Urban wards Official Plan workshop: What we heard

In June, I and my urban caucus colleagues (Councillors King, Fleury, McKenney and Menard) hosted a workshop at City Hall to look ahead at the new Official Plan. We heard lots about the kind of city you'd like to build, with heavy emphasis on sustainability and affordability. Take a look at the attached .pdf (click below) for more on what you told us.

As I noted in the newsletter, since our workshop the Planning Committee has received staff's recommendations for five "Big Moves" that they anticipate will be part of the next Official Plan (OP) now being consulted. The OP is the single-most important document that guides development in our ward and across the city, and it's important that residents engage with the process. There will be a greater emphasis in our OP on intensification, sustainable transportation, urban design, environmental resiliency and economic development. Take a look at the draft preliminary policy positions on the City's OP engagement site here, and register with the site to get updates on its progress. I'm working on bringing the planners working on this to my next ward forum in October to discuss it, as well as the Westboro Infill Study and the Westboro Secondary Plan study at a public session.

Intensification, especially around transit, is going to continue, and is overall the right direction for our city. How that's accomplished with sustainability and affordability most important as well as quality of life in downtown neighbourhoods will be the focus of our conversations moving into the final Official Plan that will become the focus of debate in the second quarter of 2020.