June 20, 2006

Infrastructure

Stemming urban sprawl

Provincial plan eyes city of 11 million people

IAN HARVEY

correspondent

MISSISSAUGA

Ontario has laid the legislative keystone for a city of 11 million people stretching along the Golden Horseshoe from Peterborough to Niagara Falls.

The long term plan sets the tone for what development will be permitted — and in some places encouraged — along with infrastructure such as transit and designated growth centres for development.

“This is a historic event,” said David Crombie, president and CEOP of the Canadian Urban Institute. “This plan, along with greenbelt legislation and the recently announced transportation authority, will form a framework to build a regional city for 11 million people by the early part of the 21st Century.”

“This is nothing less than a landmark achievement,” crowed Public Infrastructure minister David Kaplan at a luncheon to kick off the plan called ‘Places To Grow’ at a Port Credit restaurant.

A new concept, called ‘Places to Grow’, will encourage better land use in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe, from Peterborough to Niagara Falls.

He said the template is the result of input and co-operation from a vast variety of stakeholders, including mayors, municipal planners and governments at all levels.

“Making this plan will require hard work and determination,” warned Kaplan, noting that already announced investments in public transit — $838 million in the 2006 budget — will encourage denser population centres. He said GO Transit expects to expand to Waterloo, Niagara and Peterborough in 25 years.

As a result, Kaplan and others hope, the legislation first enacted in 2005 and now being put into play with a cohesive plan for the province’s most important economic region — and perhaps Canada’s — will stem urban sprawl and protect sensitive farm lands and greenbelt areas.

It is also one of the fastest growing regions in North America and cries out for a centrally developed plan through 2031. Some 3.7 million additional residents and 1.8 million jobs will be added, Kaplan said.

The plan is to bring a higher quality of life to the region, “and that will in turn attract people to come and live here.”

Densities will grow in designated areas, he said, and people will be able to walk to the store to buy milk or ride their bikes.

Rendering shows the current tendency to ‘sprawl’ development over a large area.

“We’re trying to build communities where people can work, live and play.”

Without a growth plan, he said, “we’d be looking at urban sprawl, growing gridlock and a car dependent culture.

With dire consequences to the provincial government because there would be horrendous costs to maintain that infrastructure.”

To ensure municipalities play along according to the province’s vision, the government says it will only put its infrastructure money into those communities reaching targets for sustainable and contained growth.

Traffic congestion and delays in movement of goods costs Ontario more than $5 billion in lost GDP annually. As such, the Greater Golden Horseshoe plan will control residential construction while maintaining the need for a diverse economic platform.

“I wish we’d had this plan before Mississauga was developed; it would look very different,” said Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion.

“It’s an official plan for the province. The municipalities have always had one, we were required to. Now the province has one. I hope the media, public and the developers buy into this.”

She said the province’s move to retake control of the Ontario Municipal Board will ensure greater control over planning decisions at the local level and a more cohesive process that follows an overall plan such as the ‘Places to Grow’ concept.

McCallion said greenfield development in Mississauga is over and that any new development will be infill or intensification.

However, she said, people are resistant to change, and the prospect of townhouses, low-rises and high-rises in what had been an area of single family homes will prompt objections.

“We have to sell this and talk to the people and educate them,” she said.

Kaplan said in addition to limits on greenfield developments, accelerated processes for development of brownfields and greyfields, along with incentives, will also spur better use of abandoned industrial lands.

Among the key goals is to protect farmland and contain 40 per cent of all new growth within existing built-up areas by 2015.

Density levels for jobs and residents per hectare are also being prescribed.

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