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Planned Sprawl in the GTA

I doubt it will be a leading issue like hydro- though Ontarians generally like the Greenbelt.

However, if the Liberals are smart, they'll use it as one of their prongs of attack against the Conservatives (Patrick Brown wants to pave over the Oak Ridges Moraine!)
There's a nasty irony to that though re Hydro. They are one of the worst violators of the Green Belt. The present Libs refuse to account for the transm....best I quote:

Wells in ‘protected’ Oak Ridges Moraine polluted
Local residents worry that a massive Hydro One transformer project will contaminate their drinking water in what is supposed to be a government-protected watershed.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/20/wells-in-protected-oak-ridges-moraine-polluted.html

The Libs are getting desperate for votes, and if the 905/519 region would produce more votes for slackening Green Belt protections, it will happen. The OMB is another factor complicating this.
 
100% agree. I totally see this being Brown's simplistic solution to sell to voters to fix housing prices in the GTHA.

Will voters fall for it?

Voters aren't falling for anything. It's just that the Liberals have gotten long in the tooth and change is in the air. At this point, I'm not sure opposition policy even matters. It's Brown's to win barring any major gaffes. He's going to be smart and put out tepid, bland feel good policies. Of which opening up greenbelt to development will be one.

The Liberals are going to lose. Especially with Wynne at the helm. It's unfortunate that they haven't ditched her yet and focused on rebuilding the brand.

A good chunk of frustrated millennials will probably vote for Brown too. Everybody talks about better transit and climate change, etc. until they have to bear the cost of those policies. Then, it's "Why do I have pay so much for a house?"

And if by some miracle, housing crashes before the election? The crashing economy will really decimate the Liberals.
 
Mississauga doesn't even want to help fund and build the Crosstown LRT portion within Mississauga (AKA Pearson Airport).

And why should they? They know it has to get built (to connect the airport). And they know the province, feds and Toronto will pay for it.
 
From an urban design standpoint, Mississauga is just abysmal in so many ways.


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More proof that the whole greenbelt issue is paid-for and manufactured:

Thousands of sites for homes sit shovel-ready in Toronto area

More than 55,000 sites for coveted detached homes, semis and townhouses are approved and close to shovel-ready across the Greater Toronto Area, the Ontario government says, despite complaints from some in the development industry about a land shortage.

The internal provincial government numbers, compiled from municipalities that surround Toronto and requested by The Globe and Mail, add ammunition to the debate over whether Ontario’s decade-old landmark anti-urban-sprawl policies are cutting off the supply of land for new houses, and driving the run-up in the Toronto area’s real estate prices. The release of the numbers comes just weeks before the Ontario Liberal government is to announce changes to its two key anti-sprawl policies, the Greenbelt and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-claims-of-gta-land-shortage/article34916245/
 
From an urban design standpoint, Mississauga is just abysmal in so many ways.


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When I saw that graphic on twitter and all the people saying that all of that surface parking represented a huge opportunity to urbanize I asked a few of the tweeters if they knew what the predominant land use was in that north east part of town where a large percentage of the blue is.....people just ignored the question which tells me they were not aware that most of that is industrial land and surface parking (for cars and trucks) is a pretty key component to maintaining those employment lands.

Sure we can hope to eliminate that.....and build hip urban villages where the surface parking used to be....but it is not clear to me where the jobs to afford living there would come from.

Yes there is improvement to be made in 'sauga (and most/all of 905) but I would have preferred to see that "blue parking" map overlayed with land use to see where the real areas for improvement are.
 
Finally some pushback against the ridiculous developer-bought articles decrying the lack of developable land in the GTA. Frankly, there's plenty of land- but unfortunately it's not always land they own, hence the moaning and whining.
Ontario’s Greenbelt architect launches defence of anti-sprawl policies

The chief architect of Ontario’s farmland-protecting Greenbelt is speaking out against what he calls a “misleading” campaign being waged by the development industry and aimed at blaming the province’s anti-sprawl policies for the Toronto area’s skyrocketing house prices.

In an unusual move for a civil servant, Victor Doyle, now serving as a manager in the province’s planning policy branch, is publicly releasing his own 25-page paper defending both the Greenbelt and the province’s Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, which is supposed to force municipalities to build more densely.

Mr. Doyle says he has been warning his bosses that the industry has been using what he calls “selective” and “inaccurate” information to convince the public that the two policies have cut off the supply of land in the greater Toronto area for “ground-related” homes – detached, semi-detached and townhouses – which have seen the steepest price increases.

