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Planned Sprawl in the GTA

Northern Light said:
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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Is the prediction off, or just hasn't come into fruition yet?

There is significant plans for the Seaton and Veraine, but the municipalities and some of the developers involved are not interested in repeating the sprawl of old, so these new suburbs are being more carefully planned in terms of transportation, servicing, the environment and sustainability, employment, and built form and density.

In any case, I both agree and disagree with the cited problems in the Growth Plan. The region needs to continue growth (we have a housing crisis....) and going after the Growth Plan for encouraging population growth in the 905 is playing exactly into the anti-growth political voices in those communities. However, I very much do wish for the new growth to come in the form of denser housing options rather than in the form of approving new sprawling communities and I find the Growth Plan to be insufficient in encouraging the former instead of the latter.
 
WislaHD said:
Is the prediction off, or just hasn't come into fruition yet?

There is significant plans for the Seaton and Veraine, but the municipalities and some of the developers involved are not interested in repeating the sprawl of old, so these new suburbs are being more carefully planned in terms of transportation, servicing, the environment and sustainability, employment, and built form and density.

In any case, I both agree and disagree with the cited problems in the Growth Plan. The region needs to continue growth (we have a housing crisis....) and going after the Growth Plan for encouraging population growth in the 905 is playing exactly into the anti-growth political voices in those communities. However, I very much do wish for the new growth to come in the form of denser housing options rather than in the form of approving new sprawling communities.
Click to expand...

Since the province isn't requiring municipalities to house all growth within the existing urban footprint, you can safely assume any minimum level of growth that a suburban or ex-urban community is being told to plan for will involve plans for sprawl of some sort.

Shy of a total ban on all rural land conversion, the Province needs to take several steps if it wishes to change how much sprawl occurs, and what form that takes.

1) Extract some lands from the White Belt and add them to the Greenbelt, clearly telling municipalities what lands are completely off limits.

2) Eliminate any ability to shrink the Greenbelt on the part of Municipalities and the Minister. What gets designated Greenbelt cannot be undesignated.

3) Prohibit any highway in Ontario from being larger than six total lanes on a go-forward basis, and ban new highways through the Greenbelt completely. Direct local municpalities and the MTO to plan for
any and all growth to have a very high walk/cycle/transit modal share, and handling any cars/trucks via local roads.

4) Raise the minimum number of jobs+residents per hectare/km2 that new development must achieve.

5) Ban any new development which cannot be sustained by in-watershed water supply and can safely and ecologically acceptably discharge same.

6) Require municipalities to plan to intensify existing major corridors and town centers, significantly.

7) Deliver statutory assists to the above by instituting province-wide legalization of:

Duplex, triple, and four-plex building designs as-of-right in every area zoned residential.
Permit multi-residential tenure (purpose-built rental) in all areas zoned residential.
Permit 3-storey heights in all areas zoned residential.
Permit MCR (mixed use) all major roads, as-of-right.; Permit 4 storeys on all major corridors in the GTA, as-of-right.

The above can can have caveats to protect designated/listed heritage buildings and heritage conservation districts designated prior to these changes.
 
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Northern Light said:
Since the province isn't requiring municipalities to house all growth within the existing urban footprint, you can safely assume any minimum level of growth that a suburban or ex-urban community is being told to plan for will involve plans for sprawl of some sort.

Shy of a total ban on all rural land conversion, the Province needs to take several steps if it wishes to change how much sprawl occurs, and what form that takes.

1) Extract some lands from the White Belt and add them to the Greenbelt, clearly telling municipalities what lands are completely off limits.

2) Eliminate any ability to shrink the Greenbelt on the part of Municipalities and the Minister. What gets designated Greenbelt cannot be undesignated.

3) Prohibit any highway in Ontario from being larger than six total lanes on a go-forward basis, and ban new highways through the Greenbelt completely. Direct local municpalities and the MTO to plan for
any and all growth have a very high walk/cycle/transit modal share, and handling any cars/trucks via local roads.

4) Raise the minimum number of jobs+residents per hectare/km2 that new development must achieve.

