A recent review of Perverse Cities by Ray Tomalty (Alternatives Journal 37.6) takes issue with several arguments presented.  I’ll address these in a separate post.  But the review claims that early results show that the Places to Grow (PtG) and greenbelt plans in the Greater Golden Horseshoe (i.e. Toronto mega-region) are helping rein in sprawl here.  This discussion does put the spotlight on the PtG and greenbelt plans five or so years after their adoption.  Of course these early results are only now beginning to emerge, some time after Perverse Cities went to press.  Nevertheless, whether these major planning initiatives have been succeeding in shifting the pattern of urban development in the GGH is something that I’ve been considering recently and is worthwhile exploring.

The first point to make is that the early results are very sparse.  The Ministry of Infrastructure’s PtG website recently offered a progress report, with some preliminary evidence.  It’s useful to look at the data provided and what it may or may not tell us about how we’re doing in meeting the growth plan objectives – which include achieving residential intensification targets of 40% of all new units to be accommodated on already urbanised land, directing growth to identified centres, and meeting minimum density targets – all with the aim of creating denser, more mixed use urban areas.  Let’s look at the evidence so far.

Expansions of the urbanised area

PtG was to limit urban area expansions and the dedication of more greenfields land to urban development.  Five years in, proposals are outstanding to add 8-10,000 hectares of land to designated greenfield to region’s urban envelope, within the so-called whitebelt (the area between the currently designated urban boundary and the greenbelt).  This is about 17% of the total whitebelt area, equal to about one-third of the land area of the City of Mississauga.

Density

No empirical evidence is provided yet on density trends.  The Ministry claims that their own early analysis shows increasing densities in new suburban developments post-PtG in the Outer Ring municipalities.  In the Inner Ring, they say that densities were already increasing before PtG.   We’ll have a better understanding of this once we see the actual data.

A shift to apartments

The Ministry notes significant increases in higher density housing forms – in places like Burlington, Mississauga, Waterloo, Kitchener and Markham, as well as more townhouses and semis in places like Oshawa, Newmarket and Guelph.

It’s true that on a percentage basis, there’s been a shift to a larger share of apartments in the Inner Ring CMAs (Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa).  Singles fell from 47% of units in 2001-2005 to 38% in 2006-2010.  However, we need to dig a little deeper and look at absolute numbers.  When we do we see that the number of apartments built hasn’t really increased that much.  Rather, the absolute number of singles, semis and towns has decreased, by about 55,000 units – that’s what’s mostly accounting for the increase in apartments’ share of the housing mix.  And almost 3/4 of those apartments were built in the City of Toronto.

Housing Starts, Toronto, Oshawa and Hamilton CMAs

Source:  CMHC Housing Market Indicators

Intensification

Evidence of intensification provided by the Ministry suggests that of the 63,000 units added to the GGH between June of 2009 and June of 2010, 70% of units were built the in existing urbanised area.  They note that half of these units were located in City of Toronto.  Hopefully, some more fulsome data is forthcoming.

Tomalty suggests that intensification rates range from 16% to 50% (based on information derived from interviews with municipal planning staff)[1].  The 50% is for Peel Region, which of course includes Mississauga, where most of the intensification is taking place, as that municipality has essentially exhausted its supply of greenfields.

He also quotes research on intensification conducted by the Neptis Foundation[2], as per the table below, showing support for increasing rates of intensification.

But this data assumes two different urbanised areas for the two periods.  The urbanised area is expanded for the 2001-2006 period, allowing for more development to be included as intensification than if the boundary were held constant over the two periods.

In fact, Neptis includes two calculations for the 2001-2006 period.  The second one provides data keeping the urbanised area constant between the two time periods.  This yields dramatically different results:

In my view the data in the second table are more accurate and reflective of actual intensification.  The Neptis methodology tended to have a generous interpretation of the urban boundary, which led to a significant portion of units being counted as intensification when in fact they were within 500 metres of the urban boundary.  That is, they were most likely slightly lagging greenfields development rather than intensification per se, a fact acknowledged by Neptis in their report.  In other words, intensification in the 1991-2001 period is likely overestimated, and that shown for 2001-2006 in the second table likely more reflective of actual intensification rates.

I’d love to be proved  skeptical – but I think we need much better data before we can draw meaningful conclusions about how we’re doing on Places to Grow.