{"id":51349,"date":"2015-04-15T06:29:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T10:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=51349"},"modified":"2015-04-21T22:31:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T02:31:05","slug":"parks-crisis-sidebar-section-42-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/04\/15\/parks-crisis-sidebar-section-42-works\/","title":{"rendered":"PARKS IN CRISIS sidebar: How Section 42 works"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-parks<\/a><\/p>\n

Under Section 42<\/a> of the Ontario planning act, municipalities can ask developers to dedicate land or cash for the purposes of creating new parkland. The City\u2019s policy goal for implementing Section 42 has been essentially unchanged<\/a> since 1999-2000, when council adopted the so-called \u201cParkland Acquisitions Strategic Directions Report,\u201d and then the 2002 Official Plan. These documents laid out the high level principles for new public open spaces, with an emphasis on adding parks in \u201cpriority areas,\u201d i.e., communities deemed to be short of such spaces.<\/p>\n

Overall, Toronto owns about 3 ha of parkland per thousand residents, but some areas, especially in the older parts of the city, have much less.<\/p>\n

The general aim is for the city to ask developers to cleave off a portion of their properties for open spaces instead of expropriating land. Section 42 works for subdivisions, where it\u2019s possible for a developer to hive off surplus land. But it\u2019s not suited to high-rise projects on small sites with little space to spare.<\/p>\n

In fact, new rules approved in 2008 allow the city to take cash instead of land if council \u201cdeemed\u201d a development site to be unsuitable for a park \u2013 e.g., a downtown warehouse that\u2019s being redeveloped as high rise with the same footprint. In practice, this policy has meant that the local councilor can exercise a high degree of discretion as to whether developers are asked to hand over land or money.<\/p>\n

Council, at the same time, re-jigged the formula for collecting the money, creating an alternate rate<\/a> for conveyances of park land.\u00a0According to the city, the system today works something like this:<\/p>\n

“The basic parkland dedication requirements are 2% of the site for commercial or industrial uses and 5% of the site for all other uses, including residential uses. If the property is located in a Parkland Acquisition Priority Area, then it is subject to an Alternative Parkland Dedication Rate of 0.4 hectares per 300 dwellings units.”<\/p>\n

The cash\u00a0collected from parks levies are then divvied into five pots (and held in\u00a0reserve funds):<\/p>\n

\"parks<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In practice, the establishment of a park may draw on money from these various reserve funds as well as\u00a0other sources, including private donations, Section 37 funds, and\u00a0land dedications.<\/p>\n

Part 1:<\/strong> All built up but no place to grow
\n<\/a><\/em>Part 2:<\/strong> Where the money flows<\/a><\/em>
\nPart 3:<\/strong> The perils of cash-in-lieu<\/a><\/em>
\nPart 3 sidebar:<\/strong> Section 42 explained<\/a><\/em>
\nPart 4:<\/strong> The tale of two parks<\/a><\/em>
\nPart 5:<\/strong> The system worked (slowly) for a west end park<\/a><\/em>
\nPart 6:<\/strong> Are privately-owned public spaces the answer to parks deficit?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under Section 42 of the Ontario planning act, municipalities can ask developers to dedicate land or cash for the purposes of creating new parkland. The City\u2019s policy goal for implementing Section 42 has been essentially unchanged since 1999-2000, when council adopted the so-called \u201cParkland Acquisitions Strategic Directions Report,\u201d and then the 2002 Official Plan. TheseContinue reading “PARKS IN CRISIS sidebar: How Section 42 works”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"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":[47,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parks","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPARKS IN CRISIS sidebar: How Section 42 works - 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\/2015\/04\/15\/parks-crisis-sidebar-section-42-works\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PARKS IN CRISIS sidebar: How Section 42 works - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Under Section 42 of the Ontario planning act, municipalities can ask developers to dedicate land or cash for the purposes of creating new parkland. The City\u2019s policy goal for implementing Section 42 has been essentially unchanged since 1999-2000, when council adopted the so-called \u201cParkland Acquisitions Strategic Directions Report,\u201d and then the 2002 Official Plan. 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