About Laneway Park-ing

Laneway Park-ing was conceived as a COVID-recovery program that could help communities build long-term resiliency by transforming laneways into new alternative urban green spaces to address parkland need and provide places for neighbours to connect with each other and nature. 

Throughout the pandemic, public life has been pushed outdoors to an unprecedented degree which has highlighted both how important urban green spaces are to community health and that Toronto has an inadequate amount of parkland to meet the needs of its population. Downtown and Midtown neighbourhoods are especially underprovisioned, while the citywide parkland average is 28sqm/person, in these areas actual rates fall between 0-12sqm/person. Toronto’s development context makes acquiring new land to address this shortage a logistical and financial challenge. However, there is over 300 acres of public land in underutilized, utilitarian laneways which can be transformed into new alternative urban green spaces with strategic design interventions. 

Working with your community we will transform your local laneway this fall with gardens, public art, street furniture, pedestrian lighting, and traffic calming measures. The first step in this process is this site analysis, during which we will build a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities your community is facing in the laneway. 

For updates please visit thelanewayproject.ca/laneway-parking-2022-regal-heights.

 About The Laneway Project

The Laneway Project is a nonprofit, multidisciplinary, full-service placemaking firm working to transform the City of Toronto’s network of over 2,400 underutilized, utilitarian public laneways into full-fledged components of the public realm. We have three primary streams of work physical laneway transformations and activations, the development of free public planning resources for grassroots organizations, and policy advocacy. Since 2014, we’ve worked with over 30 communities across the city to transform and activate their local laneways, created over 20 free public planning resources sharing our experience and expertise, and seen laneways adopted as people-friendly spaces into Toronto’s Official Plan, Complete Streets Guidelines, Secondary Plans, Zoning By-Laws, and upcoming Laneway Strategy.

Site Analysis

To get started, we need to understand the space and the real challenges and opportunities your community is facing in the laneway. Your local knowledge and participation are invaluable to the success of this project. 

Please complete this survey and the site analysis workbook available at thelanewayproject.ca/laneway-parking-2022-regal-heights by April 29, 2022. 

Thanks for your insights!

We highly value your local expertise and encourage any other ideas you have to improve the laneway space. You can always get in touch via email with Bronwen at bronwen@thelanewayproject.ca

Expect to hear back from us in the coming weeks and months as we turn your input into a master plan of improvements for the space.