ABC Residents Association has a long history of making positive contributions to the planning and development of our area. The Association encompasses one of the fastest growing areas in Toronto. Development pressures to increase heights and densities are enormous and planning and development issues take the most time of ABCRA Board members. Our focus is not to simply oppose new development but to work closely with City planners, Councillor Dianne Saxe, and developers to influence better planning and higher quality development of our area. Our efforts also include advocating and negotiating for more attention to the public space surrounding the buildings.
Check here regularly for information about area planning and development news.
A safer, friendlier, and quieter Avenue Road between Bloor Street and St. Clair Avenue is almost within reach – but we need your help for a final push! Complete the City’s Avenue Road Study by November 2, 2023.
The City of Toronto is in talks with two foundations to fund studies for University Avenue revitalization.
“The dream of modifying the roadway of University Avenue and transforming and connecting its patchwork of green spaces into a major park in the city’s downtown core came a bit closer to the possibility of being realized last month after a number of stakeholders committed to fund the studies necessary to push the project forward.” ~ Novae Res Urbis (July 14, 2023)
On April 6, 2023, and again on June 16, the Province proposed more destructive changes to provincial planning laws.
The Alliance for a Livable Ontario (ALO), based on a comprehensive review by expert planning advisors, concluded that if implemented, the proposed changes will turbocharge sprawl and fatally harm Ontario’s agricultural sector and environment.
Ontario Place for All has released “A Better Idea,” a proposal for a new way to approach the revitalization of Ontario Place. Given the recent addition of the Science Centre to the site, the new proposal leverages the Ontario Line at both ends, connecting the natural features of the Don River Valley and Lake Ontario, while revitalizing Ontario Place, enhancing and expanding the mandate of the Science Centre, while building affordable housing.
Each Planning Report dealing with various building initiatives identifies the importance to preserve the neighbourhood tree canopy, yet the actual action to do so becomes weaker and weaker.
The shared public space in our neighbourhood — called the public realm — plays a large part in making our daily lives enjoyable and creating a sense of community. This includes parks, trees, plantings, seating, public art and other features that animate and enhance our streets and the public spots where we gather to socialize or play.
These kinds of public realm elements are a critical part of the policies we want to see outlined in the pending Bloor-Yorkville Secondary Plan.
In the coming months, you’ll be seeing and hearing more about what’s called a “secondary plan” that will guide development in our neighbourhood for the next 25 years. You have a right, and hopefully a desire, to participate in advocating for the kind of community that you want to see. That’s why this communication is the first of three or four we’ll be sending to explain the various elements of the plan.
Paris, after a flirtation with tall buildings that has led to two or three controversial projects scattered about the edge of its centre, last week reimposed old rules that ban buildings above 37 metres (121ft).
A rare climbdown by Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives — on an ill-fated housing plan for prime agricultural land — left Housing Minister Steve Clark bruised and critics saying a government with MPPs across rural Ontario is “clueless” on a key farm issue.
The direction for regional planning implied in the draft Provincial Planning Statement represents a seminal change in the land use planning system in the GGH that together with recent and potential future governance changes pose risks to the widely recognized benefits of coordinated and integrated land use, resource and infrastructure planning and calls into question progress toward widely understood and desirable outcomes around climate adaptation, inclusion, economic and financial stability over the next decades.