The past two years have been marked by growing public concern over increasing traffic congestion, air pollution, loss of farmland and greenspace, and infrastructure costs flowing from the current urban development patterns in southern Ontario. These patterns are dominated by low-density single-use residential, business and commercial developments, usually onto prime agricultural lands, and for which the automobile is the only viable means of passenger transportation, and road vehicles the only possible means of moving goods.

The consequences of the continuation of the current patterns of urban development¹ in the Toronto-centred region² are severe. In August 2002, the Neptis Foundation, (http://www.neptis.org/)...

The Pembina Institute’s February 2003 report outlined a provincial policy framework for smart growth in Ontario, drawing on materials from governmental, academic, non-governmental, and institutional sources, ranging from the Federation of Ontario Naturalists²³ to the Toronto Dominion Bank²⁴ and the C.D. Howe Institute.²⁵ The major elements of this framework in the areas of land-use planning, finance and taxation, infrastructure, sustainable energy and governance are outlined in the left-hand column of Table 6. A brief summary of the status of current provincial policy and legislation in these areas is provided in the right-hand column.

It has been noted that the most...

Many of the problems related to current urban development patterns in southern Ontario outlined by the Pembina Institute in Smart Growth in Ontario have been well understood for many years. In the early 1970s, for example, the provincial government initiated a Toronto-centred Region Plan to deal with the consequences of urban growth in what is now called the GTA.³⁰ The plan flowed from concerns that rapid low-density residential development in the commuting area surrounding Metropolitan Toronto was likely to lead to massive urbanization and congestion, high infrastructure costs, and the misallocation of prime recreational and agricultural lands.³¹

Similarly, potential provincial...

Despite more than two-and-a-half years of announcements and discussion beginning in April 2001, the province of Ontario made remarkably little progress on turning a smart growth vision into reality. The provincial policies encouraging and facilitating urban sprawl, with its implications of increasing congestion, losses of prime farmland, worsening air quality, and infrastructure costs, were largely left in place. In fact, the province aggressively pursued policies, particularly with respect to highway construction, that were virtually certain to make the situation worse if they were implemented.

Both the consequences of continuing on the province’s current path and the steps that need to...