Bedford’s ideas include having a portion of our city councillors elected “at large” (or within districts similar to the borders of the previous municipalities that now make up the city), creating between 11 and 22 Neighbourhood Advisory Committees (with the retention of the current Community Councils being optional), and resourcing those committees with city staff. Other potential ideas included re-creating a Board of Planning, instituting a development permit system, and having the Chief Planner report directly to Council rather than to the Deputy City Manager (as is now the case). All of these proposals, say Bedford, are within the power of the City to do without any need for legislative change.

His goal is to make amalgamation work more effectively. And his suggested principles – which include achieving a better balance between local and city-wide matters, encouraging more courageous decision-making, and “unleashing the potential” of Torontonians to participate in city government – are unimpeachable. But would these reforms really fix city planning and give people a meaningful voice in the process?

No doubt about it, community engagement is getting onto the urban agenda these days. Bedford’s proposals are designed, in part, to encourage the participation of citizens and non-citizens alike in citybuilding, and his ideas merit careful consideration. But in questions from the floor after the panel, transit blogger Steve Munro put his finger on the fundamental issue when he asked a question to the effect of whether these reforms would result in genuinely meaningful public engagement – or just more of the same?

Personally, I like the idea of Neighbourhood Advisory Committees – we have been developing proposals for something similar ourselves here at PPT, known as Neighbourhood Action Councils (same acronym!), which we believe should be involved in any significant neighbourhood planning or development project at the earliest stages.  But such groups will need real power to influence the culture at City Hall, and that means somehow assigning their decisions legal weight.   All of these proposals are important to discuss, but there’s much hard thinking still to be done about how to implement them in a way that leads not just to more “consultation”, but to real, systemic change.

In my last blog post (below), I flagged some general concerns with the proposed new harmonized zoning bylaw.  At yesterday’s Open House yesterday, city planners reassured me on a number of concerns, including:

1) the reflection of existing bylaw requirements in the current draft,

2) recognising non-conforming uses; and

3) allowing approved minor variances to continue.

However I am sharply critical of the whole project and there are lessons to be learned.

1) The project should have been administrative and  taken around 6 to 9 months for a saving of around $5 million. The starting point, creating one massive bylaw, was wrong in that zoning is a local matter and should reflect local characteristics and aspirations. This caused major conflict and was the root of the major issues including the three listed above. Time would not have been wasted because there would have been no issue if a number of the existing bylaws remained. The terms of reference should have been clearly spelt out and referred to those using the bylaw in the field before being adopted.

2) Staff went on a wild goose-chase trying to standardise zoning bylaws across the city. This would have radically changed the character of neighbourhoods by allowing greater residential densities in some areas and reduced densities in others. The situation was brought back on track through the initiatives of Cathie MacDonald of People Plan Toronto and Councillor Walker who set up meetings between staff on those involved  with residential zoning and further talks with those concerned with industrial categories.  It was 5 years into the project before true public participation was invoked. An advisory committee or committees of stakeholders should have been struck at the outset. This should be done for all major planning studies. There is a disconnect between City Hall and the public. People are angry and justified in calling the city dysfunctional. Community participation can bridge the gap. I would like to donate my professional time but am constantly put in a conflict situation.

3) We are being planned by development application rather than policy. We are inundated with spot zonings and Offical Plan Amendments. Planning needs to be local plan led and planning staff numbers boosted to enable this to happen (or perhaps transferred from this project.) Neighbourhood/ Area plans should be prepared involving the community in order to guide development and to bring zoning into conformity with the relatively recently approved Official Plan. It is time to commence local planning with good  public participation practice to create high quality pedestrian-friendly environments which will attract investment (like the St Lawrence Starch Development in Port Credit) and improve the economy.

Growth management needs to be rethought and the policies of the Official Plan blended with grass roots initiatives. If whole nations can reach consensus such as the coalition in UK it should be relatively easier in Toronto. People sitting around a table with different objectives can come up with creative solutions if the mindset is right.  Toronto established neighbourhood offices when it had the reputation as one of the leading planning cities in North America.

Zoning Harmonisation might sound benign, but it would be controversial if it was not flying under the radar.