“No one has provided a factual rebuttal and explained how the plans have provided a very measured, incremental, approach to gradually shifting our housing mix over time,” Mr. Doyle said in an interview.

“The notion that the plans have constrained the supply of ground-related units is completely false, in the long-term planning.”


His intervention in the debate comes even as the Ontario government is expected to announce next week that it is tightening the Growth Plan along the lines proposed by a panel led by former Toronto mayor David Crombie. Mr. Doyle fears that criticism of the Growth Plan will continue with a provincial election on the horizon. In recent months, there has been a wave of newspaper op-eds, reports and media releases from some in the development industry and others critical of the Growth Plan.

It’s not the first time Mr. Doyle, the former manager of community planning for Central Ontario, has spoken out without the say-so of his superiors. He is currently challenging the discipline he faced in 2009, when he was shifted into his current job after he publicly criticized the province’s so-called Simcoe Strategy, which allowed for substantial new development in Simcoe County, leapfrogging the Greenbelt. His case is mired in procedural wrangling before the Ontario Public Service Grievance Board, a tribunal that hears employment disputes between Ontario bureaucrats and their bosses.

In his new paper, Mr. Doyle says the Growth Plan, which he also helped create, has actually only made a small start on steering Ontario away from suburban sprawl: “We have barely shifted the needle.”

Launched in 2006, the plan mandates municipalities to put 40 per cent of their growth inside their existing municipal boundaries. It also forces them to build more densely on new greenfield sites. The proposed changes would tighten these rules.

But Mr. Doyle says that excluding Toronto, as of 2006, there were already 800,000 ground-related housing units planned to accommodate growth projected to 2031 in the Greater Golden Horseshoe on greenfield sites, he said.

About 510,000 of them remain unbuilt. If all are eventually built, they could accommodate 85 per cent of the region’s 2.9 million in projected population growth, excluding Toronto, all on their own, Mr. Doyle says.

By 2031, he says, despite the Growth Plan, the overall composition of the region’s housing stock (including Toronto) will barely shift: Apartments will go from 34 per cent to 35 per cent, while single-family homes will decrease from 51 per cent to 48 per cent of all housing.

On top of all of those ground-related units already in the pipeline, a demographic bulge is coming that Mr. Doyle says will flood the market with the large, suburban single-family homes now occupied by baby boomers.

In the Greater Golden Horseshoe – which stretches from Niagara Falls to Oshawa – there were about 700,000 owners of ground-related homes 55 years or older in 2006, according to Statistics Canada. The youngest of this group will have turned 90 by 2041, meaning virtually all of those homes will have been put on the market by then, Mr. Doyle says.


In his paper, Mr. Doyle also cites research from across Canada and the U.S. concluding that a more compact urban form is 30-per-cent to 50-per-cent cheaper to maintain, compared to low-density development. A 2009 Calgary study concluded that developing the city 25-per-cent more densely would save 33 per cent ($11.2-billion) in infrastructure costs over 25 years, he writes.

Bryan Tuckey, president and chief executive officer of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), has long labelled the Growth Plan as a major factor behind a squeeze on low-density housing that is driving up prices, and urged the province to back off its plans to tighten the rules – although he also says builders have adapted to the Growth Plan.

He says the group has never used selective or misleading numbers. He noted the government keeps releasing its own statistics that appear to clash with the data BILD has access to, which show builder inventories at record low levels and house prices shooting skyward.

“That’s fine. Give us their [information] and we’ll go through it,” he said. “We only provide fact-based information.”

Veteran planning and land economist Don Given, of consulting firm Malone Given Parsons Ltd., has worked for GTA developers for years and also questions some of Mr. Doyle’s numbers.

He says the Growth Plan has been reducing sites for low-density homes and forcing municipalities and developers to comply with new red tape and environmental rules that slow the approvals process to a crawl, crimping supply.

“The problem we have is that the approval time frame to get that land is much longer than anybody first thought,” Mr. Given said in an interview, adding some municipalities still do not have their official plans in line with the Growth Plan, a decade later, which adds to the delays. “The ability to deliver the land in the time we need it is the issue.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ence-of-anti-sprawl-policies/article34965671/
 
From an urban design standpoint, Mississauga is just abysmal in so many ways.


