{"id":22623,"date":"2011-09-20T10:06:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T14:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=22623"},"modified":"2013-01-21T14:51:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T19:51:55","slug":"the-official-plan-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/09\/20\/the-official-plan-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Official Plan Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto is undertaking a review of its Official Plan.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The City is conducting an extensive consultation process for the review. There’s a detailed website<\/a> and a fairly quick online survey<\/a>. I attended the open house held at Metro Hall last week — there will be more consultation at later stages of the process as well.<\/p>\n

The presentation at the open house was interesting (panels available online<\/a>), 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).\u00a0 It contradicts the idea that Toronto is a city that is unappealing to developers or in decline — the truth is quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Heritage<\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Employment Lands<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Secondary Plans<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The City has also recently developed tall-building and mid-rise guidelines<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto is undertaking a review of its Official Plan.\u00a0 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 consultationContinue reading “The Official Plan Review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[499,431,18455,756,460,2510,469,404,6612,12,872,576,18456,19,849],"class_list":["post-22623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-urban-design","tag-boston","tag-chicago","tag-city-administration","tag-city-council","tag-los-angeles","tag-metro-hall","tag-new-york","tag-official","tag-online-survey","tag-planning","tag-provincial-government","tag-san-francisco","tag-the-official-plan-review","tag-toronto","tag-transportation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Official Plan Review - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/09\/20\/the-official-plan-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Official Plan Review - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Toronto is undertaking a review of its Official Plan.\u00a0 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. 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