The idea was simply to standardise the zoning bylaws of the six constituent municipalities which became the City of Toronto.  But in addition to administrative changes such as rationalising definitions, staff embarked on radical changes to zoning categories in an effort to make usage categories standard across the city as well.  This substantially increased densities in some neighbourhoods and reduced densities in others.  This would have changed the character of neighbourhoods contrary to the Official Plan.  Councillor Walker sponsored a series of meetings with City staff at the request of Cathie Macdonald from PPT, where resident group representatives and private sector planners worked together to resolve these and other issues.  Some members of the group continue to raise questions about some aspects of the proposals, though many concerns have been resolved.

The draft bylaw now is supposed to reflect existing requirements in one huge bylaw. However, unless you are a planner or lawyer who works with the zoning in Toronto you are unlikely to be able to figure out anything, because it is so complex. All that has been done is to produce the draft – no changes are listed or impacts given.  So the real consequences of this harmonization exercise are yet to be understood.

The City wishes to have the bylaw finalised before the election and has scheduled an Open House on August 11 for 2pm to 8pm in Room 310, Metro Hall and the statutory public meeting on August 19  in Ciity Hall as soon after 10am as possible for submissions.

Come to the Open House on August 11 to find out more about how the proposed bylaw will affect your neighbourhood and property. Contact the City Clerk for further details and to be listed as a deputant on the 19^th by emailing pgmc@toronto.ca.  In particular, if you think that you or an organization you belong to may wish to  challenge any  aspect of the by-law before the Ontario Municipal Board, note that you must make submissions or a deputation to City Council before it is passed.

Now, some of Toronto’s top architects, planners and developers are adding their voice. Yesterday, Councillor Adam Vaughan introduced an open letter at council calling for “a new planning vision for Toronto”. (Full disclosure – PPT was one of the signators). Specifically, the letter requests that the hiring of a new Chief Planner be deferred until the next term of council (in other words – after the next municipal election), and that a full review of the city’s planning functions be undertaken at that time. Hear hear, we say.

Letters of all sorts were flying this week, it seems.  Also put out to the public was a scathing letter from the Waterfront Design Review Panel to the City.  Asking “Why would the City of Toronto compromise the vision and potential for the Lower Don Lands”?  the panel takes on the inexplicable and bone-headed decision of the City to put a sprawling, suburban-style ice-hockey rink on the waterfront, in direct contravention of all of the values that have been so carefully – even painfully – worked out  between the community and waterfront planners over the last decade.

The grassroots and the elite of Toronto’s design and planning community agree:  planning  in Toronto is in dire need of a radical shakeup.   Is there a mayoral candidate who can answer the call?

Scarborough Village is economically depressed and demographically divided. One of the thirteen priority areas identified by the city and the United Way, with Markham and Eglinton as its major intersection, it’s considered a low-income community, with a significant population of immigrants from various backgrounds and language groups. But in fact, the population south of Kingston Road to the lake is largely white and established, with most newer, low-income residents living north of Kingston Road.

On March 1, I attended a special meeting of the recently-formed Scarborough Village Advisory Committee (“SVAC”). David Baird, a life-long Scarborough resident, brought together an impressive cross-section of local business owners and residents from both sides of Kingston Road, as well as local councillors Ashton and De Baeremaeker, to talk about how they could bring new life to the neighbourhood. The room was jammed, and the energy palpable.

The meeting started with a discussion of some smaller projects: a new basketball court, a new walkway for a Toronto Community Housing building, and support for the annual Scarborough Village Fair.

But what Baird and his colleagues really want is a city-led revitalization plan, similar to what had been done for the Kingston Road corridor in the Birch Cliff Community, west of Scarborough Village. That revitalization plan – a comprehensive strategy that looked at land use, urban design guidelines, transportation strategy and streetscape improvements, all with an eye to encouraging reinvestment and redevelopment in the area – was just passed by City Council last January. A similar study is now taking place in the Lawrence-Allen Road area. But when put on the spot, Councillor Ashton indicated that city policy is shifting on this point, with the planning department moving to Avenue Studies rather than revitalization studies (although he was not particularly clear about the difference). While he ultimately agreed to set up a meeting between SVAC and the Director of Planning for the Scarborough Region to discuss an Avenue Study, he didn’t seem particularly bullish on the prospect, perhaps because of what he referred to as the city’s “undercommitment” to the public realm. And indeed, as of the date of this post, no meeting has yet been set.