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Mississauga when looked at as a whole, feels like a lost cause.

I think we need to look smaller scale and apply some urban acupuncture to the city. Focus on specific neighbourhoods and areas such as Port Credit, Cooksview and Square One building them up to desirable levels of urbanity. Look at transforming major intersections like Eglinton & Hurontario, Dundas & Dixie etc.. Then finally, create and support corridor development master plans, like for Dundas, Queensway and Dixie, that are not lined by single-detached homes and are developable.
 
From an urban design standpoint, Mississauga is just abysmal in so many ways.


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Mississauga when looked at as a whole, feels like a lost cause.

I think we need to look smaller scale and apply some urban acupuncture to the city. Focus on specific neighbourhoods and areas such as Port Credit, Cooksview and Square One building them up to desirable levels of urbanity. Look at transforming major intersections like Eglinton & Hurontario, Dundas & Dixie etc.. Then finally, create and support corridor development master plans, like for Dundas, Queensway and Dixie, that are not lined by single-detached homes and are developable.

Add the w-i-d-e streets and sprawling single story buildings...

...that all don't allow rainwater to perculate into the ground, but add to the river runoff into the lake, you get rising lake levels. I blame the Toronto Islands lake flooding on Mississauga.
 
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Marcus Gee@marcusbgee
17 mins ago
OMB challenges to be barred within 500 metres of transit stations /via http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news.../+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links

Residents would be blocked from challenging developments within 500 metres of transit stations under sweeping reforms to the Ontario Municipal Board to be unveiled next week.

The provision, revealed to The Globe and Mail by government sources, would allow municipalities to bar challenges to approved developments near GO Transit, subway or light-rail stations in order to support the goal of boosting density near transit lines.

But it is expected to alarm some neighbourhood associations, particularly in Toronto, where developers are eager to build increasingly tall condominium towers – and where residents have resisted such efforts near transit.

That's long over-due.

One can't be selfish enough to be living within 500 meters from a subway station, yet ask the city not to building anything to provide other people the same convenience. Often it is under the pretext of preservation of neighbourhood character or safety for the kids. It is not that they just oppose 40s towers. They would oppose a 12 story apartment building if they can.
 
Some details on the Growth Plan updates from Jennifer Pagliaro- nice to see some strengthening of the Greenbelt and requirement of climate change policies in city planning, but not quite a fan of requiring provincial approval for employment land conversion (who would decide? The new OMB? Would prefer that power left to city council):

@jpags said:
This announcement follows on Tuesday's about changes to OMB. Some pieces will go hand-in-hand, like planning around transit hubs. More soon.
@jpags said:
Most notable change for Toronto is requiring minimum density around major transit station areas and existing subways
@jpags said:
Plans for the new tribunal include giving cities the power to bar appeals in major transit station areas. It's not a blanket ban
@jpags said:
It would bar both developers and residents from appealing those council decisions, if the city chooses to use that power
@jpags said:
Those interested would still participate in the conversation around those transit stations, within the context of these new density targets
@jpags said:
But once plan in place, city could essentially choose to lock it down, prevent piecemeal appeals. We're still waiting on specifics of that
@jpags said:
Don't let me focus just on Toronto though. Greenbelt to see 21 urban river valleys and 7 coastal wetlands added
@jpags said:
And cities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe must include climate change policies in official plans, create stormwater management plans
@jpags said:
.@BillMauroMPP says he's not in a position to comment on inclusionary zoning regulations the city has been waiting on
@jpags said:
Those rules would allow city to make affordable housing mandatory in new development. What trade-off might be built into rules still unclear
@jpags said:
Crombie says the development industry argument that provincial policies are driving housing supply/pricing woes has been debunked already
@jpags said:
Also big for city: Province to require conversion of *all* land designated for employment to non-employment to be approved by province

https://twitter.com/jpags/status/865167886310158336
 
It will soon be tougher to build on vacant land, as Ontario toughens anti-sprawl policies
Municipalities will have until 2031 to meet the new, tougher targets set out in province's updated growth plan

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/anti-sprawl-ontario-government-1.4121256
from that story:

The Ontario government plans to strengthen its anti-sprawl policies...

from this story http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-t...il-line-between-toronto-and-windsor-1.3420205

The initial phase would see the trains go to London. It is hoped that the high-speed rail would open up vast areas of affordable homes to people who want to work in Toronto but live outside of the city.
 

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