{"id":26010,"date":"2020-02-21T18:25:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T23:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26010"},"modified":"2020-02-21T18:25:40","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T23:25:40","slug":"affordable-housing-walkable-communities-rise-to-the-top-in-first-round-of-op-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/affordable-housing-walkable-communities-rise-to-the-top-in-first-round-of-op-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordable housing, walkable communities rise to the top in first round of OP review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Providing affordable housing and moving away from\ntailoring communities to cars were among the issues rising to the top in the\nfirst round of public consultation on Aurora\u2019s new Official Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revised Official Plan (OP), a blueprint intended to\nguide growth in Aurora through 2041, was formally presented to local lawmakers\nat last week\u2019s Public Planning meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last updated in 2010, the OP has been the subject of\nseveral amendments in the ensuing ten years, and a new OP will bring the Town\ninto conformity with a number of pieces of legislation that have been updated\nsince that time, including the Province\u2019s Official Growth Plan and the Oak\nRidges Moraine Conservation Plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve principles have been pinned down to help guide\nAurora\u2019s Official Plan review. They include: Promoting responsible growth\nmanagement; ensuring design excellence; building a greener community; providing\na range and mix of housing; providing appropriate community facilities;\nprotecting stable neighbourhoods; developing vibrant new neighbourhoods;\nadvancing the economy; building a successful downtown; establishing a linked\ngreenlands system; conserving cultural heritage resources; and providing\nsustainable infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While only one resident came forward Tuesday night to\noffer his opinion, his input touched upon many of these principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis Town is sprawling and 60 years of development have\nled to this sprawl, but it has created and we continually reinforce a\ncar-centric planning style, which, if you listen to anything going on in the\nworld, even outside York Region, this should be something we\u2019re discouraging,\u201d\nsaid resident Neil Asselin. \u201cI live on the Yonge Street corridor, I can walk to\nthe GO Station, yet getting anywhere on my bicycle is not safe, first of all,\nnot pleasant. Getting around as a pedestrian in the summer, there are bicycles\non the sidewalk and I don\u2019t blame them because they don\u2019t feel safe, but it\nmakes the pedestrian experience not safe. I can walk five minutes to the\ngrocery store, but that walk is so unpleasant along Yonge Street because there\nare no buffers from the sidewalk to the lanes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe lanes are too wide, people are speeding, there are\nno trees. It is just parking lots and drive-thrus, and we continually go along\nthis path of reinforcing this need for a car, even though we have things on our\ndoorstep, but we should also be building around Town and centring a lot around\nlocalized micro-economy. Bayview is very unfriendly and a lot of our retail is\nlocated on Bayview. I can cycle here in ten minutes, but in order to do it\nsafely, it takes me 20 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also contributing to sprawl, he said, was the\nproliferation of single-family dwellings, which leaves many people out of the\nequation \u2013 particularly those looking to <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary suites, which often take the form of basement\napartments are \u201cfine\u201d but not ideal, he contended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no shame in renting and there\u2019s no shame in\nhaving our neighbourhoods accommodate renters, and just building along a\npromenade plan, we\u2019re not really promoting a mixed-use, vibrant neighbourhood,\u201d\nsaid Mr. Asselin. \u201cHome ownership is unaffordable but that doesn\u2019t mean\neverybody has to own a house and have a mortgage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to open our eyes and open our minds and open\nsome books and understand what good policy is, not what\u2019s popular, because\nsometimes it isn\u2019t going to be popular and there are a lot of things that have\nproven to be good policy even though they weren\u2019t popular and didn\u2019t fit into a\nfour year election cycle. Some things are better taken slowly and taken\ncautiously and really get at the root of the humanity in our Town and what is\nmost important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to the residents\u2019 points, Town Planner David\nWaters said Aurora is \u201cessentially\u201d out of greenfield development lands for\nresidential use, so future growth will likely take the form of higher densities\nto meet targets set out by the Region of York\u2019s OP and provincial targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor John Gallo said he also shared the resident\u2019s\nconcerns, calling for a more detailed look at the Town\u2019s Trails Master Plan to\nimprove on its intended use to allow people to get to and from work, to stores,\nand to recreation centres off-road \u2013 safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe whole purpose is a utilitarian off-road plan,\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cThat\u2019s how [trails advocate Klaus Wehrenberg] designed it, so people can\nget from their home, to work, to shop, through our trails system. That is the\nwhole point of the plan and I think we should augment that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Wendy Gaertner also said she agreed with many\nof the points raised, placing special emphasis on affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to think about low incomes and moderate\nincomes,\u201d she said. \u201cHabitat for Humanity has teachers on their list of people\nwho can have a Habitat for Humanity house and that means we\u2019re really in\ntrouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Replied Mr. Waters: \u201cIt is [a matter of] finding the appropriate locations [to support] that kind of density housing. That typically will be the lands surrounding the Aurora GO Station. There will also be opportunities along the Yonge Street Corridor within the Promenade Plan for higher density housing, both condominium and also rental to be developed over time and that is where the bulk of our growth is going to occur over the next 20-some years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providing affordable housing and moving away from tailoring communities to cars were among the issues rising to the top in the first round of public consultation on Aurora\u2019s new Official Plan. The revised Official Plan (OP), a blueprint intended to guide growth in Aurora through 2041, was formally presented to local lawmakers at last week\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Lw","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 09:52:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}