So will SVAC have to do it on its own? Or will the city step up to the plate? I’ll keep you posted.

The City put out a proposed new bylaw last May and since then there have been a number of meetings and issues raised about the proposals. The project is described on the City’s web site – see www.toronto.ca/zoning. The proposals include both “harmonization” and the addition of totally new proposals that are normally added in separate reports with detailed information.

The consultation process produced a list of issues that included:

• Why amalgamate the bylaws?
• Residential regulations are being substantially changed.
• Uses permitted in industrial are being substantially changed.
• What happens to the legal status of existing buildings when the regulations change?
• Lack of sufficient and appropriate consultation.

The original deadline for completing the City’s approval process has been delayed for several months to allow for more consultation, including as directed by the Planning & Growth Management Committee, looking at the best way of incorporating the intent of the existing bylaws.  Also, the timeframe for reviewing the final proposals has been considerably extended. The City is now being much more open to consultation and is responding to the concerns raised.

PPT’s roles

PPT has raised issues about:

1. the consultation process, which has provided insufficient information about the proposals, so ordinary citizens have difficulty understanding what the impacts will be. There should be clear examples of the impacts of existing and proposed regulations.
2. the fact that there were unanticipated and hidden changes to existing provisions that will impact neighbourhoods.

PPT has also proposed better consultation about changes to neighbourhoods, the residential districts, and recommended that the planners work with a group of zoning experts to carefully review the proposals. PPT then played a major role in making this happen. A group of experts has met 3 times and worked through a series of issues about the proposals.

As a result, a number of significant changes should be incorporated into the revised proposed bylaw!  One of the major changes is to keep the use of “gross floor area” or “floor space index” where it is the measure of size of a house rather than change it to “lot coverage”. The “lot coverage” way of measuring is so different that it results in different shapes of houses. Others are to ensure that use permissions are not changed and that height regulations work effectively.

What happens next?

April 21 – Planning and Growth Management Committee meeting

• The planners will have a report on the all proposed changes to the May 2009 draft bylaw that address the concerns raised.
• The report will have examples comparing the impacts of existing and proposed regulations.
• The report will be available a week before on the City’s web site. See www.toronto.ca/legdocs/agendas/pg.htm

May 19 – Planning and Growth Management Committee meeting

• The planners will have a report on any additional changes to the draft bylaw as a result of submissions on the report to the April 21 meeting.

May 27 – Statutory Open House

• This is an extra step in the normal bylaw approval process to provide for more information to interested people and to allow for people to discuss their concerns with staff.

June 16 Statutory Public meeting –Planning and Growth Management Committee meeting

• This is the formal meeting to make submissions in support or to report on issues.
• The decision made by the Committee goes to City Council for approval.
• The OMB now only will considers issues raise at this meeting, in person or written.

July 6 & 7 – City Council meeting

• The City Council makes it decision on the proposed new bylaws – to approve, approve in part, defer etc.

Then

• Appeals can be made to the OMB, which then holds a hearing on the appeals.

My overall ambition is to share the inspiration that I draw from both the urban interventions being imagined around the world and the increasingly diverse perspectives on Toronto’s communities and their everyday experiences of place.  Occasionally, I will dip into even deeper waters and explore the city from the more detailed perspective of water urbanism and environmental planning.

So, please join me in this journey through the current dimensions and future potential of Toronto and its planning world! Along the way, I encourage you to contribute your thoughts, questions, and ideas.

A few weeks ago, I participated in ChangeCampTO: Designing a Civic Engagement Toolkit at the Toronto Reference Library. Addressing the demand for a re-imagined and renewed government and citizenship, a ChangeCamp event is a creative face-to-face gathering that is citizen-led, non-partisan, and enabled by social media. The goal of the ChangeCampTO 2010 was to invent a set of tools for a “Change Kit,” or a “ChangeCamp-in-a-box,” which could be used by residents across the city to create shared spaces, both physical and virtual, for community dialogue and action about the future of our city. After a brief presentation by host Mark Kuznicki on the context for this toolkit, nearly 200 participants broke out into 30 groups.

