City Hall Watcher #388: Damien Moule on the "largest change to municipal land use planning in Ontario in decades", plus CITY HALL WATCHER LIVE lets you reflect on 15+ years of Council coverage
@Damien Moule bravo to cards on table...Excellent article
The City of Toronto's so called "official plan" is now so full of exceptions... and exceptions to the exceptions - That it is essentially meaningless and (just as importantly) toothless.
Add to this Ministerial exemptions, and the lost battles at LPAT/OLT and the City has lost any semblance of control it may once have had.
City Planners using "conformity to the plan" as a criteria would be laughable, were it not for the tragic consequences to those of us forced to live in its shadow.
The density minimums (technically minima) are also somewhat arbitrary and seem to speak to suburban sprawl and not the realities of downtown density.
In fairness that is also the fault of a City that seeks hyperlocal downtown intensification instead of graduated intensification across all wards. (You can intuit the ward/community council boundaries from Damien's excellent map)
I'm skeptical of a "City Plan" that attempts to reconcile the cosmopolitan needs of Toronto Centre (21k people per square km) with the delightful Cow Pastures, Cornfields and Provincial Parks of Scarborough Rouge Park. (1860 people per square km)
I completely agree that the best candidates in the upcoming election should be completely current on this brief - Personally, I'd look for different skill sets, sophistication and (not to mince words) competence - depending on ward impact.
I've taken a look at the Edmonton model for city planning and agree that it checks a lot of boxes in terms of inclusionary housing. But not to sound cynical, Edmonton is not the same as Toronto in terms of scale, density, urban issues or cultural complexities - Its also not in a realpolitik partisan proxy Cold War with the Province.
With this in mind I'd like to add a set of downtown candidate qualifications:
A deep understanding of urban planning... and hand to hand combat.
"It spans my complete evolution as someone who covers local politics — starting out snarky and more opinionated and ending all gruff and world-weary."
Aren't you like 40 or something? If that's the case that's a pretty compressed timeline. Where the hell are you going to go from there in the next 40 years? 🤣🤣🤣
A question for Damien Moule: could you possibly expand more on the link between the Official Plan and rising homelessness? Are there interesting or unexpected ways provincial policies (re: rent control, social assistance, etc.) have interacted with municipal policy over the years?
Also, any thoughts on how the OPA changes will affect TCHC?
The main path between the OP and homelessness is not allowing enough housing and making it more expensive over time. Depending on what source you use and exactly what type of housing you're looking at, inflation adjusted rents and prices are 2-3x what they were in the mid aughts.
The OP largely wasn't written to be responsive to an increase in demand for city living. It certainly wasn't written knowing the greenbelt would come a few years later.
It was written by people very much worried about the prospect of rust belt like decay, just coming off a decade with a large housing crash and very low building rates. They assumed that most growth would happen in the suburbs and that the growth that did happen would be on former industrial sites or downtown which in their view needed a very high level of scrutiny to avoid cycles of urban decay.
In terms of affordable housing, social housing, etc. I think the main impact of the OP is to make it more expensive to build and to slow it down. The city's housing projects are subject to the same requirements as market housing and often it imposes more on itself than that. Take for instance the Housing Now affordable housing program. It started in 2019 and has yet to produce a single unit of affordable housing despite being all on existing city owned land.
As for TCHC going forward I don't really see much impact from Bill 98. It will hopefully make future projects a little cheaper by reducing the study requirements but most of what TCHC does is manage its existing portfolio which is unaffected by anything in Bill 98.
@Damien Moule bravo to cards on table...Excellent article
The City of Toronto's so called "official plan" is now so full of exceptions... and exceptions to the exceptions - That it is essentially meaningless and (just as importantly) toothless.
Add to this Ministerial exemptions, and the lost battles at LPAT/OLT and the City has lost any semblance of control it may once have had.
City Planners using "conformity to the plan" as a criteria would be laughable, were it not for the tragic consequences to those of us forced to live in its shadow.
The density minimums (technically minima) are also somewhat arbitrary and seem to speak to suburban sprawl and not the realities of downtown density.
In fairness that is also the fault of a City that seeks hyperlocal downtown intensification instead of graduated intensification across all wards. (You can intuit the ward/community council boundaries from Damien's excellent map)
I'm skeptical of a "City Plan" that attempts to reconcile the cosmopolitan needs of Toronto Centre (21k people per square km) with the delightful Cow Pastures, Cornfields and Provincial Parks of Scarborough Rouge Park. (1860 people per square km)
I completely agree that the best candidates in the upcoming election should be completely current on this brief - Personally, I'd look for different skill sets, sophistication and (not to mince words) competence - depending on ward impact.
I've taken a look at the Edmonton model for city planning and agree that it checks a lot of boxes in terms of inclusionary housing. But not to sound cynical, Edmonton is not the same as Toronto in terms of scale, density, urban issues or cultural complexities - Its also not in a realpolitik partisan proxy Cold War with the Province.
With this in mind I'd like to add a set of downtown candidate qualifications:
A deep understanding of urban planning... and hand to hand combat.
"It spans my complete evolution as someone who covers local politics — starting out snarky and more opinionated and ending all gruff and world-weary."
Aren't you like 40 or something? If that's the case that's a pretty compressed timeline. Where the hell are you going to go from there in the next 40 years? 🤣🤣🤣
Hah! Oh man, am I still going to be doing this when I'm EIGHTY?
A question for Damien Moule: could you possibly expand more on the link between the Official Plan and rising homelessness? Are there interesting or unexpected ways provincial policies (re: rent control, social assistance, etc.) have interacted with municipal policy over the years?
Also, any thoughts on how the OPA changes will affect TCHC?
The main path between the OP and homelessness is not allowing enough housing and making it more expensive over time. Depending on what source you use and exactly what type of housing you're looking at, inflation adjusted rents and prices are 2-3x what they were in the mid aughts.
The OP largely wasn't written to be responsive to an increase in demand for city living. It certainly wasn't written knowing the greenbelt would come a few years later.
It was written by people very much worried about the prospect of rust belt like decay, just coming off a decade with a large housing crash and very low building rates. They assumed that most growth would happen in the suburbs and that the growth that did happen would be on former industrial sites or downtown which in their view needed a very high level of scrutiny to avoid cycles of urban decay.
In terms of affordable housing, social housing, etc. I think the main impact of the OP is to make it more expensive to build and to slow it down. The city's housing projects are subject to the same requirements as market housing and often it imposes more on itself than that. Take for instance the Housing Now affordable housing program. It started in 2019 and has yet to produce a single unit of affordable housing despite being all on existing city owned land.
As for TCHC going forward I don't really see much impact from Bill 98. It will hopefully make future projects a little cheaper by reducing the study requirements but most of what TCHC does is manage its existing portfolio which is unaffected by anything in Bill 98.