Greater Toronto:A Case Study in Regional

Growth Management

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 upper-tier level.

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.

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

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.

Between 1996 and 2001 York and Peel Regions grew by 23.1 and 16.0%, respect-ively, 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.

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.

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.

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, andto protect farmland and the natural environment

from air and water pollution and open pit mining.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Escarp-ment to the Trent River, and encompassing all the watersheds, major and minor, that flowed into Lake Ontario along 250 kilometers.

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.

1. The Ecosystem as Home2. Everything is Connected to Everything

Else3. Sustainability4. Understanding Places5. Integrating Processes

[For more, see http://www.yorku.ca/bunchmj/pages/eaweb/Workshop_Report_1.pdf]

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.