White Paper
Residential Intensification: Building More Vibrant Communities

Overview
A. Setting Intensification Targets
B. Community Involvement in Development Decisions
C. Impact of Urban Design Issues on Intensification Planning
D. The City’s Contribution to Supporting Intensification
E. Planning for Intensification in Suburban Development
How to Provide Input
Appendix A – About Intensification
Appendix B – Intensification at Work

Overview

Vibrant, accessible and ‘complete’ communities are more compelling places to live and work. To that end, the City of Ottawa is interested in listening to the views of residents on how we can nurture thriving communities within our city-neighbourhoods where social and shopping activities can occur within walking, rollerblading or cycling distance of home. Achieving this requires the right density and mix of dwellings to ensure our city is a great place to live.

Intensification, the process of increasing development density within a local area, also makes the best use of existing services and facilities and decreases the pressure for urban expansion. It has been part of the City’s overall strategy since the 1990s. The Official Plan already targets specific areas for significant growth and intensification (those close to the rapid-transit network, major roads, busy commercial streets and large tracts of vacant land within the urban area). However, these plans can come into conflict with nearby residential communities concerned about the impact of further development on infrastructure, such as transportation, sewer, water and parks, and the overall quality of life.

This discussion paper addresses five key issues related to intensification strategies. Specifically, potential conflicts exist between the high level strategic direction and the day-to-day management of individual development proposals. The issues to be addressed are:

What are the Areas Targeted for Intensification?

The Official Plan promotes opportunities for intensification within the urban area of the city where the following circumstances arise:

• lands within 600 metres of future or existing rapid-transit stations with potential to develop as compact, mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly cores;
• lands that are no longer viable for the purpose for which they were intended, such as older industrial areas, exhausted quarries, or abandoned transportation corridors;
• lands where the present use is maintained but the addition of residential uses or other uses can be accomplished in a complementary manner, such as on under-utilized shopping centre sites;
• lands currently or formerly used as parking lots or other extensive storage purposes; and,
• lands where records indicate existing contamination due to previous commercial or industrial use, but which can be made suitable for development if cleaned up.

However, the Official Plan specifically directs growth to locations with significant development potential. These areas are identified by the land use designations: Central Area; Mixed-Use Centre; Town Centre; Employment Area; Enterprise Area; Developing Community; and, Traditional and Arterial Mainstreet.

While these areas are targeted for intensification, other areas of the City are not precluded. Elsewhere within the General Urban Area, intensification projects may be approved, but will generally be at a much smaller scale than in the land-use designations targeted for growth listed above.

Beyond the targeting of specific areas, the City has not specified quantitative targets for intensification. However, as shown in the chart, intensification as a share of all housing starts in the city has been approximately 30% of total urban housing starts for the past few years. Though intensification has occurred across a range of housing types, the dominant form has been condominium apartments (see chart above).

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A. Setting Intensification Targets

The Provincial Policy Statement calls for the Official Plan to establish and implement minimum targets for intensification, but no specific, quantifiable targets have been identified to date. There are a number of options for establishing intensification targets.

1. City-Wide Targets
   
   The City could set an overall target for intensification for the City as a whole. For example, the province has defined a target for the Greater Toronto Area of 40% to be achieved by 2015. While a city-wide target could be useful, it would not identify expectations for growth within individual parts of the city, or help assess the consequences of intensification for specific parts of the infrastructure network.
   
   
2. Micro-Targets within the City
   
   The City could more carefully evaluate the opportunities within target areas. This would better define growth expectations by breaking up the ultimate build-out scenarios into shorter, more manageable timeframes that can be regularly revisited and adjusted in order to take into account changes in our neighbourhoods.
   
   
3. Targets for Key Areas
   
   The City could set targets for key areas, such as rapid transit stations, along with a corresponding amendment to the Zoning By-law. In these areas, the Zoning By-law would provide regulations enabling the achievement of the targets ‘as of right’. In other words, the City, in advance of development applications being received, would zone land. While this would establish a commitment by the City to support intensification targets, it would not guarantee that by the time a developer is ready to proceed, the zoning will still be feasible, due to intervening changes in market conditions, land costs, ownerships, etc.
   
   
4. Define Intensification Metrics
   
   The City could develop more explicit policies in the Official Plan that would define the factors that would be used to assess the appropriateness of proposals for intensification. These policies would provide better guidance to all stakeholders on which development proposals were, and were not, consistent with the policy.

