With Toronto adding more than 90,000 residents each year, the city’s outdoor public spaces can feel overwhelmed, with only a limited amount of land available for new parks and amenities.
But with a little imagination and TLC, Toronto’s 250 kilometres of 2,400 laneways—most of them underused and some of them pretty sketchy—can come to the rescue. Tucked out-of-sight in most neighbourhoods, laneways can provide spaces for socializing, art, quiet moments and sports just outside people’s backyards.
Formed last spring, the team behind the not-for-profit organization
The Laneway Project wants to make it easier for residents, community organizations and businesses to tap into the potential of the city’s laneways. A partnership of three planning, design and architecture firms, the team is hosting its first
laneway summit on Nov. 20 to kickstart the conversation. They’re hoping that residents’ groups, BIAs and other city partners can come up with some priorities and opportunities to make better use of our laneways.
“It’s low hanging fruit. It’s publically owned outdoor space that’s a giant uptapped resource,” says co-director Michelle Senayah, who is principal at
Senayah Design.
Part of people’s reluctance to show laneways more love is a poor understanding of who owns what, who’s responsible for what and what regulations and restrictions apply. “Even as a trained design professional, I had to spend weeks on the phone to different departments of the city trying to figure things out,” says Senayah. “A lot of grassroots work happening in laneways flies under the radar at the moment. People try to do things in an official way and then it’s so impenetrable that they just decide to do things unofficially.”
The Laneway Project plans to publish a one-stop overview of regulatory and ownership parameters, as well more specific advice on how to make the most of laneways. That includes how to assess laneways for potential. Lanes adjacent to open spaces, that connect to bike lanes, that are in a good state of repair and that have a good microclimate will obviously be better suited to reimagining than dark, smelly, garbaged-filled ones.
Laneways have not been entirely neglected. On an official level, the city’s
StreetARToronto project actively tries to beautify laneways. More informally, a group of residents in the Ossington area host an annual laneway party. Senayah says the project will publish a “party in a box” guide to hosting social events and, following the summit, they’ll launch two pilot projects. The pilots—a greening project and an installation project—will provide examples of what can be done, as well as helping participants figure out some of the unexpected obstacles and how to overcome them.
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Michelle Senayah