410A - Ottawa’s new OP: Bold moves to facilitate densification of the inner city while conserving neighbourhood character

October 07, 2020

3:00PM - 3:15PM

Ottawa is becoming the most livable mid-sized city in North America! This session will outline how Ottawa’s new official plan (OP) identifies nodes, corridors, and neighbourhood designations across a vast swath of the inner suburbs and urban core to lay the policy groundwork for achieving ambitious intensification targets. The OP’s policy framework is informed by detailed transect mapping analysis that pinpoints “evolving” and “transforming” areas of the city where either a gentle evolution from a suburban landscape is envisioned or where dense urban development will be required from day one of the plan’s adoption.
 
In short, Ottawa’s new OP organize policies around functional designations: kinds or typologies of urban environment that are defined primarily, not by permitted land uses, but rather by the intended form and function of that environment.
 
This transect model approach to Ottawa’s new OP has also taken great strides to identify and be cognisant of our neighbourhood’s cultural heritage assets. Through the application of overlays, specific urban design policies have been formulated for blocks and districts where the character-defining attributes require sensitive infill development policies. This approach of blending urban design and heritage sensibilities results in intensification policies that promote densification in a way that is sympathetic to a wide variety of the city’s most cherished landscapes.
 
Development pressure in Ottawa continues to increase as the city grows beyond a population of one million. The goal of this bold new approach to the City of Ottawa’s OP is to create complete, well-integrated communities across the city, where residents will be able to get to most of their daily destinations within a 15-minute walk from their homes. Furthermore, liberalizing development opportunities within nodes and along significant stretches of urban corridors will help address increasingly challenging issues pertaining to housing availability and affordability. 
 

Speakers