Questions for Discussion

1. How precise should the intensification targets be (e.g., define specific building heights or set proportional to street size, provide ranges or specific targets)? Should these be the basis for Zoning By-law amendments?
2. At how fine a level of geography should targets be set?
3. What additional factors should be in the Official Plan to assess intensification proposals?
4. Are the ‘low hanging fruit’ opportunities for intensification used up in the city, leaving only the difficult sites, the contentious locations and as a result, will it be necessary to push the urban area further and further out?
5. To what extent does the Zoning By-law support the Official Plan?

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B. Community Involvement in Development Decisions

Communities sometimes feel that by the time a proposal is submitted for approval, it is too late to engage in meaningful dialogue with the developer to come up with creative solutions. People would like to be involved earlier. There is a perception among developers and communities alike that each application for increased density is a fight, particularly when perceptions of the ‘appropriate’ amount of intensification often differ.

The Planning Act allows the City to require developers to pre-consult with the municipality but there is no mechanism to require pre-consultation with the community, although some developers do it as a matter of course. To follow are a series of options for consideration.

1. Promote Prior Consultation
   
   Methods could be explored that would have the community and the developer engage in meaningful discussions prior to the submission of a development application for intensification, to the benefit of both parties. For this to work requires a commitment of good will and respect among all parties. Developers often have critical timelines, and communities need to fully understand the relevant issues and constraints.
   
   
2. Review Previous Developments
   
   The City could do some retrospective evaluations of the impact specific intensification developments have had on a community a few years after the project’s completion and compare this with the concerns raised by the community at the outset. This may help to bring greater clarity to the discussion, identify issues to anticipate in the future and put what may prove to have been ‘non-issues’ to rest.

Questions for Discussion

1. Should the City create a process for the development proponent to consult with the community on certain types of intensification proposals before it accepts a development application?
2. How could this best be done?
3. How can the City and development proponents clearly demonstrate the potential impacts of a proposal?

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C. Impact of Urban Design Issues on Intensification Planning

The current approach to negotiating design through the development process is based on guidance, rather than regulation. The Council approves “design guidelines” for developments, but they do not have the statutory weight of the Official Plan policy or regulation. Some developers choose to ignore the direction provided in Council-approved documents. Nevertheless, new Provincial legislation means that the Ontario Municipal Board must have regard for these documents if Council considered them in making its decision on a planning matter. As such, it may be just a matter of time before attitudes soften and more consideration is given to the Council guidelines. To follow are a series of options that could be considered.

1. Create a Design Review Panel
   
   The City could expand the pilot project requiring Design Review in the Central Area through the creation of a Design Review Panel to assess applications within intensification target areas. The City could work with a stakeholder group of developers, business people and community people to establish a set of guidelines that will govern design review of private and municipal projects. Consequences to avoid include: this becoming just another ‘hoop’ developers will have to jump through; uncertainty; delays to approvals; unavailability of qualified urban design practitioners.
   
   
2. Public Recognition for Good Design
   
   The City could seek some means of rewarding developers who are prepared to take the risks associated with creativity and innovation. This could ‘raise the bar’ by adding the prestige of public recognition and increasing public awareness of good design.
   
   
3. Identify Conflicting Policies
   
   The development community and community associations could help to identify where there may be municipal practices or standards that can act at cross purposes to the achievement of the design objectives of the Official Plan and how these might be changed to remove impediments. This would assist in assuring that all policies are moving in concert towards the achievement of viable compact mixed-use development.
   
   
4. More Prescriptive Design Policy
   
   The use of more prescriptive design policies would make the City’s expectations more predictable, but could run counter to the desire to foster creativity by being flexible. One alternative would be to include more prescriptive statements of overall intent (for suburbs, mainstreets, various categories of development, etc.) in the Official Plan, rather than creating detailed prescriptive policies. Similarly, 3-D models could help people to visualize the physical impact of a proposal and this could be a requirement for the City to support proposals for buildings over a certain size/height.
   
   The incorporation of a formal design review with set parameters, submission requirements and timelines as part of (not in addition to) the development approval process, would add greater certainty in matters of design approval. Greater communication and education of the purpose, content and use of existing design policies and guidelines may also increase peoples’ comfort level, since what is unknown can prompt resistance.
   
