Ottawa's Official Plan Update

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The Official Plan is being reviewed in 2008 as part of the Beyond Ottawa 20/20 initiative. The Official Plan is reviewed every five years as directed by Ontario’s Planning Act.

Two supporting documents, the Transportation Master Plan and the Infrastructure Master Plan are included in the review.

City Website

Preliminary Proposals

Key Aspects of the Official Plan

This review is an update of the Plans and not a return to first principles.

Unlike the creation of the 2003 Official Plan, land-use designations are not changing to any great extent so few individuals properties are affected. Many proposed changes arise from a need to be consistent with the recent Provincial Policy Statement and these requirements have been known and discussed for some time. Staff have identified three matters in the Official Plan that will require significant consideration.

1. Urban Intensification: The proposal includes a definition of intensification and the need to establish an intensification target citywide and by area. But, more importantly, it sets out a strategy for the successful implementation of intensification. Communities, Councillors, staff, and developers all must make a commitment to resolving the conflict that accompanies intensification proposals.

2. Urban Boundary: The preliminary proposal suggests that the City establish a “performance-based” urban boundary. The Official Plan would identify Future Urban Areas and require that various criteria be met before these lands are developed. One of the key criteria would be achievement of a citywide intensification target. During consultation the criteria would be refined. Over the summer, various locations for Future Urban Areas would be assessed and the outcome would be provided to Planning and Environment Committee in September. The proposal also indicates that some additional urban land will be required to be added to the urban boundary to meet the requirements of the planning period to 2031.

3. Amount of Rural Development: Various Working Groups examined specific topics as part of the Rural Settlement Strategy. No group looked at the big picture with respect to rural development. The Official Plan says that rural development will focus on villages but, in fact, 60 per cent of rural growth has occurred outside of villages. The Provincial Policy Statement indicates that a limited amount of development may occur in the rural area (outside of villages). The rural community, through Working Groups and workshops, has expressed the full range of desires regarding future rural development – its location and amount. Consultation on this issue will focus on a clear assessment of the options and an attempt to build consensus or express a majority view.

Infrastructure Master Plan

Some aspects of the Infrastructure Master Plan impact on Official Plan policies and some are more procedural. In the Official Plan report there is a section on Capacity Management related to providing piped infrastructure capacity to support intensification. This will be reviewed as part of the intensification consultation. There is also a section on Protection of Groundwater in support of rural development, which will be reviewed as part of the rural consultation. The Infrastructure Master Plan proposals provide more detail on the Capacity Management Strategy.