5) Ban any new development which cannot be sustained by in-watershed water supply and can safely and ecologically acceptably discharge same.

6) Require municipalities to plan to intensify existing major corridors and town centers, significantly.

7) Deliver statutory assists to the above by instituting province-wide legalization of:

Duplex, triple, and four-plex building designs as-of-right in every area zoned residential.
Permit multi-residential tenure (purpose-built rental) in all areas zoned residential.
Permit 3-storey heights in all areas zoned residential.
Permit MCR (mixed use) all major roads, as-of-right.; Permit 4 storeys on all major corridors in the GTA, as-of-right.

The above can can have caveats to protect designated/listed heritage buildings and heritage conservation districts designated prior to these changes.
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For #7 I would add some sort of as of right retail within the residential zoning to allow for local cafes, florists, take out, corner store, etc enabling 15 minute living.
 
So, I was reading an article in The Star about Lakeridge Health looking for a new site for an additional hospital to serve Durham Region.

Article here: https://www.thestar.com/local-whitb...-via-survey-virtual-town-hall-meeting.html?rf

What does this have to do w/sprawl you ask? Well, I went over to Durham's site for this project, and had a look at the site selection criteria. The list is long...........but the very first item stands out like a sore thumb.

1626527734898.png


By requiring 50 acres of land (a complete unnecessary amount) you:

a) Force the site to be greenfield and at the edge of any urban development, because there are few, if any sites of that size within the already urbanized area that are available.

(particularly true when you consider that don't want any site that may be deemed ecologically sensitive, nor any in close proximity to heavy industry)

b) The Criteria goes on to list cheapest possible land cost as a factor; which obviously favours the most far-flung location; and the large, sprawl-laden concept of a 50-acre site results grossly inflated costs for total
land acquisition which in turn forces the price up overall, which means the price per acre must decline.

*****

Needless to say, I took a moment to politely give'em hell; and suggest that a site with any/all parking underground, and reasonable minimum building heights should be able to occupy a small portion of the land area, and require nowhere near 50 acres.

I also suggested that prioritizing easy access for patients and visitors, but also staff meant the site had to be located on a frequent public transit route.

Any of you who live in Durham Region should take a moment to participate in the site selection criteria, as it will be hard to make a bad site choice work well.

Free Online Survey Software by SurveyMonkey: Closed Survey

This survey is currently closed. Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance.
www.surveymonkey.com www.surveymonkey.com
 
Northern Light said:
So, I was reading an article in The Star about Lakeridge Health looking for a new site for an additional hospital to serve Durham Region.

Article here: https://www.thestar.com/local-whitb...-via-survey-virtual-town-hall-meeting.html?rf

What does this have to do w/sprawl you ask? Well, I went over to Durham's site for this project, and had a look at the site selection criteria. The list is long...........but the very first item stands out like a sore thumb.

View attachment 335557

By requiring 50 acres of land (a complete unnecessary amount) you:

a) Force the site to be greenfield and at the edge of any urban development, because there are few, if any sites of that size within the already urbanized area that are available.

(particularly true when you consider that don't want any site that may be deemed ecologically sensitive, nor any in close proximity to heavy industry)

b) The Criteria goes on to list cheapest possible land cost as a factor; which obviously favours the most far-flung location; and the large, sprawl-laden concept of a 50-acre site results grossly inflated costs for total
land acquisition which in turn forces the price up overall, which means the price per acre must decline.

*****

Needless to say, I took a moment to politely give'em hell; and suggest that a site with any/all parking underground, and reasonable minimum building heights should be able to occupy a small portion of the land area, and require nowhere near 50 acres.

I also suggested that prioritizing easy access for patients and visitors, but also staff meant the site had to be located on a frequent public transit route.

Any of you who live in Durham Region should take a moment to participate in the site selection criteria, as it will be hard to make a bad site choice work well.

Free Online Survey Software by SurveyMonkey: Closed Survey

This survey is currently closed. Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance.
www.surveymonkey.com www.surveymonkey.com
Click to expand...

