Consulting on Caledon’s whitebelt future - Guiding growth

NRU
Oct. 28, 2015
By Geordie Gordon

With population growth looming and the potential GTA West highway expansion on its doorstep, the Town of Caledon plans to consult residents and others on the future development of its so-called whitebelt lands, which constitute about 10,500 hectares.

On October 20, town council directed planning staff to initiate a visioning exercise to guide growth in areas that are excluded from both the Greenbelt Plan and approved urban settlement areas.

The consultation builds on the GTA West Land Use Study, already in progress, which seeks to identify strategic employment lands for Caledon in the GTA West Transportation Corridor that runs from Highway 400 between Kirby Road and King Vaughan Road to the Highway 401/407 ETR interchange. Meridian Planning Consultants Inc., commissioned to carry out the GTA land use study, will also conduct the whitebelt exercise.

Meridian principal Nick McDonald says the exercise, expected to take about a year to complete, is necessary to figure out the long term vision for Caledon, especially in the context of the GTA West Corridor.

“The idea is that because the province is doing a significant thing in terms of planning and potentially building a new highway [in the GTA West corridor], it’ll have a significant impact on how things evolve after that,” McDonald told NRU. “So the idea here really is to say okay, here’s where the new highway is going to go, here’s the amount of land we have to plan over the very long term, let’s start thinking about that now, and make some very basic decisions in terms of the long term vision, to deal with a number of things.”

Caledon policy and sustainability manager Haiqing Xu says that the GTA West corridor was one impetus for the exercise. But he said there are other planning issues, such as the process for meeting future growth targets that are of concern to the town. Ideally, he added, the visioning exercise would set a comprehensive, long-term blueprint for growth.

Caledon staff have indicated that, on paper, whitebelt land is eligible, for future growth. “The word ‘eligible’ [is] very vague because we only get the amount of growth [we plan for] from the province once every five years, once the province updates its forecast and gives it to Peel region, and Peel region gives a little bit [of growth] to us,” says Xu. “So it’s an every five years thing. Personally, I believe it’s more like a piecemeal planning process, because you only get this much [growth] every five years, and we do need to need to have longer range planning.”

Xu says that the GTA West Land Use Study’s focus only on employment lands did not well serve broader planning goals in Caledon.

“[Two years ago] we basically looked at only employment land, and according to the PPS [Provincial Policy Statement] we are identifying and protecting future employment lands along the GTA west corridor,” he said. Recently there has been a recognition that only looking at employment issues is not sufficient for effective planning. “We cannot ignore other components of our future community. And then we came up with this whole whitebelt visioning idea,” he said.
Caledon mayor Allan Thompson agrees that the exercise must include issues beyond what might happen in the GTA West Corridor.

“What’s concerning is I’ve got a lot of residents here in Caledon that don`t want development at all,” says the mayor. “They’ve moved here, they want to stay here, and they came here to get away from the urbanization. The big thing is Places to Grow, has dictated that urbanization is going to take place. We’ve gone through some challenges in Bolton where we’ve got developers that are wanting to do their own style development, and the big thing is, it hasn’t sat well with council or the communities.”

Thompson stresses that the consultation exercise is intended to hear from local residents about the nature of future growth.

“If we are going to take the growth, what kind of communities are we looking for? What kind of architectural design do we want?” he says. “If we want post-secondary education, what are we thinking about here, so that as the [whitebelt] land gets absorbed, it doesn’t matter what plans of subdivision or agreements, everybody understands what the community plan is, and what the residents [want].When we’re done with the visioning exercise, we can say this is what the community looks like, it lays out a kind of a vision, so that at least as the development industry comes forward, they understand that.”

McDonald says the exercise is designed to be a guide for future planning studies in Caledon and that what results from the exercise will have to be endorsed by council.

“It will be a significant input into any future planning act process of the identification of new land for employment or residential purposes,” he said. “Caledon has planned to 2031, as they are required to, but they will soon have to initial another process to look at 2036 and 2041, and it continues on into the future. Each one of those processes is lengthy, and sometimes complicated, and we think this [visioning exercise] will provide some assistance.”