   
5. Require Community Amenities
   
   Section 37 of the Planning Act enables a municipality to permit increases in height and or density in return for community amenities. Currently, the City does not make use of this provision. Community amenities may include building design and public art, public cultural facilities, affordable housing units, childcare facilities, improvements to rapid transit stations, and other such facilities or services
   
   Up until now, such increases in height or density routinely achieved through Committee of Adjustment variances and the approval of rezonings by City Council without any directly demonstrated design enhancement being received in return.
   
   
6. Regulate Exterior Design
   
   Recent amendments to the Planning Act give municipalities in Ontario the authority to include requirements related to exterior design details of buildings, including character, scale, appearance, and design features. Such authority requires that provisions relating to such matters be contained in a municipality’s official plan and a by-law and does not extend this authority to residential buildings containing less than 25 units.
   
   However, the more specific we are in prescribing limits or parameters, the less flexibility there is to achieve creative solutions that respond to the context and the opportunities or constraints presented by a site or an area.

Questions for Discussion

1. Should the Official Plan be more prescriptive by establishing urban design rules or should we continue to use design objectives?
2. We do not yet have a seamless ‘design culture’ at the City that influences and informs both the development approvals process and the City’s own capital works projects. What needs to be done in this regard?
3. How should a developer demonstrate that a proposal achieves Council’s design and compatibility objectives?
4. How do we intensify in a way that enhances the liveability and attractiveness of targeted growth areas?
5. How do we address the interface between areas targeted for growth (e.g. a Mainstreet) and adjacent stable residential areas?
6. To what extent is additional control warranted and necessary in order to achieve ‘good’ intensification and facilitate its acceptance in our communities?

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D. The City’s Contribution to Supporting Intensification

Intensification creates a number of demands on the City’s services and infrastructure. Other white papers address the specific issues related to transportation and water and sewage, but creating vibrant, liveable neighbourhoods involve other aspects of the City’s infrastructure – including sidewalks, parks and community centres. Because intensification projects often demand a flexible, site-specific response to implement urban design principles, they can be in conflict with city-widestandards. The current budgeting process and available funding are not necessarily sufficient to support the additional costs imposed by intensification or to create the vibrant, interesting public spaces that will attract people to live and encourage developers to invest within areas identified for intensification. There are a number of options related to the City’s contribution in the support of intensification.

1. Base Planning on Design Objectives
   
   In establishing the City’s capital project program, staff could include Council-approved design objectives for those capital projects to be undertaken in areas designated Traditional Mainstreet, Arterial Mainstreet, Mixed-Use Centre, Town Centre, and Developing Community in the Official Plan. And, in establishing yearly budgets for those capital projects to be undertaken in these areas, include the source of funding for implementing the growth-related component of a project’s design objectives. In these locations the contribution to public art could be considered in concert with the design objectives. Reports to Council would have to reflect the capital, maintenance and operating costs related to the design aspects of the capital project, and how it fits or does not fit within established budget envelopes.
   
   
2. Development Approval Process Includes Funding for City Projects
   
   When capital enhancements within designated growth areas are recommended through the development approvals process, corresponding long-term City operating dollars or alternatively, maintenance agreements with development proponents, could be an inherent part of the same process. This proactive approach could apply, for example, when enhancements within the public right-of-way (e.g. wider sidewalks, upgrades to landscaping) are proposed as part of a site plan or subdivision application.
   
   
3. Automatic Budget Allocation Based on Project Cost?
   
   A percentage of the overall project budget of every growth-related capital project occurring within an area identified in the Official Plan for intensification could be identified to allow both capital and operating premiums for context-specific elements. If the approaches differ from adopted City standards, it would need to be demonstrated that public safety and cost effectiveness are not compromised.
   
   
4. Require Community Amenities
   
   The City could make use of Section 37 of the Planning Act to have developers contribute public amenities to enhance areas where additional height or density over and above what is currently permitted are approved. Resistance from the development community may result.
   
   
5. Review Existing Policies and Procedures
   
   The City, in partnership with the development industry and other stakeholders, could examine operational by-laws and standards, maintenance and budgeting processes, and design objectives to see if there are impediments to achieving intensification and if there are means by which these could be addressed.
   
