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Laneway Housing and Garden Suites

What are the current barriers to laneway development? I understand that the Fire dept doesn't like the idea of having to deal with fires in houses that don't have street access, what else? This seems like the sort of thing that ratepayer groups would convulse over. Have any politicians ever made any murmurs about it one way or another?
 
From what I understand laneway house has always focused on lot severing. That is chopping up a property say typically 19'-21'x125' lot into two. With a front address and rear address. There are only so many lots of this nature currently available and I think most property owners would be reluctant to chop up their property even if the process was clear cut. Chopping up the property would reduce it's intrinsic value and flexibility. Where you would see a big difference is if the city allowed "coach house" development. That is converting or adding to the rear garage of an unsevered property. This makes a clear business case. If I could create say a one-bedroom apartment in the rear I would know exactly how high my construction costs could be in order to generate a reasonable return on investment. The barrier to this is fire accessibility and sewage hook-up.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Here is the citation of the book mentioned earlier.

Shim, B., & Chong, D. (Eds.) (2003?). Site unseen: Laneway architecture & urbanism in Toronto. Toronto: Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design, University of Toronto.

It's available from the Toronto Public Library.

AoD
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A fantastic little book. I just discovered that we have a copy here at work and I look forward to devouring it later tonight!
 
I worked on a laneway housing project a while back that didn't get off the drawing board. There seemed to be a few killer issues that you'd need to overcome.

Address - Most properties have access onto a public street, not a public lane. The City would have to convert the laneway into a street (which may require widening).

Fire – Fire access is a practical and approval issue. If a fire truck can’t get near a house can it safely be dealt with in an emergency?

Garbage – Big issue. The City has the responsibility to pick-up garbage from residential properties, but they don’t want their trucks driving down narrow laneways.

Pedestrians – Weird issue. How do people walk to their house? Down a laneway shared with cars or do you need a dedicated pedestrian access. I say they can walk down a lane shared with cars, but others may disagree.

I personally came to the conclusion that if the City wants this type of project they need to figure out how to address these issues because the shear cost of getting a laneway project approved will ruin it financially.
 
I favour having as many firemen as possible ... and they should travel in style.
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What does the size of the truck have to do with style? And what is style if I may ask? Why not send two trucks carrying 3 firemen each, if it is necessary? We would be perfectly served with smaller trucks and more of them than larger trucks which carry one extra person..That argument is bubkus.

Regardless, this is exactly the same reason the police still use massive Crown Vic's instead of smaller more fuel efficient cars- there is more room and they are connected to the hip with the manufacturers.

p5
 
this is the future! it's amazing to me how many decrepit sheds and garages lie unused full of junk and old paint. everybody thinks the answer is building up. we should be revitalizing these back laneways.
 
p5connex said:
Regardless, this is exactly the same reason the police still use massive Crown Vic's instead of smaller more fuel efficient cars- there is more room and they are connected to the hip with the manufacturers.
p5
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I've always wondered how much gas, and money, would be saved if the police force switched to smaller engined cars with high output turbos. I bet it's a lot. Crown Vics make very little power relative to engine size, and there are V6s and even inline fours with turbos putting out more horsepower.

On the topic of the laneways, that's one of my hopes for the city in the future. Animated laneways, full of life. People of this city clearly have vision and creativity, now we just need the city to loosen up and stop rejecting change. This applies to street food too.
 
I'd like to see those North American firetrucks come fit onto my street/alley. I find it interesting how Asian city's have tiny little alleyways crammed with apartments rather than traditional side streets like in North America. It seems to work quite well and when taken care of they can be quite stunning, or quite dreadful... mine is pretty average. I have seen firetrucks on it before, they're about the size of a small u-haul cube van only not as wide, the police cars are also about the size of your standard small family sedan like a corolla or focus. Why does Toronto need such big police cars? Are they really ramming that many cars off the road? A few special emergency response units should fill the need for giant cop cars, and smaller more efficient vehicles would make sense for the cars that are on the road 24/7. The Impala's/Crown Vics/Chargers are quite the waste of taxpayers money and ensure maximum contributions to climate change as well.

My street:
DSCN1436.jpg
 
I brought this up in the GO Transit Fare Increase thread and it applies here as well: Canadian abundance of physical space leads to inefficient use of space.

In Europe and huge swaths of Asia, they've had little choice but to intensify and have had to adapt technologically in order to properly do this. We're just not at that point yet (though, it shouldn't take danger of running out of space to get us there, IMHO).

Though, I think we're turning the page from gigantism/sprawlism to intensification and the adaptations that come with that.

I mean, compare the poluation densities of England and Japan to Canada. I don't even think it's a cultural thing...they've just had little choice whereas we take our land mass for granted.
 
I'm pretty sure TPS use Crown Vics because they are good fleet cars. The police version is in service in just about every N. American market I can think of, so it is pretty easy to maintain a large fleet of them and not having to worry about things like availability of spare parts. They are also assembled in St. Thomas, so it might be politically unpopular to stop "buying local."

But yea, I agree that it seems ridiculous to have those kind of boats driving around, for the most part, doing nothing. Maybe it would be a good idea to copy the parking cops. They have small cars (Echos, I think...) because their specific job never really requires much more than parking and giving tickets. Instead of having a homogeneous police force all armed with Crown Vics, we could have a two tier system. One group of police more or less meant to "keep the peace" (i.e. make house calls, drive around, setting up speed traps and just giving a "show of force") in something like a Yaris while another group deals specifically with things like car chases where you might need some *oomph* under the hood. For bonus points, given them riced up Dodge Neons with body kits and ground lighting. Ha!
 
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