City Planning, Provincial Rulemaking Take a Snow Day
Developers are consulted lavishly. Citizens get less than a week to respond, with city services and prime farmland hanging in the balance. What if cities started listening to the public?
We’re passing the mic this week to Lella Blumer, The Energy Mix’s Community Engagement Lead, who’s been following some of the local obstacles to smart urban planning in her current home town of London, Ontario.
Municipalities are on the front line of the housing, food, mental health, and climate crises. As they aim to build thriving, resilient communities, are they overlooking the most obvious resource available to them?
A freak, intense snowfall blanketing London, Ontario this week only added to the weight of discussions around the Council table as members of the Planning and Environment Committee plowed through more than four hours of development applications. That was before they even began to tackle the thorny question of initiating a review of the city’s urban growth boundary, with the intent of expanding it significantly to handle questionable population growth projections—and with some of the country’s most precious prime farmland hanging in the balance.
Like so many issues municipalities across the country are facing, it’s complicated. And so far, it looks like community voices are only barely being heard as an afterthought.
Making Sense of the Numbers
London’s population has been growing quickly—according to 2021 Statistics Canada data, it experienced a 10% growth rate over the previous five years, making it one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities over that period and resulting in a predictable strain on all types of housing.
Most visibly, affordable housing. Monthly reporting shows 1,935 local people experiencing homelessness, among the city’s calculation of a current population of just over 497,000.
Factor in the federal government targeting $90 million of the Affordable Housing Fund under its National Housing Strategy to London, and the fact that the city has committed to a goal of 47,000 new homes by 2031.
The provincial government is making its presence felt, as well, requiring city planners to use provincial Ministry of Finance population projections to 2051, rather than those approved by council based on an expert report two years ago. The new numbers are 250% higher than historical trends, even as the federal government’s announcement of substantial reductions in federal immigration targets for 2025 through 2027 could be seen as signalling we won’t return to recent levels of 500,000 per year. From the province’s viewpoint, more people automatically means more land.
And, the new Provincial Planning Statement gives municipalities the go-ahead (read: strong encouragement, read: direction) to use a 30-year planning projection instead of 20 or 25 years.
That’s in spite of a recently-released Auditor General's report that calls into question the provincial government’s tactics to fast-track housing development, including the use of Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZOs):
Half of the MZOs made from 2019 to 2023 were for housing developments, and the inclusion of affordable housing was the most commonly requested condition sought by municipalities in exchange for their support of MZO requests. But the Ministry does not track the number of new affordable housing units to be created through MZOs.
Then there’s the 97-page report from London city staff and external consultants, with extensive input from developers, advocating for committee members to allocate the largest possible area over the longest time frame to pave the way (quite literally) for more homes built in the newly-expanded area with its less expensive land values.
Slogging Through Snowdrifts
To that loaded scenario, add a few members of the public who made it to the public meeting through the snowdrifts, each of them given five minutes in front of the committee to share thoughts which they had less than a week to prepare, since the full report was posted publicly just six days earlier. A total of 20 minutes to impress on the committee that expanding the boundary will not only have a negative impact on the environment and on prime agricultural land that is being sized up for new subdivisions, but may not even deliver affordable housing—as there was little evidence in the report or the presentation that building on less expensive land would result in more affordable housing, let alone affordable lifestyles.
If a family is better able to afford a home in a community further from the urban centre and then has to rely on two vehicles to drive kids to school, sports, recreation and, when the time comes, their first jobs because public transit isn’t yet built, is that actually more affordable?
And what prospect is there that transit, snow removal, and other local services will be adequate to serve those bustling new neighbourhoods, when public agencies are already struggling against cascading need and declining provincial funding to serve the sprawled geographies they’re already responsible for?
Behind the words, frustration was palpable. In fact, it was evident even in the words: Brendon Samuels, chair of London’s environmental stewardship and action advisory committee, voiced it outright.
I think this is one of the most consequential decisions this council is going to make materially in terms of shaping the growth trajectory of London and the landscape.
And I just feel like we’re not doing a good job of bringing Londoners along and translating information into a format that allows them to meaningfully be consulted, so I just wanted to express that frustration from a community point of view.
Listen to the Public, Not Just Developers
The request from members of the public: defer a decision on initiating an urban growth boundary review until a proper public consultation can take place, with the city investing at least as much in consultation with the public as with industry.
Without that minimum degree of basic procedural fairness, it’s challenging to move beyond assertions that housing development is market-driven, that most people still want single-family homes in the suburbs, and that it’s not affordable to build affordable homes. Those assumptions may or may not be correct, but closing the door to investigating them and exploring alternatives creates a culture of division.
