Transcript GEOG 346: Week 12

Greater Toronto:
A Case Study in Regional
Growth Management
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Greater Toronto is Canada's largest urban
region covering 7200 square kilometers, with
6 million people out of the province's nearly
13 million.
Politically, it consists of the City of Toronto
(formerly, Metropolitan Toronto) and four
regional municipalities – Halton, Peel, York,
and Durham.
Regional municipalities are like our regional
districts, but with more power at the uppertier level.
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The region is subject to major growth
pressures in an environment characterized by
important environmental resources – areas of
prime farmland, aquifer recharge areas,
significant river and stream ravines,
aggregate resources, and wildlife habitat.
Most growth in the region has been largely
uncontrolled. The first attempt to promote a
more comprehensive approach occurred in
1954, with the creation of Metro Toronto.
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Metro Toronto was all the land south of
Steeles Avenue, and was comprised of 12
(later 5) municipalities, with control being
exercised over land use in the surrounding
townships. (These latter had representatives
on the Metro council, but were not formally
part of it.)
Metro Toronto later became the ‘mega-city’
of Toronto (in 1998), and what is known as
the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) today is
comprised of it and 29 lower-tier
municipalities
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Before 1971, the GTA absorbed about 50,000
new migrants a year. More recently, the figure
has been about 70,000. Until 1971, Metro
Toronto (now Toronto) absorbed the lion's share
of these; since then, most of these have been
absorbed into the surrounding municipalities
like Markham, Richmond Hill, and Oshawa, etc.
As a result, Metro Toronto/ Toronto's share of
the GTA's population has dropped from 77% to
closer to 50%, with Brampton capturing the
greatest share of growth in the province.
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Between 1996 and 2001 York and Peel
Regions grew by 23.1 and 16.0%, respectively, while Toronto has been growing by less
1% per year.
Greater Toronto (and, especially, Toronto
itself) has been described as the most
multicultural city and region in the world and
this has imposed some significant planning
challenges, but also makes for a very lively
cultural environment. The area has also
engaged in some of the most advanced
regional planning exercises.
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1965-1975 has been described as the
“golden age” of regional planning in Ontario.
1966 saw the launching of the Design for
Development exercise, whose goal was
promote economic growth in the less
developed parts of the province and to create
development plans for its ten economic
regions, one of which was Greater Toronto
(what was described as the “Toronto-Centred
Region” [TCR]).
The TCR Concept Plan came out of an earlier
transportation study initiated in 1963.
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This study – the Metro Toronto and Region
Transportation Study – developed a
transportation plan for a 97-km. radius
around the city which incorporated the
commutershed. The final report considered
not only a trend scenario – extrapolating
existing trends into the future – but also
three goal plans which were more proactive.
Some of these were incorporated into the
TCR Concept which considered an area
almost three times the size of the current
GTA.
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This area had a population of 3.6 million in
1966, which was expected to increase to
about 8 million by the end of the century
(this came pretty close).
The goal of the TCR was to:
offset the concentration of population in the central
and southwestern parts of the province at the expense
of rural, northern, and eastern areas;
to manage unstructured sprawl, and
to protect farmland and the natural environment from
air and water pollution and open pit mining.
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The final document was issued in 1970, and it
encouraged a more structured urban pattern
along the urbanizing lakeshore (especially to the
east); the fostering of concentrated urban nodes
to the north and east (with provisions for
transit), and the development of a second
international airport and new town (Seaton) in
Pickering.
Ultimately, the plan lacked sufficient specifics
and didn't have sufficient support from local and
provincial politicians.
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Failure was also attributed to insufficient
consultation with the affected municipalities and
citizenry (too top-down), the lack of a power
base inside and outside of government, and
economic slowdown/ drop in housing prices
which negatively impacted on plans to go ahead
with Seaton.
More recently, the provincial Liberals have
exchanged the lands at Seaton for lands on the
much more sensitive Oak Ridges Moraine.
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There were, however, some legacies that
remained from this period:
the Parkway Belt in Peel and York Regions (intended as
a multi-use utility, urban separation, recreation, and
linked open-space corridor);
the Niagara Escarpment Plan (protecting an important
physical/ biological feature), and
the preservation of the Seaton lands.
Since the early '80s, when TCR was officially
dumped, there have been other initiatives.
