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Proposed official plan changes would inch toward sustainability while sprinting toward sprawl
Group recommends prudent changes to plan to ensure Ottawa becomes national leader in responsible urban development
March 31, 2009 Ecology Ottawa is warning residents that
changes to the city’s official plan that have been proposed by
municipal staff would lock Ottawa into sprawling, unsustainable
development patterns. The group will present their position Tuesday to
the city’s planning and rural affairs committees, who are meeting to
review the proposed amendments. The plan goes to city council for
approval in Jay.
“To say that this plan is one step forward and
two steps back would be an understatement,” says Trevor Haché, steering
committee member of Ecology Ottawa. “What city planners have
proposed—and councillors seem set to endorse—is the second largest
expansion of Ottawa’s urban boundary in the last two decades. The
climate crisis demands swift movement in the opposite direction.”
In
its presentation today, scheduled for 12:25 p.m. in Council Chambers at
a joint meeting of the Planning and Environment and the Agriculture and
Rural Affairs Committees, Ecology Ottawa will urge councillors to
reject any expansion of the urban boundary and to adopt much more
ambitious targets for urban density. It will present recommendations
for ensuring compact and walkable neighbourhoods, a concentration of
residential development around transit corridors, and the preservation
of green spaces and rural areas.
“The ever-expanding,
car-dependent suburbs of the 20th Century have no place in a carbon
constrained future,” says Matthew Paterson, a University of Ottawa
professor and volunteer for Ecology Ottawa. “Political leadership is
required to ensure our city makes a clean break away from the failed
planning of the past, which saw the leapfrogging of the Greenbelt and
increasing vehicle-related smog and greenhouse gas emissions.”
Ecology
Ottawa will also be mobilizing residents across the city to write and
telephone city councillors and the mayor to help ensure the city takes
a more responsible path.
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For more information, contact:
Trevor Haché, Ecology Ottawa steering committee member, 613-866-9912 or trevor@ecologyottawa.ca See Ecology Ottawa's submission to the City of Ottawa below:
EcologyOttawa_OfficialPlan_submission_31March2009.pdf
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