"WE CAN'T KEEP PILING PEOPLE INTO THE GRID...

...and expect the urban fundamentals of health, safety, security, sanitation, education and general well being to prevail."

 -  These were my words back in 2000.
  

Since then I've been watching for Planning to pull together a future-focused balanced urban strategy based upon these concerns.  

We've been through a decade with Planning more concerned about unlocking intensification, than attending to ensuring a Complete Community outcome.  Planning allowed itself to be outpaced by the development industry which has established new development typologies and taken up substantial real estate positions.  As a result, a development surge is in process, while it remains to establish the extent and magnitude of growth.  Of even greater concern is whether this thrust is sustainable.

Sustainability is about ensuring that the underlying hard and soft infrastructure can in truth accommodate the degree of intensification rolling out.  Furthermore, there is the question of how best to configure this intensification to improve the offering and remedy identified tipping-points.

The Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre is of paramount concern with its great expectations of intensification and high-wheeling enterprise.  Whereas one would expect to find Yonge Eglinton's Planning to be a robust fit-to-purpose practice, instead the area is well behind in the Good Planning being provided for lesser intensification areas - and far less again than Plannings prescription for contemporary area planning.