Toronto is undertaking a review of its Official Plan. The Plan was adopted by City Council in 2002, but it didn’t come into force until 2006 after all of the various OMB hearings had been worked through, and the Province mandates a review after its first five years.
The City is conducting an extensive consultation process for the review. There’s a detailed website and a fairly quick online survey. I attended the open house held at Metro Hall last week — there will be more consultation at later stages of the process as well.
The presentation at the open house was interesting (panels available online), suggesting that overall, the plan is working well — most development has been concentrated in the “centres” and along “avenues” as intended. In fact, if anything Toronto’s challenge is coping with too much success — as of May 2011, Toronto had more tall buildings under construction (119) than New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles put together (118). It contradicts the idea that Toronto is a city that is unappealing to developers or in decline — the truth is quite the opposite.
Despite the plan’s overall success, there are a few issues that need to be looked at that emerged from the presentations and discussions at the open house.
Heritage
The Official Plan was originally drafted when heritage protection laws were weak, and the plan reflects that position of weakness. In 2005 the provincial government strengthened the Ontario Heritage Act, but the Official Plan has not been updated to take advantage of this better protection. Doing so is one of the primary goals of the review process.
Employment Lands
These are what used to be described as “industrial lands” — large tracts of lands near transportation (highways, rail) that were designated for business uses not very compatible with residential areas. The Official Plan protects the designation of these areas because the City wants to keep jobs within the City of Toronto. They have proven valuable, for example, as locations for startups (the number of companies based in these lands has increased). However, some of these lands are under considerable development pressure because landowners can make more money building housing there. Most development in the past few years that happened outside the areas designated by the Official Plan happened in employment areas after contested OMB hearings. The review is a window in which the designation of land could be changed, so there will be pressure to do so in some places.
Secondary Plans
The Official Plan deliberately avoided giving specific zoning standards. It sticks to a high-level outline of what should be done, and leaves the detailed standards to “secondary plans” which were supposed to be developed for specific areas designated for growth. But this process has been very slow, in part because the City’s planning department remains understaffed. “Avenue studies” were commissioned from outside firms for some of the arterial roads designated for intensification, but they proved to be a cumbersome process, and had to be worked on with staff before they could withstand challenges at the OMB. As well, they don’t have a lot of force until they are converted to actual zoning bylaws, also a time-consuming process.
The City has also recently developed tall-building and mid-rise guidelines as general standards, but again since they are just guidelines they are harder to enforce. And the rejection of the harmonized zoning bylaw by the new administration means that zoning in general remains in its current chaotic state.
The result is that development in Toronto remains something of a free-for-all, done on a case-by-case basis, which does not provide certainty for either developers, planners or residents. City planning needs to find an efficient way to quickly establish strong and predictable standards for development to accompany the Official Plan.
There’s also no way of knowing how the current City administration will affect the process of the Official Plan review — it seems to be under their radar at the moment, but their interventions can be unexpected and unpredictable.
7 comments
“The result is that development in Toronto remains something of a free-for-all, done on a case-by-case basis, which does not provide certainty for either developers, planners or residents.”
And yet the author opens with, “Despite the plan’s overall success…”!
The OP has only been a success for the developers who have been sucking profits from the Toronto sky with impunity.
What disturbs me equally is the rise of beat of, “kill the OMB”. I’ve heard it from Cllrs Matlow and CW Tam. It’s well seen they are from the newbies bunch.
I suspect the Ford Twin Mayors will use this process to completely gut the Official Plan, cherry picking FordNatter submissions as representative of ‘the people’, to allow back-room development deals, over the democratic process.
I’m not sure why this process is even being kicked off, we have a great Official Plan, presided over by Paul Bedford. Its just that Council’s right wing never seemed to’ve read it, and ignored it completely. Og
I’d like to see some discussion regarding the interface areas between employment lands and adjacent residential areas. It is not only the conversion of employment lands that threatens industrial areas, but the proximity of residential lands to existing (often thriving) industrial operations. For example, residential development in the East Bayfront precinct has/had been stalled (in part) because of its potential impact on Redpath Sugar. It isn’t something the current OP contemplates.
OG THE DIM: The review of the Official Plan is mandated every 10 years. This has nothing to do with Ford and council.
And quite honestly, this process will not be affected by the budget discussions and tone at city hall. This is almost an entirely citizen-driven input process.
If we want to make sure Ford et al do not get their hands dirty in the OP we have to make sue we let our neighbours and other residents know how important it is to have an effective and intelligent OP.
I’m curious if the review will actually be completed before Gary Wright (Toronto’s Chief Planner) retires next March. The middle of an OP Review seems like an awkward time for whoever they hire to replace him to step into that position.
I’m also curious what the Transportation components of the plan are going to look like–if Miller was still around, I could see Transit City being solidly integrated into it, but with the Fords… I have no idea what it’ll look like.
When the plan was passed the first time, my impression was council’s right-wing was very much opposed to it as being far too liberal (as in too permissive).
Keep in mind that although they are good friends with deep pocketed developers, right-wing councillors bread-and-butter votes are the rate-payers associations that don’t like change or development. Thus the official plan having no zoning strictures at all, suggesting that a developer could try to put town-houses in a strictly 1-storey detached neighbourhood was a big problem.
If anything, I would expect Ford handling the document to produce a much more rigourous set of regulations.
R.
Morris – Toronto obligated to review OP a min. of every 5 years. This could mean leaving it the same or tweaking it except that the city took the extreme step of repealing the entire harmonized zoning by-law and beginning from scratch, something the development industry was pushing for.
Citizens aren’t not the only ones giving input there are stakeholder groups and meetings with land owners, and you can expect that the admin will have input. Ford has generally deferred to developers except when sensing problems – Portlands, Lawrence Park, Ravines on Humberwood..