Living Lane at Regent Park Block 16s

A laneway reimagined as a community space and hub for bike culture

The Living Lane, an upcoming project integrated into the DuEast Condominiums in Regent Park, is designed as an animated community space and a hub for bike culture. It will stay active in all seasons with magnets for activity, including bike repair and storage rooms, bike forests, live/work units, offices, courtyards, and seating.

As well as being a community space, the Living Lane is designed to be fully functional as a service area. When built, the project will show strategies for laneways to serve functional needs at the same time as creating comfortable and memorable places for residents to enjoy—a current challenge for Toronto laneways. Though the laneway will use a curbless “woonerf” design to make the space as flexible as possible, subtle strategies such as a pixilated paving pattern and careful alignment of service entrances will make it easy to tell apart areas meant for people and cars.

“Regent Park Living Lane” won an Award of Merit for the 2017 Toronto Urban Design Awards. According to the jury comments, “It has the potential to become a valuable precedent in the ongoing discussion of how to best use the city’s vast network of service lanes.”

Location

Toronto, ON

Client

The Daniels Corporation

Scope

Landscape Architecture
Urban Design
Park Programming

Awards

2017 Toronto Urban Design Award of Merit