   
6. Tie Intensification Targets to Infrastructure Budgets
   
   The City could coordinate the preparation of intensification targets with the development of infrastructure capacity allocation strategies in areas targeted for intensification.
   
   
7. Review Development Charge By-Law
   
   The City could review the means to finance the rehabilitation of inner-city infrastructure and the provision of public spaces in association with intensification in the context of the 2009 Development Charge By-law review.

Questions for Discussion

1. How can intensification be coordinated with the provision of infrastructure capacity, transportation capacity, public open space, community centres, cycling facilities, sidewalks, and so on?
2. How can the City contribute to enhancing the liveability of neighbourhoods experiencing intensification?
3. Can the City better support its strategic efforts to achieve intensification within its practices, processes and regulations?

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E. Planning for Intensification in Suburban Development

Even though the focus of this discussion paper is intensification, it may be worth considering how we build our new communities so that from the outset we create compact, more traditional-looking neighbourhoods that are denser, more ‘complete’ places to live with variety, choice and mix already built in. On existing suburban mainstreets, there are many redevelopment opportunities to transform 1960s style car-oriented development to more compact, pedestrian-friendly formats.

The introduction of a grid street pattern in low-density town centres can anticipate and facilitate the eventual redevelopment of single-use large format buildings oriented to the automobile, to formats that contain a greater mix and type of development, are more street-oriented, friendly to the pedestrian, and supportive of transit. The presence of higher residential densities within walking distance of mainstreets is an example of a pattern that will support more urban forms of development along our major shopping streets.

Planning requirements for new development often act against a goal of intensification in new communities: e.g., four school boards can each require sites (up to 2.8 ha. for an elementary and 8 ha. for a high school); the City requires the maintenance of stream corridors and setbacks from water courses; and generally speaking, development provides more open space than in the past. There are a number of options, which could be explored in this area.

1. Require Planning for Intensification in Suburban Areas
   
   The City could revisit the policies for development on arterial mainstreets and town centres to increase the density requirements around retail developments. The City could also, through Community Design Plans, subdivision and other development approvals seek a more urban form, a greater variety of housing options and a broader mix of uses. Developers may resist regulating such matters as minimum density, height or dwelling unit type and mix if they consider there is no proven market for it.
   
   
2. Improve School Design to Support Intensification
   
   The City could encourage schools to develop multi-storey buildings and explore other means to reduce their space requirements. The City could also explore the establishment of dual zones on school sites so that in the event of a school being declared surplus, the property would have an appropriate ‘as of right’ zoning for intensification without the need for a site-specific rezoning.
   
   
3. Use the Enterprise Area Designation More Effectively
   
   The City could revisit the Enterprise Area designation. This was originally intended to retain the overall employment potential of a site while introducing other uses (residential) that would result in increased densities, mix of uses, and possible sharing of open space, parking, district heating and so on. The policy has not been well implemented and staff are considering removing the designation from the Official Plan. However, there may be other ways of increasing the intensity of development in business parks.

Questions

1. Might a greater measure of intensity targets be attainable in new suburban housing developments?
2. How can we influence the suburban housing market to respond differently?
3. Should we be rethinking how we build our suburban mainstreets and town centres?
4. Should we be requiring a greater mix of housing types?
5. How can we use intensification to contribute to more interesting urban design, more and different amenities, community resources and greater variety and choice of housing, employment, shopping and leisure opportunities in our suburbs?

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How to Provide Input

Send comments by phone, regular mail, e-mail or by visiting the City’s Web site before December 9, 2007.

Contact the author by phone, in writing or by e-mail:

Jack Ferguson
Planning, Transit and the Environment Department
110 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, ON K1P 1J1
613-580-2424 ext. 26940
jack.ferguson@ottawa.ca

Go to: ottawa.ca/beyondottawa2020 and register your comments using the on-line discussion tool Ottawa Talks. Register your e-mail address at the same time to receive notification of upcoming public consultation events.

Send your comments to: plan@ottawa.ca

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Appendix A – About Intensification

What is Intensification?

Intensification is the practice of increasing the density of development within existing urban areas – typically measured as an increase in the number of dwelling units per hectare (or employment per hectare in the case of business intensification). This paper focuses on development of existing urban areas and does not include ‘greenfield’ areas – development of large tracts of vacant land located on the fringe of the city’s urban area.