The unfortunate outcome is that decisions that will shape communities and the many thousands of people living in them over the next 25-30 years are being made under pressure, without hearing the voices of those with different life experiences, a range of income levels, ages, abilities, careers, cultures, and interests about the kinds of homes and communities they want to live in. Or from co-op, non-profit, and other front-line developers who’ve known for decades how to do differently and better—as London saw first hand, when it hosted the annual conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association in 1991.
It’s Happening Everywhere
The disconnects between housing markets and housing needs, and between housing and planning policies and their deep impacts on climate, land use, food security, and more, are playing out in cities and towns across the country, as elected officials search for solutions to overlapping social, environmental, and economic pressures.
Vancouver City Council’s recent vote to stick with its ban on natural gas in new buildings was at least in part influenced by input from more than 140 residents, including families demonstrating outside city hall and signs decorated by children and displayed during the meeting. (Although the kids’ artwork was removed in a “snowflake” moment three time zones away from London’s real-life snowstorm, after a councillor said the drawings were “intimidating” and was upheld by Mayor Ken Sim.)
That kind of grassroots organizing takes incredible time and energy on the part of ordinary citizens, time and energy the vast majority of regular citizens don’t have at their disposal.
So what if, instead, they were encouraged to participate positively throughout the process?
What if people were treated as a resource rather than a risk or a liability? If our collective creativity and problem-solving were not only valued, but considered essential for informed decision-making?
And here’s a crazy thought: What if that decision-making process didn’t have to happen as part of multi-hour public meetings where citizens and their elected representatives feel frustratingly pitted against each other instead of engaged in meaningful dialogue?
There’s no doubt people can be annoying, they complain too much, and they make almost everything more complicated. Most of us can probably relate to Agent Kay’s cutting words in the 1997 film Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”
While the snow piled up in London and committee members slogged through a five-hour meeting, likely their inboxes were overflowing with complaints about unploughed roads, impassable sidewalks, and (because not everyone understands where decisions sit) why school buses were cancelled.
But people can also be wise, creative, and caring—and the greatest resource municipalities have to draw on. It means investing in public information, inviting discussion, and facilitating engagement. And it means a better chance of designing sustainable and resilient communities where no one is left behind.
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Thanks for your important comments, Carolyn. There are definitely multiple levels to this, which is also why it deserves deeper exploration and broader understanding. While I'm far from understanding all the complexity (case in point), I do want to point out a couple of things that might help dive a bit deeper.
London's Official Plan outlines the city's vision for communities, including building up, not out, and preserving farmland - and there are clear guidelines around density (single family homes vs. mid-density or high-density, for example). The London Plan is available online, if you're interested! : https://london.ca/government/council-civic-administration/master-plans-strategies/london-plan-official-plan. When City Council reviews applications for individual developments, they do apply that vision - and before applications are approved, there is a lot of work done by city staff and developers to align to those expectations. There is also an opportunity for neighbouring residents to share their thoughts on specific developments in their communities.
The difference in undertaking a review of the urban growth boundary is that it opens up new swaths of land for development generally, without any specific applications being considered. It means there is more space outside the current "built-up" boundary that will be open for housing, commercial, and industrial developments.
The consultation that has led to the recommendation to expand the urban growth boundary is where public information and input has fallen short. There has been extensive consultation with developers about what they need to get more homes built more quickly, and there has been lots of direction from the province about how to calculate how much land is needed to "accommodate" expected population growth. Recommendations are built on set formula around how much room people need to live, work, and shop. Notably, food sources are not factored into the calculations.
Then, as developers purchase blocks of land in the new space, which is less expensive than land closer to the core, they can submit applications for specific projects, which will be assessed by the city against the expectations set out in the London Plan (as above). Expanding the urban growth boundary means basically that there will be more development in spaces that are currently not open for development. Council will still be able to apply the principles of the London Plan, and developers are clear on what's expected.
Where residents are missing in this process is (a) understanding how it works, and (b) being able to contribute to decisions around where and how they will live in communities. The calculations used to determine "how much land we need" are based pretty much on status quo assumptions and how we have been building neighbourhoods for the past few decades. A decision impacting generations over the next 25-30 years should leave room for different thinking.
Such a long response - I hope something in there is helpful. Thanks for your interest!
So interesting, Carolyn, thanks. I’m in Ottawa, too, and I’ve been seeing and hearing much the same. Including concerns that it’s a lot harder to get approvals for projects that meet the kind of criteria you’re talking about than for the tract housing and urban sprawl that Lella writes about in this post, and that seems to be all the rage in London.
I’m here, not there, but would still guess that the kind of common sense expectations you list here would come to the surface pretty quickly if communities like London just stopped to listen for them. Then developers, as you say, would have the clarity of a clear set of rules, rather than having to guess.
What I can’t answer from a distance is whether a focus on gentle density and urban sustainability is on the agenda for the particular developers who were indeed consulted lavishly before four community members in London had to share 20 minutes of fame in response, on less than a week’s notice.