INTRODUCTION
As a matter of introduction... for more than a decade I've made it my personal ambition to see contemporary comprehensive planning scripted for the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, nonetheless, the subject en masse remains as elusive today as back then.
POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT GROWTH
You referred to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe as “a document that in retrospect was far more concerned about residential intensification than about where office jobs should be located”. In my opinion such an observation arises from the long practiced convenient fabrications of self-serving readers, rather than any oversight on the part of the Growth Plan's planning statement.
The Growth Plan clearly states at the outset of:
Chapter 2 “Where and How to Grow”; 2.2.2 Managing Growth: Subsection 1:
“Population and employment growth will be accommodated by –“
and proceeds through a battery of points, A through K, to address both employment AND population considerations.
COMPLETE COMMUNITIES
Furthermore, the Growth Plan goes on to speak about managing growth through effective local planning establishing Complete Communities, and the Growth Plan defines Complete Communities as follows:
“Complete communities meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing, and community infrastructure including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for their residents. Convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel is also provided.”
CONSOLIDATION vs INTENSIFICATION
In my opinion, the Growth Plan did a great disservice in labeling its new urban strategy as being about “Intensification” rather than “Consolidation”. Frankly, I didn't appreciate the different connotations until I moved to Sydney Australia in 2004 and worked for private planning consultancies for the next four years. Sydney had just introduced its new Strategic Plan at the very same time as Toronto introduced its New Official Plan. Sydney's Strategy was referred to as Consolidation strategy – being about “how things fit together”, whereas Intensification is simply about “increasing magnitudes”. At the time, I was intrigued by the different terminologies, and Googled “urban planning” in conjunction with major cities around the world, and interchanging the terms Consolidation and Intensification. I discovered that Toronto was unique in labeling its new urban strategy as being about Intensification – whereas all other cities referred to their planning initiatives as being about Consolidation.
PLANNING GENESIS
It is my contention that from our unfortunate choice in terminology arose the difficulties which that have plagued the Golden Horseshoe's and Toronto's planning for the past decade. To quote my favourite planning, strategist from another era and another field of planning, Clausewitz: “Undertaking never arise above their genesis”. We'd failed to establish the all-essential Genesis Statement, and subsequently doomed our efforts to simply swimming about within a lesser pool of concerns.
YONGE EGLINTON GROWTH CENTRE
The Big Review goes on to attribute the lack of employment components within Growth Centres to “one primary reason; the quality of transit accessibility” and goes on to identify the lack of large parking sites “that cannot be found in the urban growth centers”. In the instance of the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, there is no lack of transit accessibility, and their is an untapped parking potential which I will discuss later on.
SILOS OF JURISDICTION
The Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre's problem is divided political and planning jurisdictions, which partition this Growth Centre right through to its core, and defies the attainment of any Genesis Statement. Instead a condition of isolated silos exists. This further frustrated by the additional insular silos of Metrolinx and TTC as they affect the Eglinton LRT's urban solution and the existing Yonge Subway Station's improvements. As a result, there is a looming failure to attain an iconic (meaning: to have a form reflective of its purpose) pedestrian dispersal network; AND a further looming failure to establish an 800 car space parking garage sculptured out of the LRT's temporary construction void – and which the divided silos simply intend to relegate to back-filling instead.
CLEVER MUNICIPAL STRATEGIES
In the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, the primary failure is not transit accessibility, nor is it finding the necessary supportive parking. It's simply a planning failure to apply Consolidation strategies! – a failure apply the “clever municipal strategies” referred to in The Big Review.
As a matter of introduction... for more than a decade I've made it my personal ambition to see contemporary comprehensive planning scripted for the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, nonetheless, the subject en masse remains as elusive today as back then.
POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT GROWTH
You referred to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe as “a document that in retrospect was far more concerned about residential intensification than about where office jobs should be located”. In my opinion such an observation arises from the long practiced convenient fabrications of self-serving readers, rather than any oversight on the part of the Growth Plan's planning statement.
The Growth Plan clearly states at the outset of:
Chapter 2 “Where and How to Grow”; 2.2.2 Managing Growth: Subsection 1:
“Population and employment growth will be accommodated by –“
and proceeds through a battery of points, A through K, to address both employment AND population considerations.
COMPLETE COMMUNITIES
Furthermore, the Growth Plan goes on to speak about managing growth through effective local planning establishing Complete Communities, and the Growth Plan defines Complete Communities as follows:
“Complete communities meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing, and community infrastructure including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for their residents. Convenient access to public transportation and options for safe, non-motorized travel is also provided.”