Our table’s design assignment was to brainstorm some possible tools for a “same time, different place” gathering. We were given 55 minutes to work out our ideas and capture them visually on Post-It Notes and through a table-specific live blog. Suffice it to say, the discussion at the table was very lively, indeed, about the best tools to engage the greatest diversity of the participants and that to the greatest extent. Which social media platforms and other technological tools could effectively enable a single conversation in multiple locations? What lessons could we learn from experienced community organizers and pass on to first-time organizers? How could we get youth to participate as the key brokers between their parents and their civic leaders, between different languages and technologies? Most importantly, which local concerns would provide the catalyst for a community dialogue and collective action, and how would citizens build upon the momentum of an initial event into a broader process for change?

As we searched for a common denominator for engaging residents with different tools, we shifted from new social media to “older” media, like conference calls and phone trees. Most of us at the table agreed that, in general, we needed to go back to the fundamentals of truly meaningful dialogue and inclusive civic engagement – the particularities of these elements remain for all of us still to uncover, – if we were to make any real impact with the toolkit.

At one point, my mind drifted back to ChangeCamp Halifax, which took place last December at The Hub in downtown Halifax. While I was unable to attend the event in person, I was able to follow the day’s workshops and conversations online. I remember feeling quite distinctly as though I were actually back in my former home city by virtue of my memory of the event space (it is an old favourite workplace of mine). Jumping back to Toronto, I thought we could suggest in the ChangeKit that organizers take photographs of meeting spaces, so anyone participating either online or by phone could picture himself/herself there and experience the meeting more fully. By shifting our emphasis back to one of the strongest components of our neighbourhoods and our city – our shared spaces – we might be able to take a first step towards a new, and perhaps more dynamic, collective reality.

Before long, our time was up, and we all had to move on to the other tables, leaving behind our artifacts for others to debate, and hopefully, to bring to life in the very near future.

Moving forward, a group of ChangeCamp volunteers will be analyzing and synthesizing our ideas, input, and feedback to craft a framework for action. Over the next few months or so, I’ll share some of the dialogues, projects, and lessons, as they emerge and evolve. Until then, you can review all the content we have generated so far on the ChangeCamp blog

- Clara Stewart-Robertson

This is worrisome for a number of reasons…

First, tying the planning department’s budget to development charges reinforces a reactive, not proactive, approach to planning, since the emphasis is clearly to deal first and foremost with applications coming from outside the department.  Second, whether perceptually or actually, it encourages the planning department to solicit development applications, since it’s in their interest to collect the fees (which range from about $500 for a minor variance, to $14,000 for an Official Plan amendment, to over $20,000 for a plan of subdivision approval).  Third, it’s an unsustainable approach to budgeting for a major municipal function, since economic volatility – like the recession we’re just now beginning to pull out of – can have a major impact on the resources available and thus the activities that can be undertaken.

In October 2009, City Council requested that the budget be balanced, while accomplishing three things:    protecting the quality of life in Toronto; keeping Toronto affordable for residents and businesses; and continuing to protect the most vulnerable.  A quick look at the City’s 2010 projected operating expenses shows that Planning, at $36.2M, takes up less than 1% of the City’s budget (in fact, on the City’s pie chart, it’s shown as 0%).  The only department that receives less than planning is Economic Development and Culture, at $35.9M. Yet planning, economic development, and culture are the functions arguably most key to attaining City Council’s objective of protecting the quality of life in Toronto.  What are they thinking?

Never mind that the symbolism of all of this is emblematic of the problems with City Planning in general. What happens next? As Councillor Carroll herself noted last week, it’s almost time for a new Official Plan – but under the current strictures, there’s not going to be the staff in the Planning Department to do it.  Current staff in the Planning Department, are, to be fair, trying to work on longer-term projects like Avenue Studies, but when we are told that there isn’t enough funding to create secondary plans or more meaningful civic engagement strategies, we wonder just how much real planning can be accomplished.  Perhaps we should just change the name of the Planning Department to the Development Applications Processing Department and be done with it.

As for planning?  Well, I guess it’s up to us, the citizens, to put in some constructive thinking about how our neighbourhoods and city should grow and develop.  Stay tuned.

- Dina Graser