City Planning 101 – The Presentations and some homework

If you missed Wednesday’s Planning 101 session at St. Christopher House, don’t fear. We have the materials from the event here. Mike Layton now has a section on his own website with all the materials available for download also.

The night had two presentations, one from the city planning department with an overview of what they do and how they go about making decisions, and another from Terrence Van Elslander, of local architecture firm VanElslander Carter, on how the process with developers works from their perspective.

The goal was to educate all of us in the basics as we begin to discuss the future of our neighborhood. What do planners do? how do they do it? What guides their decisions?

This was the city planning presentation:
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Some of the notable slides were 22 and 23 which highlighted the young population of Ward 19 relative to the rest of the city. It was pointed out that Ward 19 has a disproportionate number of 25-34 year olds and a much higher percentage of residents who use something other than a car to get to work. Slide 25 is also notable because it shows the Ossington strip is a mixed designated use area. This means it is slated according to the city plan as a growth area.

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In Terrence VanElslander’s slides, what stood out was slide 6, which shows the process that developers have to go through to get their building permits in the city, including the community input which the visioning study enables.

The neighbourhood has heard a lot about what some residents don’t want. In an effort to be constructive, Mike Layton and the visioning working group have assigned the neighbourhood some homework. They are asking asking ‘What do you want in the neighbourhood?’. He would like you to send his office pictures (or even make a Pinterest board) of the neighbourhood you want. It could be pictures of buildings, structures, parks, activities, businesses, residences, or anything that you feel represents the Ossington that you want to see. This will help guide the visioning group in their study and focus the upcoming meetings.

Don’t forget: the next meeting is a community walk on Aug 29th from 6-9pm to look at some other buildings in the community and see what works and what doesn’t work. Here’s a map of the walk starting at Queen and Strachan.

View Ossington Area Walk in a larger map