plan103 final exam Flashcards
define, understand and reflect on municipal finance and planning admin
Planning: where stuff goes
Administration: how do we carry out a task and organize ourselves
understand and critically reflect on why we plan and the need for contemporary planning
- To avoid conflicting land uses
- Protect public goods
- To provide public goods
- Coordinating and pooling resources for collective projects
understand costs and benefits of planning
○ Costs:
§ Direct cost of planning system
§ Land (housing) prices
§ Productivity, business activity
○ Benefits:
§ Env and social issues from market econ
§ Balance of benefits among diff stakeholders
§ Econ development benefits from coordinated/compact development
§ Avoid duplication
○ Net
§ Not straightforward
planning administration
○ More bout the processes and the legislative framework
○ Less about how to design a community or how and why we plan for a specific land use
public finance
- About the revenue ans expenditure decisions of municipal government
- What goods and services to deliver
- How to pay
- How to deliver them
- What are the implications of these decisions
○ Who pays? Who benefits?
public interest(s)
infrastructure gap
traditional vs. performance based zoning
statutory power
what is the planning heirarchy
- First is the planning act which enables planning (adminsistered by the ministry of municipal affairs and housing)
- Also other acts which could include the building code
- After planning act there is the provincial policy statement (PPS): more direction from the province as to what to include in plans (ex. Planning for diveristy of housing tyoes and proctecting natural environments), broad direction
- Municipal plans (offical plans): must be consistant with both the planning act and PPS (is figure 7.1)
- There are also provincial plans that stem from other acts (Environmental impact assessment): start to talk about where and what and how to plan specifically
federal roles
○ International
○ Trade
○ Defense
○ Macro economic policy
○ Funding,
○ Owned lands (parks, real estate)
○ Infastructure
○ housing
provincial roles
○ Health care
○ Transportation
○ Education
○ Resources
○ Local governments
○ Funding,
○ Owned lands (parks, real estate)
○ Infastructure
○ housing
○ planning legislation
municipal roles
○ creatures of the province
○ Funding,
○ Owned lands (parks, real estate)
○ Infrastructure
○ housing
○ planning legislation
○ carry out planning
planning and reconciliation
- Reconciliation in planning has a minimum of 4 dimmensions
- Uphold indiggenous ways of living and planning
- Respond to action items from truth and reconciliation commisions
- Acknowledge role of historic and current planning practice on
Indigenous peoples and Nations (and work to undo them)- Educating the public and specific stakeholders involved in the process
- We must build parralel systems in order to have indigneous planning as we should not try to aviod conflict in and of itself
- Conflict can help us understand where people are coming from…discomfort is important
ontario planning act
- Enables planning
- Gives planners the legal authority to plan (ie; able to create zoning by-laws and the authorty to prohibit land)
- Gives municiplaites express authority to carry out planning
- Normally deal with five matters
- Creation of plannig units
- The establishment of organizational machinery for planning
- The content, prep, and adoption of plans
- The format for enacting zoning, building, and statutory plans
- The system for subdividing lands
official plan/community plan and some characterisitics and roles
- Municipal policy on land use
- Goals and objectives of the community
- Location (amount) of different land uses
○ Housing, industry, commercial retail, community facilities
○ Services (infrastructure, schools, fire stations) - Phasing of development
○ About where and when things go places
Key features of community plans
1. Focus on the natural and built environment
2. Long-range and forward looking
3. Comprehensive in viewpoint
4. General and broad-based in perspective
indigenous planning methods
- Community driven, inclusive, and representative
- Empower community members to share and find solutions
- Reflect emotional experiences embodied in stories of people and traditional knowledge of their culture
- Prioritize land stewardship, striving for responsible development
What is zoning? What can it and can it not regulate?
○ Land use type
○ Lot size
○ Height
○ Set backs from lot lines
○ Density, bulk
○ Floor area ratio
○ Conventional zoning: desity use, FAR, stbacks, parking requirements, maximum building heights specified
○ Zoning design guidelines: conventional zoning requirements, plus frequency of openings and surface articulation specified
§ What you would like things to look like on the exterior
○ Form-based codes: street and building types (or mix of types), build-to lines, number of floors, and percentage of built site frontage specified
What are the differences between a secondary plan and a site plan?
a secondary plan is for new areas that are undergoing growth and site plans are individual design of a lot specifying things like driveways, walkways, greenspace, etc.
What is a plan of subdivision? How does it differ from a severance?
plan of subdivision plans exactly where the lots are going to go and severence is the process of separating land from existing property to create a new lot
Assume that you are to build a ten-unit condominium building as an infill project (i.e., inner city densification or intensification). What financial and planning considerations might you take into account in determining the feasibility of such a project?
- average selling price of units
- potential revenue (how much money made)
- profit (20%) of revenue
- maximum cost of project (revenue - profit)
- the costs (land, legal, construction, planning applications studies)
- land and price of land
- can we carry out the project (land econ, business case, affordability)
- How could we make it work potentially?
