On April 25th, we were pleased to host Patrick Devine (a development lawyer) and John Gladki (an urban planner) to explore the ins and outs of Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act.
Section 37 allows your local government to set rules around negotiating with developers when they ask for permission to build with more height or density. The community can negotiate for local community benefits like: providing affordable housing, replacing rental units, protecting heritage buildings, adding cultural centres, streetscape improvements, adding public art, and more.
We set half of the night aside for your questions, and we were impressed as usual at the enthusiasm and insight that our audience members bring to their questions!
Let’s all check our language, Gillian Mason told the room of planners, students, and community members last night. The director of the Centre for City Ecology, she instructed us to expunge any jargon from our speech and to raise a hand if something wasn’t making sense to us. This was going to prove difficult, as the topic of the evening’s discussion was the often murky, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours dealings of Section 37 of the Planning Act—the one which allows the City to barter extra density or height on a development site in return for agreed upon community benefits.
Developers and the community are often interested in discussing Section 37 benefits earlier on in the development approval process. However, councillors and planners wait until development plans are finalized to more accurately quantify the added value of permitting increased height and density to better position the city in the negotiations…
The purpose of zoning is to protect what exists, encourage appropriate standards and a mix of uses, while minimizing negative external effects, not necessarily to anticipate future development potential, explains Gladki. Even if the city's outdated zoning was updated to better reflect current development practice, it wouldn't necessarily eliminate Section 37 agreements.
Photos and Recordings
This event was recorded and we are working on editing it so we can release it as a podcast. If you would like to be notified when it is available, you can join our mailing list.
We are exploring the possibility of bringing this event to other Toronto neighbourhoods. If your organization is interested in co-hosting an event like this with us, please contact Heather Ann Kaldeway at heatherann@cityecology.net.
Starting on Wednesday, February 1st, the City Builder Book Club will start with our first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. We would love to have you join us! We are reading 1–2 chapters per week: Check out the schedule on the website!
Staff of the Centre for City Ecology and Creative Urban Projects will blog about the book each week. We will also have guest posts from urbanists, architects, town planners, designers, academics, and city builders of all kinds. On Fridays, members of the mailing list will receive a weekly wrap-up of the posts and discussions about that week's chapters, as well as a selection of related materials highlighted for us by the Toronto Public Library.
In this book, Jane Jacobs demonstrates the value of the experiences of people who live and work in cities. We welcome you to strengthen our discussion of this book by joining the conversation on our blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Your experience in your own city is a valuable part of this conversation about what makes a city welcoming and vibrant.
If you don't yet have a copy of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, you can:
We will be reading chapter by chapter rather than page by page, so you will be able to follow along no matter whether you have a crisp new copy of the recently released 50th Anniversary Edition or an older much-loved, creased and highlighted copy!
As many of you know, on 17 September 2011, 120 people met at City Builder Camp to hear about existing challenges in St James Town, Mount Dennis, and Yonge & Bloor. Community representatives presented about their neighbourhoods and heard advice and feedback from urban planners, community organizers, architects, and developers who had volunteered their time for the day. CCE has been meeting with these communities again, to hear how City Builder Camp has affected their work and to see their neighbourhoods in person.
St James Town
Community Matters and U for Change, two local community groups, recently led CCE on a walking tour in St James Town. At the start of our tour, Chris Coshan of Community Matters showed us the original model of St James Town, now located in Rose Avenue Jr. Public School:
They found the City Builder Camp helped to focus their subsequent community conversations. As the community worked on their presentation to the Camp, they were able to combine the voices that represent both those who focus on social justice issues with those most concerned with development pressures.
Since City Builder Camp, they have developed greater clarity around their priorities, which they have been able to map. With this map of priorities for improvements they have already made some headway. The input provided by practitioners and the exercise of thinking about their community at the Camp has enhanced their capacity to focus their consultations with developers in the neighbourhood.
As we walked around St James Town, we were very impressed with the infrastructure that already exists, and the changes that are being made due to community efforts. The community has successfully added:
new stop signs at a busy private intersection,
vibrant murals designed and created by local youth through U for Change’s Graffiti and Murals arts program,
In December, we met with the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association, which is facing many development pressures. They told us that their main take-away from City Builder Camp was the focus on “how to get from NIMBY to YIMBY” and that this has affected their approach since September. They also deeply appreciated the opportunity to have such a positive and productive conversation with architects, planners, and developers as they shared their insights with CWNA at City Builder Camp. Thank you to our panel members for making this possible!
Since the Camp, CWNA has held a community planning exercise which was attended by 80 community members and covered topics including development, safety, place-making, and heritage. As a community, they have now developed a shared vision for their neighbourhood. To increase their ability to realize that vision, they are strengthening their approach by developing and adopting both a strategic plan for the neighbourhood and for their association. Creative approaches are being taken to hosting events that will enable developers, planners, and community members to work together towards a public vision for how Yonge Street could become a Great Street.
