Item - 2019.PH9.5

That Planning and Housing Committee:

1. Requested the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning and the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with the General Manager, Economic Development and Culture, and the General Manager, Toronto Water, and other relevant divisions develop a Toronto Laneway Strategy that analyses the use patterns, functions and physical context of today's laneways and suggests strategic updates to maintenance and servicing standards, safety measures, laneway frontage guidelines and standards, storm water management measures, and traffic planning and management including meeting the multi-modal access, servicing, circulation, and social use needs of their neighbourhoods, and report back to the Planning and Housing Committee with a status update by the end of 2020.

As Toronto evolves, we must ensure that our built fabric is doing all it can do to ensure a vibrant, livable and affordable city. Our city's network of laneways was designed to provide midblock service access to properties - an important role, and one which can be strategically expanded to enable these spaces to fully serve our growing and intensifying neighbourhoods.

The role of our laneways is already changing, with recent policy developments such as the Changing Lanes bylaw changes, an increase in laneway-facing units in the podia of new buildings, and increasing attention to the spaces from property owners, BIAs and Residents' Associations.

If the City of Toronto is to take an active role in ensuring that our laneways evolve with the changing city and serve neighbourhoods throughout Toronto, rather than only in an ad-hoc way where development projects are concentrated, a concurrent update of the City's policies, procedures and guidelines pertaining to the spaces is required. To inform these updates, we must develop a Toronto Laneway Strategy that analyses the use patterns, functions and physical context of today's laneways and suggests strategic updates to maintenance and servicing standards, safety measures, laneway frontage guidelines and standards, stormwater management measures, and traffic planning and management measures, and lays out policy changes to ensure that laneways are able to meet the multi-modal access, servicing, circulation, green infrastructural, and social use needs of our neighbourhoods both today and tomorrow.