By Jason Park
Reviewing land use
Canada's largest city looks at land-use policies for employment facilities.
S
imilar to many other muni- cipalities, the City of Toronto has been struggling to pro- tect its employment lands for traditional employment uses,
namely manufacturing, office, research, and development facilities. One of the strongest tools that a municipality has to protect its employment lands from other non-employment uses is the policies set out in its official plan. Although Toronto
now has significant powers to prohibit conversion of employment lands to resi- dential uses, the policies relating to the development of employment lands for large-scale retail uses and certain institu- tional uses have not had the desired effect. As a result, the municipal government is now reviewing these policies, and sugges- tions to strengthen them with respect to these types of uses have been put forward by the city's planning division.
In a May 2010 report to the plan-
ning and growth management committee, Toronto's planning division made recom- mendations concerning the policies set out in s. 4.6 of the City of Toronto Official Plan, which deals with large-scale, stand- alone retail stores and power centres. The current wording of policy 4.6.3 is pro- posed to be amended to address the fol- lowing matters: • to ensure the traffic from new large- scale, stand-alone retail stores and power centres will have minimal traffic infiltra- tion within employment areas; • to ensure such new developments will provide on-site driveways and large sites shall be required to meet the design objectives of public streets, such as pedes- trian infrastructure and tree plantings; • to ensure such new developments will
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