Politicians And Beauracrats Are The Problem

Blaming it on amalgamation is a cop out. If they had spent their time in implementation rather than on knocking the decision there wouldn't be such a backlog of items that have not been harmonized.

Hume: Love it or loathe it, change is a comin'

December 04, 2009

Christopher Hume

We'll take the growth, but you can keep the change.

For people like Toronto's chief planner, Gary Wright, that awkward truth lies at the heart of city life.

Delivering his annual report card at the Canadian Urban Institute on Thursday, Wright painted a portrait of a city barely able to keep up with itself. Though the recession has slowed things down, the planning department – understaffed and overworked – just manages to keep its head above water.

But resistance to change also remains a stubborn fact of urban life, nowhere more so than in Toronto, a city where neighbourhoods wield considerable influence, if not power. And because "all development in Toronto is infill," there's never a shortage of angry neighbours.

If any of that bothered Wright, he sure wasn't letting it show. Nothing's perfect, he said, but generally the chief seemed quite pleased with the ways things have worked out. Given that 100,000 residential units have been built in Toronto in the past decade, and that another 100,000 are in the works, he might have good reason for optimism.

But what also emerged from his talk was just what a regulatory mess we're in. More than 10 years after amalgamation, Toronto has yet to recover from the forced merger. Wright gave some revealing examples:

The city has 43 zoning bylaws that must be consolidated into one.

There are 1,500 definitions in planning legislation, which will be cut to 185.

There are "five or six" legal definitions of the term apartment; there needs to be one.

There are "five or six" ways of measuring the height of a building.

It gets worse: There are 10,000 "site-specific amendments" in a city of 480,000 properties.

"I can tell you," Wright lamented, "the lawyers are all over this one."

You get the idea; it's a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy and rules that have outlived their purpose. Needless to say, cities are endlessly complex organisms that for the most part resist more than partial control. Historically, Toronto's response has been to attempt to anticipate every eventuality. That, of course, is impossible, which then means the rules themselves become obstacles.

At various times in our past, planning laws have gone so far as to ban residential development in the core. That was based on the notion people are happy to work in the city, but not to live in it.

Now we know better.

As Wright pointed out, planners must also address themselves to the growing environmental crisis. New green standards go into effect in January, which inevitably means conflict and confusion. Being a man of the world, Wright also said that whatever council doesn't get done by next summer will have to wait for the 2010 election. After that, everything's up for grabs; Mayor David Miller won't be back and neither will a number of councillors. On the other hand, the city's "very successful" design review panel, created on a temporary basis, will be made permanent.

Then there's Transit City, which has serious planning implications. Real estate consultant Barry Lyon questioned why the city has failed to zone for greater densities in areas surrounding subway stations, bus terminals and the like. Rather than construct free-standing transportation facilities, he wondered, why not incorporate them into office towers or condo complexes? That's what would happen in, say, Hong Kong, where residential towers can reach 80 storeys and higher.

That's something else Toronto isn't yet ready to allow – but will.