The compact metropolis, planning for residential intensification in the Greater Toronto Area

Abstract

Thus, in many metropolitan regions throughout North America, state, provincial and regional governments have undertaken comprehensive policy initiatives to control sprawl, direct growth into regional cores and suburban centres, and to achieve a greater range and density of housing in suburban developments. These policy initiatives have met and are meeting with mixed success, in part due to the resistance of municipalities to planning directives coming from "above".

In order to understand the sources of municipal resistance and to provide insight that would help craft more successful intensification strategies, this thesis conducts a case study of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). This urban region was selected for detailed analysis because the Ontario government has undertaken a number of province-wide policy initiatives to encourage more compact urban forms, and because it has taken further steps - such as the creation of the Office for the Greater Toronto Area (OGTA) - to control sprawl in the GTA itself.

Unlike in some UW states where unitary growth management legislation has established comprehensive planning frameworks to prevent sprawl, intensification policies in Ontario have been adopted piecemeal by the provincial government over a period of years, by a number of ministries, and with a variety of legal statuses. Thus, the first task of the case study is to identify and describe the province-wide intensification policy framework, designed to influence municipal land-use planning in favour of compact development. After this, the case study turns to the activities of the OGTA in its attempts to facilitate regional action to curb sprawl and promote intensification. Finally, a detailed analysis of the planning policies contained in official plans of upper- and lower-tier municipalities in suburban regions reveals the extent to which provincial and provincially-brokered regional policies were respected.

The principal finding of the case study is that municipalities in the region have compromised and co-opted provincial policy initiatives by adopting three linked development strategies: what I call expansion management, site-specific intensification, and nodal development. These strategies allow municipalities to satisfy provincial policy pressures in a way that responds to "domestic" growth pressures and constraints, and avoids major changes in the trajectory of suburban growth trends. The case study results suggest that municipalities are increasing their autonomy relative to the province in terms of control over development patterns. Under these conditions, the effectiveness of provincial policy initiatives will depend - at least partly - on the legitimacy of such actions from a municipal point of view. The principles of effectiveness and legitimacy are used in the closing sections of the thesis to recommend some changes to provincial and municipal policies, programs and institutions that would encourage a more compact metropolitan region.