Questions of balance and sprawl
Pandemic will mute debate over expanding city’s urban boundary
At city hall, there are few political firestorms as hot as those about where more homes should be built for a growing population, especially when staff recommend expanding the suburbs.
This is the kind of controversy that touches on several sensitive municipal topics like property taxes, transportation and affordable housing.
Council’s political fissure will swell, perhaps like never again this term, over a proposal by the planning department to add between 1,350 and 1,650 hectares of allowable development land inside the “urban boundary.”
A joint planning and agriculture and rural affairs committee will consider the guidance from the planning department on May 11 before sending a recommendation to council.
To anyone disengaged from the municipal government, the urban boundary fight might be dismissed as another clash between tree-hugging daydreamers and money-grubbing landowners.
Of course, there’s more context. Council’s decision will probably impact apathetic residents more than they think.
Allowing more outlying land to be developed for new homes drives fears over how much tax money will be required to deliver services beyond what development charges pay for, how it will impact traffic congestion and which parts of Ottawa’s unique rural landscape will be chewed up by bulldozers.
Environmental advocates, like the Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital, are taking a hard-line approach to expanding the urban boundary, urging council to reject the staff recommendation, keep the current geographic development limits and work harder to add new homes in already builtup communities through intensification.
Those who side with many developers recognize that growing families often look to the suburbs for affordable houses with backyards and multi-car driveways. The province compels municipalities to provide a range of housing options to satisfy projected market demand. It would be difficult to shoehorn families into multi-residential units in communities already hungry for more city services, such as recreation facilities.
Advocates for pumping more development land inside an expanded urban boundary, like the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, don’t believe the city is proposing to add enough suburban-area land for new homes to complement intensification targets, particularly when dense infill developments traditionally cause uproar in established communities.
Council last year made two emergency declarations that could be leveraged during the urban-boundary fight. The City of Ottawa finds itself in both a politically backed climate emergency and a housing and homelessness emergency.
With the former, council has committed to reduce the city’s impact on climate change, feeding perfectly into the argument against building homes far afield from the city’s business areas, increasing the dependence on cars. On housing and homelessness, council has sounded the alarm over people’s inability to afford housing, fuelling arguments from skeptics who don’t believe the city can fulfil intensification goals and will inevitably require new subdivisions to satisfy the demand for homes.
The city landed on the most politically appetizing word to describe the staff proposal for adding more land inside the urban boundary: balance.
Out of three scenarios considered, staff are going with an option that reduces the amount of new land required in an expanded urban boundary to coincide with a more aggressive intensification goal, but it’s far from the hold-theline plea voiced by anti-expansion advocates.
Despite the recommendation to open the urban boundary, the city will emphasize how bullish it is about using land inside the existing boundary for homes so that just over half of the new residential growth over 28 years will be absorbed through intensification.
Under a refreshed official plan informed by the urban boundary decision, the city would try to target much of the intensification around Confederation Line and Trillium Line stations.
So, high-density development proposals, like one filed this week for the Westboro area, will be immensely attractive to the planning department. GLV Realty Advisors wants to build a 26-storey tower as part of a mixed-use, 318-residential-unit rental complex across from the future Westboro LRT station.
The city has also been studying ways to change planning policies to make sure multi-unit, low-rise infill projects fit appropriately in central Ottawa’s established neighbourhoods.
If the city is trying to avoid an urban boundary controversy, it will receive some unexpected help from the current public health crisis. There likely won’t be any big demonstrations outside city hall next month as councillors consider pumping more land inside the urban boundary.
The last time an increase in Ottawa’s urban boundary kicked up a big fuss was in 2009 when nearly 200 people concerned about the environmental effects of sprawl rallied outside city hall as councillors mulled a staff proposal to add about 850 hectares. Council narrowly voted to add only 230 hectares. After an appeal by developers, the old Ontario Municipal Board increased the land to more than 1,000 hectares.
The 2020 urban boundary decision will happen with the city in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. That means the big committee meeting in May won’t have a public gallery and deputations, like the council members, will need to make appearances by video or audio feeds.
One of the most consequential decisions by council this term could be unusually muted.
The city landed on the most politically appetizing word to describe the staff proposal for adding more land inside the urban boundary: balance