Draft development plan remains incomplete

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/06/2021 (1958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE City of Winnipeg’s executive policy committee recently held a public hearing to consider Winnipeg’s new 25-year development plan. Titled OurWinnipeg 2045, the plan is intended to guide everything the City of Winnipeg does, providing a vision, goals and policies intended to influence leadership and good governance, priority setting, delivery of city services and decisions about how the city grows.

It also influences how environmentally resilient, economically prosperous, healthy and socially equitable the city will be to increase the quality of life for all residents. OurWinnipeg 2045 is accompanied and supported by the Complete Communities Direction Strategy, which is a city-wide secondary plan that guides growth, development and land use in Winnipeg. Both documents are scheduled to be considered by city council in this month.

Over the past four-plus years, the City of Winnipeg has engaged numerous citizens and stakeholders in reviewing its OurWinnipeg plan. The Manitoba Home Builders’ Association, representing the residential construction industry, and the Urban Development Institute of Manitoba, representing the professional land development industry, have taken part in many of the consultations held by the city during this multi-year review process.

These two documents are very important to our industry, as they outline and guide how, where and when Winnipeg will grow over the next 25 years. These planning documents outline where Winnipeggers will live, work and play, and will guide Winnipeg’s residential and economic growth strategies until 2045.

When this review process began in 2017, the general consensus regarding the existing OurWinnipeg and Complete Communities 1.0 plans was that they were solid planning documents, but were missing three supporting components: the right planning tools to allow for the plan to be fully and properly implemented (an updated and aligned zoning bylaw, for example); buy-in from and implementation by other city departments outside of planning property and development; and a strategic infrastructure plan that included establishing levels of service within the city.

It was at this same time that UDI Manitoba began to be more vocal in calling for a “Plan for Growth” for the city of Winnipeg and surrounding municipalities. The land-development industry identified that a more strategic long-term plan for Winnipeg’s sustainable growth was needed. The starting point to develop a fact-based planning approach for the city and surrounding municipalities is to establish a comprehensive, strategic regional infrastructure plan that identifies the capital region’s current levels of capacity and servicing, strategically outlines the infrastructure requirements that will enable new development in and around Winnipeg, and provides all levels of government with the cost/benefit of their infrastructure investments.

A strategic regional infrastructure plan is the foundational piece upon which a strategic, fact-driven plan for Winnipeg’s growth can be built.

The city’s OurWinnipeg review process has resulted in a significant rewriting of both documents, rather than a simple tweaking of the existing OurWinnipeg and Complete Communities plans. While there are many positive aspects to these planning documents, our industry’s main concern with the new versions is that key elements informing the policies within them remain incomplete.

Once again, it appears the supporting planning tools that would allow for proper implementation of the plan have not been developed, and therefore the plan lacks support, essential information and buy-in from other city departments.

Most concerning is that a comprehensive strategic infrastructure plan for the city of Winnipeg — one of the most important components to the Complete Communities plan — still does not yet exist. Without a strategic infrastructure plan, there are many policies in the Complete Communities plan that may not be achievable or realistic.

A comprehensive strategic infrastructure plan is a critical component of the Complete Communities document, and without it the document is incomplete.

Developments of every type — infill, brownfield, greenfield, commercial, industrial, residential — depend on the city having a concise awareness of the servicing capacities for existing development opportunities and the planned service-capacities needs for new areas identified in the plan. This key component, which provides greater investment certainty around all types of development opportunities city-wide, remains missing.

Proper planning for every type of land development in Winnipeg depends on a strategic infrastructure plan. Without it, planners and developers will continue to “guess” on the potential of development sites and on Winnipeg’s overall supply of serviced and serviceable land.

Lanny McInnes is the president and CEO of the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association and the managing director of the Urban Development Institute of Manitoba.