It doesn’t take much to feel like tourist in Toronto.

I’ve been house and dog sitting in Little Italy for a week, a neighbourhood I’m often in, but a short visit is different. Embedded as I am, the arc and rhythm of the days can be felt, from the quiet mornings to the caterwauling of local drunks at night. My routes through the city changed too: I head east where I used to go west. Small details, but the angles are new and familiar buildings are seen at a different time of day, so the city seems like I’m visiting somewhere further away.

Dog walking means getting an inch-by-inch inspection of the neighbourhood; there’s no hustling with a beast that must sniff everything. They pull in directions I might not otherwise go, sometimes into laneways, one of the best things about this part of town. A labyrinth of behind-the-scenes pathways, try following them instead of the streets and watch the city seem to go back in time 50 years.

This is a neighbourhood of near-million dollar shacks. Formerly working class, so many houses were built cheaply, not expected to last 100 years. Many of the shacks are dressed up out front but the laneway view often reveals sagging back porches, old siding, and layers of both renovation and decay: a Toronto that hasn’t been staged for bidding wars.

I’ve lived in a building for some years now and have rediscovered how houses are troublesome, needy things. You have to take care of them as much as the dog. Apartments seem to run themselves, or more accurately, I pay somebody else to worry about things. Lock my front door and that’s it.

Living so close to the ground, I’m tempted to close the curtains more. The proximity to other people makes the desire for privacy more acute. In my apartment there could be 1,000 eyes trained on me, but there’s a feeling of anonymity. People are far enough away that they become abstract, so the curtains are never closed and the city sparkles in view all night long.

I’ve also rediscovered how dark downtown houses are by day. Toronto’s long and narrow lots create middles with either no windows or ones that look out into narrow passages. An old Toronto condition, thank the Victorian surveyors for that. Apartment living, even in my north-facing flat, is all about light. It floods in all day long.

The lack of view creates some anxiety too: it feels isolated. A claustrophobic feeling creeps in. Apartment life is often said to be disconnected from the city, but at home I can see a human panorama with a glance out the window, a constant reminder there are lots of people nearby, the reason I want to live here. Where I am now, I can only see the street out front. The city gets really small in a house.

I have a wee backyard to use while I’m here too. A backyard must be sat in so I sit and listen. The toddler next door mumbles a song. A couple of cats screech down the alley. Dinner plates clink from a window. The old woman sweeping two doors down chats in Italian. She’s always sweeping. Back inside, the creaking and groaning of these old houses makes them seem alive: an intimately connected contraption. A toilet flushes next door. Food smells drift through. The life is here too, it seems. Anxiety goes down.

There ought to be an Airbnb-style house and dog-sitting service where we can spend time in another neighbourhood. A week in a Brady Bunch bungalow in Don Mills would be nice, or perhaps a weekend in Port Credit or Agincourt. Live like the locals and feel like we belong for a bit before going back home, with a better understanding of how this place works.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.