A vision for the city – by us

BLOG #596: City council has agreed with its planning department that the next Official Plan review, about to start, will be driven by Londoners’ vision for the future, not special interest groups. Let’s hope that’s a promise the politicians plan to keep.

Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012 – London

Lest you worry the forthcoming update of London’s Official Plan will be captive of special interest groups, fear not,

“The people chosen for working groups will be one Londoner, one Londoner, one Londoner, not who they are and what they represent,” declares John Fleming, the city’s planning director.

And, for once, city council seems to agree – all, that is, save Councillor Stephen Orser who yesterday tried to talk Mr. Fleming into working groups top heavy with developers and investors, “people who will contribute more to creating jobs.”

The rest of council, and especially Mayor Joe Fontana, seemed on board for a very public, very different process that will develop land use guidelines for the next 20 years.

“I hope we can really engage our citizens,” the mayor says, “especially young people who will grow up in the city we’re planning.”

The Official Plan is the document which draws a blueprint for where and how the city will grow in the decades ahead. It’s not rigid cement – the last Official Plan update, five years ago, has already been amended almost 500 times – but neither is it a push over.

The plan must embrace provincial planning directives; it must accurately forecast development costs to spare taxpayers paying for the profit of others; it must maximize municipal services by discouraging urban sprawl.

And, this time for certain Mr. Fleming says, it must reflect citizens’ wishes for the future of their city.

Gregg Barrett, the city’s manager of land use planning policy who will be guiding the Official Plan review, promises to “really reflect citizens’ desires in the process. What we’re trying to do is bring together the community to establish what their vision is and then reflect that in the policies we propose.”

It will be a different process than other years, he says. New public engagement techniques will be deployed from the beginning.

“We usually spend a lot of time developing policy,” Mr. Barrett told council’s strategic priorities and policy committee. “This time we’re starting with the community vision.”

That’s where the working groups will come in – groups of citizens all across the city who will be engaged in grappling with specific planning problems and opportunities. The end result, Mr. Barrett hopes, will be a planning document that is more understandable and more user friendly, filled with pictures and diagrams rather than dense prose.

A couple of ticklish issues are ahead. Expansion of the urban growth boundary, which limits expansion of new suburban development, will be a key question; already the lobbying has started for big change. So will possible creation of more industrial land, especially large parcels to satisfy a major manufacturer should one ever come knocking.

As united as they were yesterday at the kick-off, council is of several minds on those two issues.

However, that’s for the future. For now, who knows what Londoners will come up with.

Yesterday Mayor Fontana was quite excited about the prospect of asking them, wondering whether some way could be found to get a questionnaire into the hands of everyone. “If asked in the proper way, maybe we could get 10 questions for every Londoner about the kind of city they really want.”

Great idea. One hopes the mayor remembers the adage, be careful what you ask for. Is council really ready for the answers?