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Planned Sprawl in the GTA

Fritter said:
This Stouffville development has got me thinking where the next place to grow up, not out will be.
Barrie is starting to develop a skyline, but I wonder if other non GTA locations will start to see skyline defining height.
Will it be a Kingston, Peterborough, Collingwood, Parry Sound or even a Sudbury?
Just soliciting thoughts on the idea.
Click to expand...

Most/all of these are far too flung to see spin-off development from the GTA/GGH which is the character of the development in Stouffville.

You could see development in other centres, but it would have to be based on something in the local context to drive it.

Ptbo might see something....in theory..........however, much of their DT is within a regulatory floodplain.....which poses issues.

Collingwood has the resort community to drive some density.......but I find it hard to imagine DT Collingwood with endless towers.

****

Outside the GGH, @WislaHD noted London..........I would add some potential in Windsor which is seeing very high levels of growth.
 
Fritter said:
This Stouffville development has got me thinking where the next place to grow up, not out will be.
Barrie is starting to develop a skyline, but I wonder if other non GTA locations will start to see skyline defining height.
Will it be a Kingston, Peterborough, Collingwood, Parry Sound or even a Sudbury?
Just soliciting thoughts on the idea.
Click to expand...
KWC judging by the new threads posted in recent days. edit to add: possibly Niagara--so many parking lots and other underused sites.
 
Didn't know where to post this, so thought here was as good as any.

Was looking at marketing material for 1 Jarvis Condominums in Hamilton's West Harbour and saw this speculative massing rendering of the West Harbour area and thought others would also find it interesting:

1622084568022.png
 
mjl08 said:

'An urban pedestrian-oriented place': Bronte GO station area plan includes about 8,000 residents, 19,000 jobs​

www.thestar.com

'An urban pedestrian-oriented place': Bronte GO station area plan includes about 8,000 residents, 19,000 jobs

Town collecting input for development plan
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com
Click to expand...

The proposed (at the time, I'm assuming this was approved?) MTSA:

1622469070353.png


Proposed Land Uses, and Heights:

1622469123377.png


1622469154192.png

1622469188771.png


1622469225652.png


Link to the Planning Report, here: https://securepwa.oakville.ca/sirepub/cache/107/rk1e2phws3w40ntdyn05z2ww/56969705312021094805424.PDF

*******

Very interesting to see submissions from the Community calling for greater height, so long as there's a slight uptick in open space at the north end of the established residential.
 
Looks good. Typical Oakville to push for densities so low it'll basically be pointless to redevelop the existing industrial assets.

Burlington's proposed densities around their GO stations are much more reasonable.

Honestly I wonder when south Oakville's condo market is really going to take off. North Oakville is exploding with new condos right now despite it being away from transit, yet the area around Oakville GO continues to be anemic in growth despite being much better located for a typical condo dweller. It's a great area to live - high quality transit to Toronto with short travel times, excellent access to parks in the wider city, close to downtown Oakville and Sixteen Mile Creek, etc.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Honestly I wonder when south Oakville's condo market is really going to take off. North Oakville is exploding with new condos right now despite it being away from transit, yet the area around Oakville GO continues to be anemic in growth despite being much better located for a typical condo dweller. It's a great area to live - high quality transit to Toronto with short travel times, excellent access to parks in the wider city, close to downtown Oakville and Sixteen Mile Creek, etc.
Click to expand...
It's surprised me as well of how long it has taken for this area to take off, especially compared to what we've seen elsewhere in the GTA. There is activity behind the scenes, I wonder if the proponents are just waiting to see what kind of prices and density they can get in the future. The area has potential for city centre level densities yet the current secondary plan calls for max 20-storeys.

I'm also surprised that some of the necessary improvements to municipal infrastructure and road configuration aren't already underway there. This would speed up the development pipeline for quite a few sites north and east of the GO station.
 
I think there are a lot of issues with the Midtown Secondary Plan from what I recall. It requires a ton of new road work that doesn't align with existing property boundaries, and development charges are high to reflect it, which discourages developers and creates challenging development parcels as all the new roads break them up too much. But even then, there are lots of parcels that should be developable right now that haven't moved forward.

My understanding is Oakville is currently revising the secondary plan to try and address the issues a bit, but it seems like the market side of things is still not there either which surprises me.
 
great article.

It highlights the issues with the growth plan of consistantly underestimating growth in Toronto, both population and employment.

The Growth Plan is still planning for huge increases in office employment in the 905 despite it being completely flat for the last decade more or less. Plus of course the silly projections of major intensification in York and Peel Regions, despite the market indicating clear preference for Toronto based intensification.

It's resulting in Toronto getting far more growth than it is planning for, the inner 905 getting far less, and the outer 905 sprawling faster than expected.
 
New article this morning in the Globe and Mail...........

It discusses how the Growth Plan has consistently over-estimated growth in suburban areas; and the impact of that in terms of regions/municipalities be required by the province to designate additional lands
for development as a result.

The province imposes the numbers in the Growth Plan as the amount of growth for which a municipality must plan.

Not mentioned, is that these numbers then also inform the MTO's plans; approval for new Sewage projects etc.............and that this whole things becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy/cycle in some ways.

It boosts the value of land designated for growth, making it less tenable as agriculture/forest/rural housing...........
It adds legal permissions for new housing.
It puts in place infrastructure for higher populations.

Article here: (not currently paywalled)

www.theglobeandmail.com

Auditor-General investigating Ontario’s land-use policies

Probe to include growth planning projections that critics say fuel sprawl
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

The article centres the above in the context of the provincial NDP asking the Auditor General to investigate; and an assertion that the current policy may be tied to PC Party-friendly developers/speculators.

One excerpt from the above:

Under the 2005 growth plan projections, he said, Durham Region had to designate enough land for 64,000 new housing units by 2021, but as of last year, it had only built 33,000 – a prediction off by almost 50 per cent.
 
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