City plan needs way to assess impacts

Re: Maps illustrate challenge with creating `15-minute neighbourhoods' in built-up areas, July 30.

Jon Willing's article on the city's recent mapping of neighbourhoods as part of its Official Plan review indicates some of the challenges Ottawa faces as it tries to accommodate most future growth through intensification.

The maps show where the city needs to focus if it wants people to have access to amenities without having to get in a car — the proverbial “15-minute” neighbourhood. But unfortunately the proposed Official Plan contains no guidelines or metrics to assess the impact of intensification by neighbourhood, nor the triggers to apply any mitigative measures when intensification occurs, such as sidewalks, trees, access to green space, etc.

City planners have told us that they will measure development through intensification on a citywide basis, that the targets for preserving tree canopy, for example, are citywide. Yet the impacts of intensification are most felt at the neighbourhood level, where the additional units are built.

Looking at the data from a citywide aggregate misses the effect intensification has on the neighbourhood streets where people actually live.

What is needed are metrics to link the march of intensification to the provision of mitigative measures so that we don't lose what makes our neighbourhoods so attractive to live in. Having such metrics will go a long way in assuring communities that intensification will not overwhelm them but can be managed so that the city can obtain its growth objectives while residents can be assured of continuing to live in the type of neighbourhood they bought their homes in.