The Parallel City: Rethinking the Urban Laneway
Cities tend to describe themselves through their most visible parts: main streets, centres and corridors. Behind them sits another urban network—laneways that support daily life while remaining difficult for planning systems to recognize.
The Parallel City examines Toronto’s mixed-use laneways and the quieter forms of work, living, movement and adaptation taking place within them. Drawing on the Mixed-Use Laneways Study, Blair Scorgie explores the gap between what can function in practice and what institutions are prepared to name, classify and permit.
The book stays with that institutional gap. It considers why modest activity can feel unsettled when it appears behind the main street, how small spaces become economically and socially useful, and what laneways reveal about the way cities absorb change. Visual studies and conceptual renderings explore some of the conditions future laneways could include.
The digital edition includes both a designed PDF and a reflowable EPUB file.
First edition, 2026
Published by Scorgie Planning Press
ISBN: 978-1-0678040-1-5