Within the last 10 years, amendments to the Planning Act and the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) have placed new legislative powers in the hands of municipalities that enable planners to exercise more control over the exterior built form of communities. Municipalities across Ontario have taken different approaches to implementing Urban Design Guidelines and enabling Official Plan language into their design policies. Province wide, Ontario is a patchwork of design policies at various levels of strength and force. While certain steps must be taken to enable the powers outlined by the Act and by the PPS, these steps have not been taken uniformly, and while some municipalities share occasional common practices, determining a best practice is difficult because language varies widely from planning department to planning department. This document, provided by Masonry Works, provides a number of case studies in Urban Design policies intended to serve as examples of progressive language used across Ontario to inform planning decisions around the Urban Design function. This is an evolving document and we encourage municipalities to propose progressive design policies and language in the establishment of strong rules for exterior form and urban design. By establishing a set of progressive Urban Design and built form language, the steps taken to build more enduring, more climate-resilient communities from the exterior cladding on out can become best practices for the Province of Ontario.