Residential intensification occurs in a number of ways, such as:

• Conversion of a single-detached house to a number of apartment units;
• Redevelopment of an under-developed lot – e.g. by replacing a few single units with a multi-unit or mixed-use building or by developing on land formerly occupied by parking;
• Conversion of an existing non-residential building to residential uses;
• Infill on a vacant lot within a residential subdivision;
• Infill by creating one or more new lots from an over-sized yard;
• Redevelopment of contaminated Brownfields; and
• Development/redevelopment through change of use of large sites such as CFB Rockcliffe.

What are the Constraints on Intensification?

While the City has adopted an overall strategy supporting intensification (for the reasons outlined above), it does not support intensification everywhere and under all circumstances. The city-wide strategy for intensification actually occurs through the development approvals process (i.e. site plan control and/or rezoning), which is ultimately dependent on the more detailed area planning set out in Community Design Plans. In addition, the City’s plans for intensification must address other constraints.

There are three principal constraints on intensification development decisions: community concerns, urban design issues, and infrastructure/ services issues.

Community Concerns

Within those parts of the city designated as General Urban Area (those not specifically identified as targeted for intensification), residential neighbourhoods are often of lower density and local communities are concerned about intensification. These concerns arise from increasing density in these residential areas and from the potential impact of intensification in nearby areas that are targeted for growth.

Some form of small-scale intensification can and does occur ‘as of right’ within virtually all neighbourhoods:

• A low-density zoned (e.g., R2) area that has been developed only with detached dwellings could allow for semi-detached and duplex dwellings, which would result in small-scale intensification.
• Where the zoning by-law permits a detached or semi-detached dwelling, or duplex building, a secondary dwelling unit within these dwellings is also permitted.
• Areas that were originally developed on private wells and septic systems (and therefore required large lots), but have since switched to public sewer and water, may see reductions in lot sizes through severances, which effectively increases the number of dwellings in an area.

Each of these developments is of a small scale, but they could accumulate over time into significant intensification of a community. Vehicular traffic may increase with intensification. The impact of traffic congestion on the quality of life in existing communities and the way we regard congestion are questions that frequently arise when considering growth through intensification.

Neighbourhoods on the edge of areas targeted for growth can also be concerned about intensification because the impact of development may be felt throughout the area – for example in increased travel demands.

Urban Design Issues

Intensification must occur within a context of good urban design, contributing to the quality of the area where it is located, rather than being resented by it – as one observer has put it, all new buildings should be “modest triumphs of quality and care”.

The application of urban design principles is integral to the consideration of intensification in the Official Plan. However, applying those principles is not easy. Most people appreciate seeing architectural creativity and variety in their neighbourhoods, but also want to retain an element of the familiar and feel assured that new developments will be compatible in scale and context.

The Official Plan supports the shift to a more design-oriented approach to assessing change in local communities, but recognizes there are no simple prescriptive standards or checklists which can be applied.

Infrastructure/ Services Issues

Increasing population density helps create more vibrant communities, but also creates challenges for the City. The City has an important role to play in creating interesting public spaces – places for people to shop, to play, to meet informally, to walk or cycle, wait for transit, or simply to watch others engaged in these activities. Wide sidewalks, attractive surface materials, amenity space, cycle parking facilities, street furniture, trees, pedestrian-scale lighting, or public art can all help to turn things around. Encouraging developers to intensify and attracting people to live in intensifying areas may mean there is a need to provide more amenity for neighbourhoods, particularly within the inner city.

Yet increasingly, the City is experiencing significant difficulty delivering public spaces of the kind envisioned in its policy documents while operating within predictable and tightening capital and maintenance budgets. There is often reluctance on the part of the City to accept non-standard or enhanced pedestrian amenities within the public right-of-way because to do so results in increased life-cycle maintenance costs for which adequate budgets have not been made available. Further, because intensification projects often demand a flexible, site-specific response to implement urban design principles, they can be in conflict with city-wide operational maintenance standards, practices and by-laws that are intended to streamline the development approval process and provide consistency, cost effectiveness and predictability in the delivery of municipal infrastructure. This is particularly so in established areas where tight sites and narrower rights-of-way often dictate a need for flexibility. Striking an appropriate balance between consistency, safety, and practicality in operating and maintenance considerations and good urban design practice is of critical importance.

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Appendix B – Intensification at Work

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