Sunday, September 18, 2011

Home, Home on the Lane | Sightline Daily

Home, Home on the Lane | Sightline Daily
Vancouver, BC—the city that has served as a North American icon for creating liveable inner cities—is having its own “laneway” renaissance (as alleys are known here). However, in Vancouver, the revival was spawned by sky-high real estate prices, a lack of affordable housing, and an ingenious plan to create ‘hidden density’ in the city’s most desirable single-family neighborhoods. Whereas some might see these underutilized swaths of pavement as merely needing a little beautification, the City saw it as an opportunity to provide badly-needed rental units.
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Tiny, tiny homes in alleys.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://unclutterer.com/2011/09/15/a-nice-little-home-out-of-a-garbage-can/

Anonymous said...

Okay, so in BC these things are allegedly desirable while in Los Angeles (according to the article below), creating additional housing on the lot is deemed "extralegal" and is to be discouraged.

Now the city planner can't really be that different in mentality. Nope. I think the Los Angeles planners are simply not happy with the amount of money that has escaped from lack of permit fees, etc. On the other hand, in BC the city is actively involved an promoting these because it expects higher tax revenue.

The garage conversions of LA are far more cost-effective than building new "laneway" housing in BC. As noted by some of the comments after the article: laneway housing is actually very expensive and only works for people that already own the land their homes are on.