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In 1988, an Office for the Greater Toronto Area (OGTA)
was established under the control of a deputy minister.
Also a Greater Toronto Coordinating Committee
(GTCC) was established.
The role of the OGTA was to promote discussion and, if
possible, coordination and cooperation amongst
municipalities. However, it had no taxing powers, no
formal authority or independent power, and a low
profile/ no accountability to citizens. While it helped
raise awareness on the part of municipal and regional
politicians of the need for regional planning and
growth management, it was itself no substitute for a
real regional planning body.
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In the late 1980s, former Toronto mayor and federal
cabinet minister, David Crombie, was made head of
the federal/ provincial Royal Commission for the
Future of the Toronto Waterfront, which was
suffering from a host of problems.
He cleverly expanded his mandate to encompass the
whole of what he called the” Greater Toronto
Bioregion.” This was the area on the south flank of
the Oak Ridges Moraine from the Niagara Escarpment to the Trent River, and encompassing all the
watersheds, major and minor, that flowed into Lake
Ontario along 250 kilometers.
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This bioregion encompassed 17 local municipalities,
and six Conservation Authorities, and was larger than
the GTA, but didn't go as far north.
It proposed an “ecosystem approach” to planning as
opposed to “conventional planning,” and sought to
create a more ecologically sustainable society that
would also benefit society and the economy.
None of the planning concepts of the Commission
were adopted, but in 1992 the Waterfront
Regeneration Trust was established to advise on
related issues and carry out research and educational
work.
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5.
The Ecosystem as Home
Everything is Connected to Everything Else
Sustainability
Understanding Places
Integrating Processes
[For more, see
http://www.yorku.ca/bunchmj/pages/eawe
b/Workshop_Report_1.pdf]
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In 1995, the GTA Task Force was established by
the NDP, chaired by Dr. Anne Golden. Originally
given an 18-month mandate, it was forced to
deliver its report in nine months by the
incoming Mike Harris (Tory) government.
The report was about various scenarios for the
future, and how wasteful of money,
infrastructure, and natural resources it would be
to continue the existing patterns of sprawl. It all
the problems faced by the region back to a lack
of regional coordination, and recommended the
need for a new governance model.
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While there was widespread consensus on the need
to develop infrastructure to accommodate
population and employment growth, the
foreshortened consultation period meant that there
was no overall consensus on Golden's findings,
which were again seen as coming from the “top
down.”
Though her report was neglected by the province, it
did – in 1999 – set up a Greater Toronto Services
Board (which, like the OGTA, lacked any real
power), and a new transit agency, the Greater
Toronto Transit Authority.
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Though not the first to do so, Jane Jacobs – in 1997
(later echoed in 1999 by Richard Gilbert, a Metro
and city councilman, and Federation of Canadian
Municipalities chair) – proposed that Greater
Toronto become its own province and thus no
longer a mere “creature” of Ontario. The idea has
been bandied about in academic circles, but has not
developed traction with politicians.
A short time later, the Tories were defeated by the
Liberals, who reinforced the latter's protection of
the Oak Ridges Moraine, in response to intense
public pressure.
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In 2005, they followed this up with the Protecting
the Greenbelt Act, which seeks to protect farmland
and environmentally sensitive land from unwise
development with the “Greater Golden Horseshoe.”
In addition to directing development to specified
nodes (“Places to Grow”), it also adds 1 million acres
to the 800,00 acres already protected on the Oak
Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment.
For more information on the history, See Gerald
Hodge and Ira Robinson, Planning Canadian Regions
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001).
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Establishing a network of countryside and open space areas supporting the
Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment
Sustaining the countryside, rural and small towns, and contributing to the
economic viability of farming communities
Preserving agricultural land as a continuing commercial source of food and
employment
Recognizing the critical importance of the agriculture sector to the regional
economy
Providing the protection needed to maintain, restore and improve
ecosystems in the greenbelt area
Promoting river connections between the Oak Ridges Moraine, Niagara
Escarpment and lakes in the region, including Lake Ontario
Providing open space and recreational, tourism and cultural heritage
opportunities to support the social needs of a rapidly expanding and
increasingly urbanized population
Promoting linkages between ecosystems and provincial parks or public
lands
Controlling urbanization of the lands to which the greenbelt plan applies
Ensuring transportation and other infrastructure projects are developed in
an environmentally sensitive way
Promoting sustainable resource use.