Lack Of Planning Laid At Mayor Miller's Door

It is obvious that Mayor Miller's planning initiatives are driven by the special interest groups that support him at election time. "Why David Miller hasn’t made cleaning up Toronto’s approach to city planning one of his major goals is baffling." While I am apprehensive about putting city planning in the hands of ratepayer groups, who truly only represent a miniscule number, they at least have a plan.

City Hall: planning ahead

June 9th, 2007

Dale Duncan

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This week I wrote about a group called People Planning Toronto (PPT for short), who held a neighbourhood summit May 26 to discuss how to improve the Toronto’s backward planning process and ways to get residents more involved. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the summit, but I spoke to one of the organizers, Sandra Shaul of the Annex Residents Association, who is good at telling stories that illustrate the state of planning in this city.

One of the stories she told me when we spoke last week was about a recent walk she took around her neighbourhood with Councillor Adam Vaughan and a planner for the area.

“So we had the one city planner with us yesterday and we walked for three hours,” says Shaul. “He talked about how 20 years ago, when he started off as a planner with the city, he used to ride his bike to work, and he’d stop from site to site — he had to beg to be given permission to walk with us yesterday.” As I mentioned in my column, the planning department is very understaffed. Simply retaining employees has become a problem as well.

“We walked down Philosopher’s Walk,” Shaul continues. “He had never walked down Philosopher’s walk in his life and he’s a planner for our area!” Philosopher’s walk, which meanders through the University of Toronto, starts on the south side of Bloor Street. This particular planner is in charge of an area in the Annex that begins on the north side of the street.

“That’s who’s planning the city,” she argued. “That’s why everything that’s done is spot zoning. He said he learned so much about our neighbourhood that day. I said, don’t you think you should learn that before you call yourself a planner for the area? I said, you come in late notifying the neighbourhood about these development applications, and you set yourself up for a fight because you don’t understand the culture of the area. The only things you understand are the zoning bylaws, or the lack of them, and intensification goals. You don’t look beyond the site. It just hit me between the eyes yesterday. Their priorities are all shot.”