As a Canadian who is interested in matters of planning and particularly in the concepts of Smart Growth, I've always been a bit envious of our neighbours to the south and to the west who seemed to grasp and act on concepts that were not even discussed outside of classrooms in Ontario. I would read about examples of Smart Growth in places like Portland, Oregon or in Vancouver, British Columbia and wished that we would start seriously talking about "planned planning" here in Ontario. Now it is finally happening and, it's happening in a big way!
On Friday, I attended a conference put on, ironically some might say, by a local developers group entitled Accommodating Growth; A Call for Consensus. Now that's a tall order - finding consensus on the myriad of issues involved in accommodating growth! Essentially, the conference topics were built around the Province of Ontario's new Places To Grow initiative. It is a major undertaking and represents a serious rethink of the way our province will grow in the years to come.
After more than five years in the making, Ontario passed the Places To Grow Act in 2005 and with it, I would say they have clearly raised the bar on planning for the future. The first specific growth plan was released in 2006 and focuses on the Greater Golden Horseshoe area of South Central Ontario. The GGH is home to almost a quarter of Canada's entire population and it is projected that an additional 3.7 million more people will live in the area by 2031. We cannot accommodate that type of growth in the same sprawling fashion of the past without resultant disaster and so, the plan was developed. The over-arching intent of the plan is to improve quality of life and contribute to prosperity and diversity while protecting out environment. It considers where new development must be concentrated, revitalization of downtowns, identification of employment lands, transportation and connectivity, creation of more complete communities and, curbing sprawl.
Currently, the regions within the GGH (in our case Simcoe County), have been charged with developing new official plans that incorporate the new Act and then, individual municipalities must bring their own Official Plans into conformity by the summer of 2009. We can expect to see specific growth targets, delineated areas for development, new tools to promote intensification and stronger means with which to protect farmlands and green spaces. In a nutshell, the idea is that the new plans will make it hard to develop in an unsustainable way but make it easy to develop in a smart way. It will be a huge shift in planning policy directions and I for one, can hardly wait to see it happen.
Comments(4)