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Growing City

A Growing City means planning for homes, jobs, shopping, retail, entertainment, places of worship, infrastructure, and community facilities to accommodate and manage growth.

Growth provides many choices for places to live and work, generates revenue for public and private sector services, drives infrastructure use and improvement, supports and develops the local economy, and creates opportunities for renewal of all parts of the community.

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Things to Think About:

  • How & Where to Grow

    • Every resident should have easy access to shopping, dining, recreation, education, transportation, and services.
    • Identify community areas suitable for growth, including housing and amenities.
    • Maximize use of current city infrastructure to save costs.
    • Ensure flexibility for future reuse or redevelopment of non-viable commercial areas.
    • Encourage higher-density built forms and land uses to develop complete communities, reduce land consumption, and use existing infrastructure.

  • Meet Housing Needs as a Growing City

    • Identify the best indicators to accurately measure housing scarcity or abundance.
    • Policies should provide direction on how the City can attract and create affordable housing.
    • Include policies supporting the continued intensification of Downtown and other strategically chosen road corridors.
    • Consider pre-zoning to lower financial risk in development projects.
    • Incorporate pre-zoning-related infrastructure upgrade projects into its capital program to make the approval process smoother.

  • Future-Proofing with Flexible Policies

    • A balance needs to be struck between streamlining housing creation and delivering complete communities and other goals.
    • Higher-density neighbourhoods should identify space for non-residential uses, such as places to shop, go to school and parks, to create a complete community.
    • Some areas should be allowed to gradually change their use and density over time.
    • Aging buildings should be re-used in the future for different purposes than their original ones. Example, as a business instead of a home.

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