CONSOLIDATION vs INTENSIFICATION
In my opinion, the Growth Plan did a great disservice in labeling its new urban strategy as being about “Intensification” rather than “Consolidation”. Frankly, I didn't appreciate the different connotations until I moved to Sydney Australia in 2004 and worked for private planning consultancies for the next four years. Sydney had just introduced its new Strategic Plan at the very same time as Toronto introduced its New Official Plan. Sydney's Strategy was referred to as Consolidation strategy – being about “how things fit together”, whereas Intensification is simply about “increasing magnitudes”. At the time, I was intrigued by the different terminologies, and Googled “urban planning” in conjunction with major cities around the world, and interchanging the terms Consolidation and Intensification. I discovered that Toronto was unique in labeling its new urban strategy as being about Intensification – whereas all other cities referred to their planning initiatives as being about Consolidation.
PLANNING GENESIS
It is my contention that from our unfortunate choice in terminology arose the difficulties which that have plagued the Golden Horseshoe's and Toronto's planning for the past decade. To quote my favourite planning, strategist from another era and another field of planning, Clausewitz: “Undertaking never arise above their genesis”. We'd failed to establish the all-essential Genesis Statement, and subsequently doomed our efforts to simply swimming about within a lesser pool of concerns.
YONGE EGLINTON GROWTH CENTRE
The Big Review goes on to attribute the lack of employment components within Growth Centres to “one primary reason; the quality of transit accessibility” and goes on to identify the lack of large parking sites “that cannot be found in the urban growth centers”. In the instance of the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, there is no lack of transit accessibility, and their is an untapped parking potential which I will discuss later on.
SILOS OF JURISDICTION
The Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre's problem is divided political and planning jurisdictions, which partition this Growth Centre right through to its core, and defies the attainment of any Genesis Statement. Instead a condition of isolated silos exists. This further frustrated by the additional insular silos of Metrolinx and TTC as they affect the Eglinton LRT's urban solution and the existing Yonge Subway Station's improvements. As a result, there is a looming failure to attain an iconic (meaning: to have a form reflective of its purpose) pedestrian dispersal network; AND a further looming failure to establish an 800 car space parking garage sculptured out of the LRT's temporary construction void – and which the divided silos simply intend to relegate to back-filling instead.
CLEVER MUNICIPAL STRATEGIES
In the Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre, the primary failure is not transit accessibility, nor is it finding the necessary supportive parking. It's simply a planning failure to apply Consolidation strategies! – a failure apply the “clever municipal strategies” referred to in The Big Review.
A
CONTENTIOUS ARCHAIC FRAMEWORK
Yonge
Eglinton's planning vacuum is deep rooted, and the planning exercise
that orbited about determining the Growth
Centre's boundary.
When
I asked what would be the characteristics of what fell within this
boundary, as a means to plumb this new line, I was informed that this
was of no importance to the line-drawing exercise in hand. As a
result the boundary was snapped to the historical mid-century
alignment, rather than forming an outline of the contemporary
characteristics of the new urban Growth
Centre structure.
AND
as
a result of this oversight, there has arisen contentious pushes of
development ambitions encountering local challenges citing the
planning framework being violated – when in fact, the bounds are
flawed by being based upon archaic notions, rather than being truthed
by contemporary reasoning.
STRATEGIC
PLANNING
Both
the Growth
Plan
and Toronto's Official
Plan call
for forecasting of employment and population in order to ensure the
provision of necessary infrastructure. However, such forecasting has
not been prepared for the Growth
Centre.
TOWERS
FORECAST
Towards
this end, in January 2014 I prepared a model based on towers
under construction, approved, anticipated and soft sites
following current development criterion. This inform
model is intended to inform the genesis of future-focused planning.
It is not intended
to suggest what should or should not occur. Instead, it simply draws
a numerical outline around the Growth
Centre's invisible
elephant – putting a number to the likely magnitude of Yonge
Eglinton's future growth. It has been requested that city planning
circulate the Towers
Forecast to
departments and agencies for their comments with respect to future
infrastructure requirements and identification of tipping points. So
far this has not been taken up.
Based
upon current momentum, over the next fifteen years a $4 billion
development surge is projected that will transform the Growth
Centre's 500m
(seventy-eight hectare) intensification circle with construction of
sixty new towers, accommodating 23,000 additional residents – a
population equivalent in size to Canada's 100th largest city,
Pembroke. Meanwhile, there are current development proposals in the
Yonge Eglinton
Growth Centre which
exceed the model's intensity. If the 19-FSI proposal at Redpath and
Broadway Avenue is approved by the OMB, the model's population will
need to be reconfigured upwards to a new population figure of 35,000.
TOP-DOWN
PLANNING
City planning
consistently demonstrates a top-down – and I might add – a
divided and distance-removed approach to the Growth Centre's
planning, with only nominal community consultation. It's somewhat
ironic that it is local constituents who are the strongest proponents
for the inclusion of employment projects and the exercise of Complete
Community best practices AND consistently request a consolidated
planning faculty located within the Growth Centre.
CONCLUSION
My
point in the all above mentioned?
....is to recommend that the current
Growth Plan be carried
through into local planning initiatives, prior to resigning to the
idea that “the
time has come for policy makers to reflect on the effectiveness of
those cornerstone planning documents”.
