The Laneway Project

Toronto | Vancouver

Transforming Toronto & Vancouver's
laneways into vibrant public places

Laneways have a huge amount of untapped potential. While currently acting primarily as utilitarian service corridors, with strategic upgrades they can become fully-integrated and multi-purpose parts of our public space network, delivering extensive cultural, economic, social, health and environmental benefits. They can play a role in creating engaging, lively and richly textured places where people want to live, work and visit.

Read our feature in the OALA News Letter!

Unlocking the potential of Toronto's Laneways

The Laneway Project is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to bringing laneways to life

The Laneway Project is urban planners, designers and placemakers, who work with public, private, and community-level stakeholders to transform laneways and other neglected public spaces into complete, living public places: building collaborative teams, implementing best practices and catalyzing policy changes.

 

Design Resource: The Toronto Laneway Manuel 2.0  

 

The Laneway Project in Toronto Canada incorporates colourful StreetBond Coatings for horizontal pavement surface designs and artwork. Streetbond provides a cost effective way to create outstanding surface applications for asphalt and concrete, that are attractive, durable, and highly visible.

StreetBond, adheres permanently to asphalt and concrete. When mixed with StreetBond® SB150 Pavement Coating Part B and StreetBond® Colorant, provide an enduring, aesthetic finish, as well as a low-maintenance surface that helps protect and extend the life of the pavement for years.

More Awesome Now - Alley Oops (Vancouver)

More Awesome Now Laneway Activations

Imagine if instead of avoiding Vancouver’s downtown laneways or just using them as a shortcut through the city, you actively sought them out as spaces to socialize and play? More Awesome Now reshapes laneways using StreetBond 150 decorative coatings systems, into engaging, accessible public spaces that contribute to the vibrancy of the city. Vancouver’s street grid includes over 200+ downtown blocks bisected by laneways. By reimagining and reconfiguring these city corridors as recreational, commercial and performance spaces, we can increase the pedestrian area of downtown up to 30% and inspire new opportunities for social connections.

Design Challenge

hcma partnered with the City of Vancouver and the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) to transform alleyways from utilitarian service corridors into bright, playful public spaces. These spaces are shared by people and vehicles, which continue to access the lane for service purposes.

This project was made possible through the collaboration and engagement of property owners, tenants and visitors who share the responsibility for enjoying, cleaning and monitoring each alley.

Improvements to Laneways can create:

  1. Improved local walkability and connectivity

  2. Increased local space for informal physical activity

  3. Local-scale midblock green spaces

  4. Opportunities for gentle intensification

  5. Opportunities for patios, pop-up shops & micro-businesses

  6. Space for pop-up and permanent public art

  7. Space for community events and entertainment

Decorative asphalt surfaces and materials are in high demand. So too, are coatings that can match a project’s visual design. StreetBond can be produced with a wide range of colours to match virtually any vision.

 

Flexibility is a big plus for designers when choosing materials. StreetBond can be applied in bright vibrant colours as well as earth tones, and neutral colours. We supply over 50 signature colours that can provide a custom palette for a unique look.