# The missing middle will come, eventually

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2015-06-03

alley, architect-this-city, atc, athiscity, cities, development, duplex, fourplexes, ground-related-unit, housing, intensification, laneway, laneway-home, laneway-house, laneway-housing, lloyd-alter, low-rise, montreal, official-plan, places-to-grow, real-estate, single-family-homes, toronto, treehugger, triplex, uncategorized, urbanism

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Yesterday [Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal](http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/missing-middle-another-model-providing-dense-family-housing.html) to my post about [homes for families](http://brandondonnelly.com/post/120476570843/most-people-still-want-to-raise-kids-in-a-house). 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](http://missingmiddlehousing.com/)”.)

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](http://brandondonnelly.com/post/109296352978/3-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](https://www.placestogrow.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=9): 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.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/the-missing-middle-will-come,-eventually)*