New Provincial Policies Shaking Up City Planning
October 10, 2005

Last week's update to the city's 30-year Growth Related Integrated Development Strategy (GRIDS) reveals that provincial planning initiatives have significantly shaken up land use planning in Hamilton. The staff report blames the province for delays to the GRIDS process that was approved in 2003, around the same time as the election of the McGuinty government which has changed provincial planning policies, enacted a Greenbelt and is now finalizing its Places to Grow legislation.

The provincial actions have apparently blocked plans for much more sprawl development south of the city. The staff update says the Greenbelt "greatly changed (scoped) where the city of Hamilton could grow". While the Greenbelt did not affect Hamilton's current urban boundaries, it protected much of Glanbrook and nearly all of rural Flamborough from future urban growth as well as parts of Ancaster and rural Stoney Creek. The report suggests this blocked unannounced city designs on urbanizing these areas and that "final Greenbelt Plan boundaries significantly impact[ed] all urban expansion options".

The report further admits that recent wording changes to the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) have also thrown a monkey wrench into the planning practices at city hall. The main change was to require municipalities to "be consistent with" the PPS rather than to "have regard for" it.

Staff report that making these provincial policies mandatory has had major impacts. "Most significantly, these reforms now demand 'consistency' with Provincial policy requirements requiring a far higher level of technical precision and justification in urban growth decisions than had previously been the case." It goes on to explain that "detail justification is [now] required to show that all reasonable alternatives have been considered before urban expansions are permitted to impact prime agricultural areas."

The province cited the PPS in late July when it challenged council's decision to expand the boundary by 3100 acres of farmland around the airport before examining any alternatives, or even calculating the cost of the expansion.

The PPS changes were approved in November of last year after extensive province-wide consultations, but the McGuinty government launched its planning initiatives very soon after it was elected in October 2003. A one-year moratorium was imposed in December 2003. During that period, the Greenbelt proposals were presented and widely debated before being adopted early in 2005, and the Places to Grow plans were unveiled. The latter was passed by the legislature this spring.

Last week's city staff report also announced a six-month delay in the GRIDS public consultation process, retracting a schedule only released in May. The preferred growth option now won't be unveiled to the public until March of next year. That was supposed to happen in September.

Further delays are possible since the committee meeting to receive the staff update wasn't held last week because too few councillors showed up. The next meeting of that committee is October 19 and won't get to council until the 26th, which may setback the next public presentation scheduled in the report for "late October 2005 / early November 2005".

The staff report provides some preliminary suggestions of how Hamilton would accommodate some of its projected growth by increasing housing densities in some parts of the city. Provincial rules under Places to Grow require that 40% of new growth be achieved through intensification of existing residential areas. This also seems to be creating nightmares at city hall.

In mid-March, city council enthusiastically adopted predictions that Hamilton's population will grow to 700,000 people by 2031. But last week's report only suggests ways to accommodate about half of the expected growth. "By 2031, it is projected that within the existing urban area of the City of Hamilton, the population will be approximately 581,000 based on the minimum 40% level of intensification proposed in the draft Places to Grow plan. An additional 38,000 people will reside in the rural area for a total population of about 620,000." The planners are unclear as to where they plan to put an additional 80,000 to reach the 700,000 target, except to say that "development of the short list of growth options provides options for how, where and when the additional growth can be accommodated".

Even without an answer to that question, the already proposed housing intensification is likely to be controversial. The plans call for 59,500 new residents in existing neighbourhoods. The old city of Hamilton would get nearly 80% (47,000). That works out to an average 12-15% increase. A similar level of intensification is envisioned for lower Stoney Creek. But upper Stoney Creek would not be asked to accommodate any of this growth. The share is also zero for the already urbanized areas of Glanbrook that currently hold about 9000 residents.

The allocation to the other three former suburban municipalities also vary substantially. Flamborough would be asked to add 1800 to the existing 15,100 in Waterdown for a 12% increase. Dundas would see an eight and a quarter percent increase, while Ancaster would take six and a quarter.

All of these figures exclude any growth in new subdivisions which are expected to accommodate 78,200 of the new growth. The report doesn't make clear if higher levels of density will be required in these "developing neighbourhoods" or if they will be cookie-cutter equivalents of the sprawl that has characterized most new growth in Hamilton over the last few decades. Planning staff have resisted recent suggestions by some councillors for higher densities in newly approved subdivisions in Ancaster, Binbrook and the south mountain.

The total growth in these two categories (59,500 plus 78,200) is greater than the net growth of 100,900 because the planners calculate that the population of existing neighbourhoods will drop by nearly 37,000 as children grow up and move out and average household size decreases. The report predicts these declines will be virtually uniform in all parts of Hamilton, ranging from 7.6% in upper Hamilton to 7.9% in Flamborough.

The full staff report is on the city website at
http://www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/70A3172F-811D
-4859-9D33-B2BED3DCC4F1/0/Oct05GRIDSUpdateNo4v21.pdf.