instance, the Shuberts and their architect Henry Beaumont Herts, decided to run an alley all the way through the block to serve as their emergency exit. 

  But what seemingly started as a pragmatic response to a code requirement, ended up creating what some people would consider the heart of the theater district. Sometimes constraints can be a good thing for design.

  Image: New York Times

  2014.07.05