From link. Don't look at current population. Have to look at future population growth.

...increased by more than six per cent between 2011 and 2016. At the end of 2016, there were about 673,000 people living in the region. Our population is expected to grow to 1.2 million by 2041.
Click to expand...
 
W. K. Lis said:
From link. Don't look at current population. Have to look at future population growth.
Click to expand...

A further concern, Durham's projected growth in those plans has consistently come up short.

So growth is not occurring in Durham at the projected rate.

Further, there is evidence on-the-ground of a shift away from greenfield and to more intensive development in Durham.
 
Northern Light said:
A further concern, Durham's projected growth in those plans has consistently come up short.

So growth is not occurring in Durham at the projected rate.

Further, there is evidence on-the-ground of a shift away from greenfield and to more intensive development in Durham.
Click to expand...
Based on what we can see on the development pipeline, the 2020s may be a very different decade in terms of growth for Durham compared to the 2010s.
 
WislaHD said:
Based on what we can see on the development pipeline, the 2020s may be a very different decade in terms of growth for Durham compared to the 2010s.
Click to expand...

Not only in volume though, but in the nature and siting of development.

My concern in the hospital proposal is that the criteria would be based on a different growth scenario than the one that is likely to unfold.
 
She draws a lot of straight lines and makes a lot of assumptions that I'm not convinced exist. She makes the blanket assertion that North American wood framed homes are "flimsy" w/o actually making her case. Certainly, there is always room for improvement as the recent tornado in Barrie has shown, but I'm not aware that houses are falling down around us after a few decades, even those allegedly hastily-built post-war tract houses . She seems to conflate construction quality with the construction method. Our last house was built in the 1890s with locally-sourced material and likely local non-trade labour and it's still there.

Building construction back in the era when transportation was more challenging reflected the locally available building materials. Wood might have been more abundant in Europe in past centuries than it is now but was more protected; that, and in many countries forests were the property of the local monarchy and you just didn't cut them down at will - more than once. Hence, they used more masonry methods. Over here, people often forget that this part of the world was virtually all trees before settlement started clearing the land. If you go to many areas of eastern Ontario you can find a lot of older buildings that are limestone because it was readily available and relatively easy to quarry.

Brick houses are cheaper to heat? Considering older solid brick houses (not brick veneer as are typically built today) had only an air gap for insulation, that claim is a bit much. Insulation was much less of an issue when you fuel source was dirt cheap. I would put a wood frame home built with modern insulation technologies and methods up against an unimproved draughty old European house any day.
 
yup. Saying that house construction technology has made houses worse over a century ago is a joke. Spend a day in a house from the 2000's on a cold day or a hot day then a day in a house built in the 1920's and see which is more comfortable and which has lower heating bills, and which has less water penetration, and which has more desirable floorplans, and which has more space, etc., etc.

Houses are like cars -at first they built them like tanks because thats what you had to do to make them stand up. As time went on we figured out ways of doing it that's better but less "tanklike". Sure that 1960's chevy may be built like a tank, but I sure as hell would rather be in an accident in a 2021 Honda Civic than a 1960's Ford pickup.
 
the problem is not the house design, i.e. platform framed wood homes. You can certainly build an excellent house with current methods and many builders do. All these super advanced net zero homes for example use the same basic methods but with good attention to details, better products, and good workmanship.
The minimum building code isn't great and could be improved a lot. the roofs coming off homes in Barrie could be solved with $500 in steel brackets.
in production building, there is a huge problem of bad detailing\lack of detailing by designers, and poor workmanship resulting in many cases of not even meeting minimum code. Enforcement of code is also very lax. Production Residential in Ontario is a joke.
For example, in ICI, if a roof came off, standards would change immediately. Look at what happened with railing glass for example. But because the residential developers have such a chokehold on the code, I bet that tornado changes nothing for them.

Also the R Value of brick is <1, so to say it is a better insulator is hogwash. The assembly behind aND the airseal is what will determine the performances, not what sort of rainscreen system you have on top.
 
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