At the beginning of the year, I wrote this: The desire to add more housing to single-family neighborhoods will continue to pick up steam across North America. How exactly this plays out will be market specific, but in Toronto I expect to see new planning… Read More
Toronto’s chief planner, Gregg Lintern, published this piece in the Toronto Star over the weekend where he argued that “expanding housing options in [Toronto’s] neighbourhoods is the missing piece of the growth puzzle.” What he is saying is that if we’re going to have any… Read More
Some of you might remember that Toronto City Council approved new garden suite policies earlier this year. Garden suites (also known as accessory dwelling units) are kind of like laneway suites but without the adjacent lane. Unfortunately, these new policies were subsequently appealed by a… Read More
Progress is happening slowly but surely. Over the years we have spoken a few times about this nice little coffee shop on Shaw Street here in Toronto. It is a good looking and widely visited coffee shop that has made many guest appearances on urbanist… Read More
We talk a lot on this blog about laneway housing and ADUs, including, of course, the one that Globizen built earlier this year. But beyond being exceedingly cool (see above), what has this policy change meant at the macro level? To what extent is it… Read More
This past summer, the Bentway (in collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Toronto Downtown West BIA) issued a call for expressions of interest to re-imagine two key intersections under downtown Toronto’s elevated Gardiner Expressway. The York Street intersection and the… Read More
As most of you know, laneway suites (a form of accessory dwelling unit) are permitted “as-of right” across the City of Toronto. This has led to an explosion of new laneway housing. One framing contractor that I know recently told me that he is now… Read More
As many of you know, Toronto currently allows “laneway suites” across the entire city on an as-of-right basis. What this means is that no variances or special planning permissions are generally required to build. Assuming you meet the by-law, you can go straight to a… Read More
With laneway suites permitted as-of-right across the entirety of Toronto, the City is now looking to other forms of accessory dwelling units and other ways to increase the supply of rental housing. The next frontier is likely to be something that the City is broadly… Read More
In the fall of 2016, Lucas Manuel (Partner at Slate) and I traveled to Chicago in order to meet with Jeanne Gang and the rest of the studio. Our objective was simple: We were looking to find an architecture firm that we could partner with… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 