○ Density
○ Selling price
○ Profit
○ Severance
○ Development incentives/susides
Planning concerns of infill- Parking
- Noise
- Sewage treatment
- Drinking water
secondary plan
Made for new areas that are undergoing growth
design gudielines
A document that uses text, graphics and images to convey to potential developers and the public examples of desirable aesthetic details and layout of roads, public spaces, building facades etc.
land subdivision
A plan or process that denotes details of how an existing, undeveloped property is to be divided into multiple lots for sale
severence
The process of separating land from existing property to create a new lot
minor varience
A small variation from the requirements of the zoning bylaw
legal non confroming use
When the use of one’s land, building, or structure is not permitted by the current bylaw, but was permitted by the previous bylaw
plan ammendments
An application process that can change policies and/or land use designations in an official plan
The difference between single versus two-tiered municipalities (and difference between Regional and Local Official Plans in two-tiered municipalities)
- Single
○ One geographic boundary
○ One council
○ Approves local OP
○ Higher level plan
○ Overall urban structure
§ Growth areas
§ Transportation routes
§ Protected areas
§ Urban vs rural lands
Growth boundary - Two tiered
○ Upper layer
○ Smaller layer
○ Ex. If only plan for Kitchener in the very inter-connected region of waterloo, how could you do good planning
○ Sometimes its better to think about things from a broader regional scale
○ Needs to fit within regional OP
○ Local focus
○ Form of city
§ More detailed land use designations
§ Transportation
Basis for more specific area plans (ie. Secondary plan)
The process of obtaining a minor variance
- Pre-application consultation meeting
- Public notification
- Public hearing
Committee decision and appeal
The general process and input into creating a secondary plan (Rosenberg community, Southwest Kitchener)
What kinds of plans, planning tools and processes did we discuss ? How do these relate to the planning hierarchy we learned about before?
What is public participation? How do we define it? What does it involve? What is the role of the planner in participation?
- Including all affected parties in public decsiscion making process
- Defining who stakeholders are who have a stake in the outcome of a decision
- Define the public as those stakeholders who are not a part of the decision making entity or entities
- Define public participation as any process that involves the public in problem-solving or decsison making and that uses public input to make better decsions
- Indetifiying that the public is affected by decsions but also that there are multiple publics
- Why are there multiple publics
○ There are different people
○ We cant just take all of our views and just average them out
○ It is not a mathematical problem, but it is a qualitative problem
○ Must recognize that you as a planner have your own perspective on the world and we must compensate for the fact that we alone cannot decide what is best for the world
○ “Planning with” rather than “planning for”
What is the ladder of public participation? What are the different levels?
Who is included in public participation? Excluded? How do we work toward greater inclusion? Is “co-production” possible?
- Find ways to engage in “co-producing processes, policies, and programs”
- Transcend “being there” with a role in decision-making
Create continuing connections - There have been many changes made to the ways in which the planning process occours but that hasn’t fundamentally changed the way that we plan
If your process doesn’t inherently allow for the participation to create really results, not only is particpation for nothing, but it can also foster a worse relationship with the community for wasting their time
What are the skills planners require to lead successful public participation?
- Education/knowledge and educating
- Experience - facilitation
- Communication
- Mutual learning
- Mediation - consensus building
- Persuasion/marketing
○ Promoter of “right” ideas
○ Sometimes our job is to change people’s minds
§ Eg. Living downtown - People skills (planning is about people)
- Expect the unexpected
- Professionalism
What is intersectionality? Why is it important to consider in the context of public participation?
What is NIMBY? And why is it important?
- Not in my backyard
- Issue percived as damaging quality of life, investment in property
- Can be a reaction to not being informed
- Important for planners to seek an understanding of the reaction
Can be a result of racism, classism, poverty shaming, other forms of exclusion and discrimination
What factors shape the context within which municipalities make revenue/expenditure decisions? In what way?
Where do municipalities gain revenue? How do they spend their money?
Vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalance
Themes in municipal finance (amalgamation, types of tax collected, fiscal imbalance etc.)
Ways in which COVID-19 has impacted municipal budgets/spending
What are three common sources of municipal revenue in Canada?
Which revenue source has traditional been the largest component of a municipality’s total revenue stream in Canada?
What limits how municipalities are permitted to collect revenues?
Why is there a growing fiscal gap in municipal budgets?
What are the differences between revenue, capital and reserve funds?
What are the differences between line-item and program-based budgets?
What are select principles of “sustainable finance” used by the City of Kitchener that we covered in the lectures?
What are some common trends in municipal finance in the Canadian context? What are their implications for municipalities as it relates to budgeting and planning?
What are the benefits of financing expenditures from current budgets versus incurring debt?
What is participatory budgeting? How and where has it been used? What lessons have been learned?
Why is budgeting important?
how price influences demand for different types of goods
elasticity
externalities
how and why do prices matter in planning
Describe characteristics and definitions of sprawl and development charges
Describe and analyze relationship between sprawl and development charges
Understand and be able to calculate examples of marginal versus average cost pricing
subsidies
cross-subsidies
marginal vs. average cost pricing (mis-pricing)
Sprawl as “excessive growth”
Three approaches to planning for growth
Suburbanization as a process (and a place based definition)
Diversity of suburban ways of living
Dualism in traditional definitions of suburbs vs city
bundled goods
Pricing strategies (cost, equity, rationing)
not pricing externalities
sprawl as excessive growth
Practical examples of pricing strategies used
Limitations and concerns
Managing transportation demand (and costing for municipality)
inclusionary zoning
brownfield redevelopment
Long term occupant subsidy programs
Stormwater management
P3s
DBFO’s
Vancouver Canada Line and Olympic Village
