Monthly Archives: March 2009

An Ecology Ottawa response to the City of Ottawa draft Official Plan amendments and supporting documents (March 31, 2009). Overview: The proposed amendments to the City of Ottawa’s Official Plan and supporting documents like the Residential Land Strategy are full of good vision statements about the direction the city should be going in. They emphasise dense, walkable neighbourhoods, organizing planning and residential development around transit corridors, aiming to preserve green spaces and the rural areas around the city. These are goals that Ecology Ottawa supports very strongly and, if reached, would enable Ottawa to become a genuine leader in sustainable urban development. Getting it right in a plan such as this is crucial; the investments in buildings and infrastructure made under this plan will have social and environmental impacts over several generations.
But the devil, as always, is in the detail. And here, the draft Official Plan comes up very short indeed. Its particular goals for increasing density in the city and protecting green spaces are woefully short of what is needed. And these goals are in practice undermined by the city’s unwillingness to challenge what is business-as-usual development policy – making available large amounts of undeveloped (“greenfield”) land available for low-density, car-oriented development. This must be fundamentally opposed. For Ottawa to become a leader, it must really follow through on the principles of ‘smart growth’ that it claims to be aiming for. In short, it can talk the talk but is not yet walking the walk.

March 15, 2009 This report outlines a three-part strategy for the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and waste from Ottawa’s buildings by encouraging greener building practices for new construction. This report was also part of Ecology Ottawa’s policy platform for the 2010 municipal elections.