Drawing on considerable experience on the subject, Professor Brigitte Shim was recently interviewed by Better Dwelling for her insights on laneway housing in Toronto.

From Better Dwelling: 

'Laneway housing is an idea whose time has come,' explains Brigitte. 'Living in a laneway enables you to feel like you are live in a village in the heart of an enormous metropolis. Laneways have the potential to create intimate community clusters which operate at a smaller scale within a large, thriving city.'

For those that don’t know, Toronto has 4,109 laneways, that stretch an estimated 294 km behind homes, and businesses. As the city becomes less car dependent, these former service corridors are becoming less relevant in their current form. Laneway homes take 2-3 laneway garages, and through the magic of a great architect, they can be turned into small, but beautiful sustainable homes.
 

For the full article, visit Better Dwelling.

In 1993, Shim and Howard Sutcliffe gained approval from the Ontario Municipal Board to design their laneway house, which won the Governor General Medal for Architecture from the RAIC and the Wood Design Award from the Canadian Wood Council. Additionally, Shim and alumnus Donald Chong co-edited the book titled Site Unseen: Laneway Architecture & Urbanism in Toronto: "a small but catalytic venture in post-urban (or re-urbanizing) adventuring in the city’s inner frontier," according to Gary Michael Dault of Canadian Architect.