A few weeks ago, I told you about how I was advocating to the City of Calgary to include Outline Plans as applications to be reviewed by an external body known as the Urban Design Review Panel (UDRP). I wrote letters on behalf of the Federation, talked to Councillors and city planners and presented at the Planning and Urban Development (PUD) Meeting on June 14th. I am happy to tell you that we have passed the first stage and another recommendation was added to the report to explore the process to review Outline Plans by Q1 2019. This project will now be forwarded to Council where we will see if all the recommendations will be taken in. Below was my presentation to PUD.
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Good Morning,
My name is Carrie Yap and I am one of the planners at the Federation of Calgary Communities. The Federation is a support organization for over 150 community associations, while we attempt to provide a broad community perspective on issues, we cannot represent the opinion of every community and individual communities that may have differing opinions.
We want to thank Dawn Clarke and David Downe for including us in the engagement of the Urban Design Review Framework. We are in support of the framework presented before you. Urban design is an important aspect of city planning that considers the form and function of our communities. The incorporation of the UDRP into two stages of the process will not only elevate the caliber of design that we should be expecting but also challenge those in the development industry to meet these standards and to promote the benefits of good urban design. The UDRP may even challenge the City to change some of the existing policies that limit good design from occurring in Calgary.
As the UDRP understands its role and responsibility, one element that we would like to see is for UDRP to review Outline Plans in Phase 2 of the Implementation Plan. Urban Design as defined by the Revised Terms of Reference is “the practice of giving form, shape, and character to the arrangement of buildings, or whole neighbourhoods, or the city.” (Urban Design Framework, City of Calgary, 2011) If we follow this definition then by default, whole neighbourhoods that are characterized by OPs and ASPs should also be reviewed. Outline Plans fundamentally establish the layout of a community, a neighbourhood – and thus determine the quality of place-making. We believe that if the City wants to move towards principles that promote a healthy and walkable environment, we need to change the structure of how we design our communities and this starts with the Outline Plans.
Creating a masterplan that focuses on challenges such as circulation from the initial stage will potentially prevent some of the challenges that we have found as a development builds out, such as congestion from developments that have circulation issues which push onto the greater community, piecemeal applications which do not compliment the community, speeding, lack of pedestrian environments, inefficient use of spaces, and etc.
In addition, a well-designed outline plan will also allow our greenfield communities to focus their attention on building recreational and social opportunities in their community, rather than being preoccupied with safety and the physical structure of their community.
We have had multiple conversations with the Mattias Tita, director of Community Planning and we have his commitment that in Phase 2 of this project, the City will begin to explore how outline plans can be reviewed by this external body. We understand and support the City’s need to pilot the framework and to take a phased approach to implementing various application types. We would like to request council to put a motion arising for administration to report back with a process on how outline plan can be reviewed by the UDRP by Q1 2018.