Centretown residents are voicing concern over a proposed change to the City of Ottawa’s Official Plan.
The plan was adopted by the city in 2003 to set a policy framework for managing growth. It comes into review every five years.
Shawn Menard, Centretown Citizen’s Community Association President, says he is concerned by a clause in the proposed amendments that would extend the urban boundary by 850 hectares.
The proposed boundary plan would be costly to taxpayers and is environmentally unsustainable, adds Menard.
“Essentially the people living within the Greenbelt are subsidizing these suburbs and subsidizing the rural areas.”
“Sustainability principles will tell you that we shouldn’t be paving over more roads beyond the Greenbelt, that we shouldn’t be making less usable land, that we shouldn’t be extending the urban boundary because it’s not good for the environment,” he says.
Ian Cross, program manager of research and forecasting in the city’s planning department, thinks differently. “We are studying about 2,000 hectares,” he says.
“We’ve already ruled out all agricultural land and environmental lands. We are trying to rate the candidate areas according to the degree to which they can provide well with transit and other factors.”
They are trying to produce a future development that is as sustainable as possible, adds Cross.
Centretown resident Bonnie Mabee says she doesn’t think this is possible.
“The infrastructure is just not sustainable,” she says. “You cannot continue to push out roads and transportation and call it sustainable. It isn’t.”
Mabee says she believes the city does not need to be extending boundaries for 20 years from now, and there are other uses for the money that would be spent on developing an extra 850 hectares.
“Rapid transit, social housing – lots of others things are crying out for money,” she says. “Fix our potholes on the roads that are already there.”
Cross says he doesn’t anticipate any of these areas developing in the next five years.
“Part of the amendment that we are working on is to give the city tools to require higher densities,” says Cross, addressing the issue of sustainability. “The policies that are going to apply to these designated lands will require that densities be higher.”
And, according to Cross, higher densities means less cost to taxpayers in the long term. “Development that is more dense and more transit-oriented will cost the city less money,” he says.
“To that extent, these new areas actually will come closer to paying for themselves. In fact, there is a good chance they’ll break even basically or maybe even generate a small surplus.”
Although the CCCA has a specific stance on this amendment, some people in Ottawa feel differently.
Archie Campbell, president of the Federation of Citizens’ Associations of Ottawa-Carleton, says the federation is still debating the proposed amendment as they are an umbrella association of over 30 community groups.
He says there are diverse opinions across Ottawa communities. “Some communities don’t want any increase in density. They are quite happy to make the trade off for more geographic movement of the boundary to compensate.”
Campbell also says some communities feel the change in infrastructure cost is modest and something they can live with.
He adds he has personal doubts about rushing to plan for 20 years in advance.“I’ve been involved in this stuff from the ‘70s to this point,” he says.
“Population realities have always fallen short of population predictions.”
Nonetheless, Cross says the urban boundary extension is the best option. “The city will grow,” he says, “and we are just making plans to address that which is virtually a certainty.”
Changes to the plan will be addressed at a public meeting on March 31.
Based on public feedback, the planning and environment committee will recommend which route to take.