Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1361

Urban Explorer by Andrew B. on 500px

Laneway housing is becoming an incredibly popular topic here in Toronto. Lots of people seem to be interested in building, or least living in a compact ground-related laneway dwelling. 

A big part of this, I think, has to do with affordability (or the perception of affordability). A lot of people want to live in a central urban neighborhood, but it has simply gotten both expensive and difficult to secure low-rise housing. Here’s an example of a young couple in Toronto who went door-to-door in their desperation to find a house.

I believe that laneway housing has the potential to be a more affordable low-rise housing solution in this city, as well as in many other cities around the world who have a similar urban condition. But today, at least here, it’s not that way.

Since the City of Toronto does not officially support laneway housing, it would be an uphill to get one approved and you need to be willing to put a significant amount of money at-risk in order to try. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality today.

I’m certain that will change. But it will take a bit more pioneering. The Laneway Project , which I advise, is working to change the way Toronto thinks about its laneways and I know that there are many other small entrepreneurs working on doing the same.

One of the first things that will need to happen is that we’re going to need to name our laneways. Some of them are already named, but many of them are not. And while this may not seem like a big deal, it is. For laneway housing to become a reality, they will need to have addresses and we will need to think of our laneways as legitimate streets.

Recently The Laneway Project published a how-to guide called: How to Name Your Laneway . So if you’re interested in laneways and laneway housing here in Toronto, I would encourage you to give it a read and then try and get your local laneway named.

I’ve only been to Dubai once. I had a lot of fun, but it’s not my favorite city in the world. That’s largely because I tend not to be drawn to cities where you feel like you need to drive in order to properly experience it.

But boy, this time-lapse video sure makes the city look cool. Click here if you can’t see the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGtz_GOA79w?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

1042 Queen St W by Kevin Steele on 500px

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

Earlier this week I attended a talk at the University of Toronto called Data Innovation and City Governance. It was by Mark Kleinman who is from London, but is now a Visiting Scholar at the Munk School of Global Affairs .

The topics covered would have been familiar to anyone who is a regular reader of this blog (the power of open data, the knowledge economy, etc…), so I’m not going to repeat it all here. But I did want to touch on one of his impressions of Toronto, which is that this is a city that is “never finished.”

What does that mean?

The opposite of a city that is never finished would be a city like Paris that feels a bit like a monument that is now done and shouldn’t be touched anymore. It’s a city that almost feels too precious to intervene in. This is obviously not the case for all of Paris, but I think you get the point.

Toronto, on the other hand, is a city that is constantly building, changing, and renewing itself. There are often layers upon layers of new interventions being applied, which gives you the impression that the city will never be done. It’s constantly in flux.

Some of you may not appreciate this kind of “messy” urbanism, but I think it gives cities a kind of entrepreneurial resiliency (resiliency is a hot topic right now in urbanist circles). Cities are an ecological system. And the most resilient ecological systems in the world are the ones that are able to adapt to constant change.

So in my view I look at this as a feature, not a bug . The only constant is change.