Mount Dennis
We met with Rick Ciccarelli and Marabelle McTavish of the Mount Dennis Community Association this past week for a tour around their neighbourhood. Here you can see Rick telling Gillian and Marabelle about the last remaining building on the Kodak lands:
As we drove around the neighbourhood, we realised that our maps at City Builder Camp had masked two things about Mount Dennis:
It’s really big! Unlike those in St James Town and Yonge Street, this tour required a car due to the scale and shape of the neighbourhood.
It is riddled with barriers, both natural and human-created. It is crisscrossed by two ravines, parallel railway tracks, wide arterial roads, a cut flood relief channel, and lots of steep hills. Within the sections created by these crisscrossing barriers, residents have access to services and shops, but each section is seriously disconnected from the others, at least for pedestrians!
This photo illustrates one of the challenges this community is facing:
"The wall”, which we heard about at City Builder Camp, is along the southern edge of the 57 acre vacant Kodak lands. It forms the northern retaining wall for Eglinton Ave which as you can see tunnels underneath the railway (we took this photo from the railway bridge). In the plans, of course, is the proposed Eglinton–Scarborough Crosstown Line. Add this to the above challenges and you can quickly imagine the complexity of the discussion about whether to opt for a subway or an LRT and where it should go. More fascinating work ahead for the community and CCE.
If you would like to assist any of these communities or learn more about them, please contact us at info@cityecology.net and we will connect you with them.
Yesterday was the final Tranportation Month event: Transport Futures' Mobility Pricing Stakeholder Forum. As usual, Toronto's urbanist Twitter crowd was there!
kristinmichi Congestion charging is to improve journey times, and reliability for motorists. To be palatable, congestion must be a severe problem TODAY
HilaryHolden In Stockholm, everyone pays congestion charge but commuters able to deduct from income tax. Efficient AND fair? #ArupTO#TransportFutures
caasco Dennis Burns, at Transport Futures, talks parking. USA study estimates that 30% of traffic in a city caused by people looking for parking.
TessKalinowski Oakville Mayor Rob Burton at road pricing forum today.
OakvilleMayor In basement of T.O. hotel for Transport Futures Forum on future (if there is one) of tolls, gas taxes, parking. Or will everything be free?
@OakvilleMayor@Ruffell78 Well, not certain yet. We all need/want personal mobility. Need pick how to pay: progressive, regressive, proportional tax/fees?
OakvilleMayor .@Ruffell78 Plus, how do you want the external costs handled? If user/causer pays, will behaviour be more responsible?
Ruffell78@OakvilleMayor I'd switch to transit if I had to pay $5+ congestion toll and higher parking fees. Would need to address GO crowding though.
OakvilleMayor@Ruffell78 Crowding (full seats + full standing on my GO ride) at 7:30 am was most impressive.
MobiliT.O.: Getting to the Core, a design workshop hosted by CCE and the Ontario Association of Architects last Saturday, resulted in lots of great discussions and interesting images!
We had some fantastic presentations in the morning by CCE's Gillian Mason, OAA's Sheena Sharp, Joe Berridge, five students from the University of Toronto's Workshop in Planning Practice class, and Chris Hardwicke. After that, we had a day full of discussion groups and design exercises where we worked on mobility solutions that balanced the needs of people who are walking, biking, driving, taking transit, driving taxis, and making deliveries in downtown Toronto.
We'll be posting more images and video soon. For now, here's a snapshot of the day from Twitter!
Wait... Jane Jacobs was on the cover of Vogue Magazine??
We're just as curious as you are! So we started asking around.
So far, it seems that while Jane was not on the cover of Vogue Magazine, she did have a photo shoot with them and they published several of her articles. We are working with the Toronto Public Library to find out more and we promise to report back.
exhibit_change Best Practices #MobiliTO HK Octopus Card. Refillable transit card and rewards. Also apartment security key + loose change card!
exhibit_change Shift thinking from urban planning & architecture to service design. How do we change the movement rather than the physical? #MobiliTO
CabbagetownMatt Chris Hardwicke asks which trend we should be looking at; Complete Streets or Shared Space - diametrically opposed, same goal. #MobiliTO
CabbagetownMatt Our #MobiliTO break-out group is trying to improve mobility for drivers and couriers in downtown #TO - pretty sure we've got it sussed.
Walk_TO@chrisjamesdrew I hope it includes talk about walking as part of a transportation network ...
chrisjamesdrew@Walk_TO#walkTO on the agenda + one of the considerations. I included the idea 4 improving walking on Yonge from the Downtown Yonge concept
CabbagetownMatt 20+ engaged and intelligent thinkers, brainstorming improvements to mobility in #TO Love it. #MobiliTO
CabbagetownMatt Dan Fisher of #ArupTO knocks it out of the park with a measured and rational statement about the necessity of mass transit in #TO#MobiliTO
chrisjamesdrew Group presentations. Our group mention integration, had some fun thinking about often forgotten modes of transport: taxis+couriers #mobiliTO
