scholarly journals Rethinking planning in a digital marketplace: implications of e-commerce for land use policy in Toronto

Author(s):  
John Federici

The intention of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe is to create a planning framework that achieves complete communities and a thriving economy. However, there is minimal direction for municipalities planning for retail development to realize these goals. This is problematic, as e-commerce is disrupting the retail industry and is transforming the commercial and industrial real estate that support it. This paper examines e-commerce growth over the past thirteen years in Canada and demonstrates how this is prompting changes in both land markets through two case studies. Case studies identify implications that e-commerce will create for land use policy in Toronto moving forward. Recommendations presented to address these implications prompt upper levels of government to collect data to inform decision making at the municipal level. Recommendations for the City of Toronto are aimed at relaxing land use policies to create a strategy to facilitate efficient goods movement. Key words: E-commerce; Land Use Policy; Toronto, Canada

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Federici

The intention of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe is to create a planning framework that achieves complete communities and a thriving economy. However, there is minimal direction for municipalities planning for retail development to realize these goals. This is problematic, as e-commerce is disrupting the retail industry and is transforming the commercial and industrial real estate that support it. This paper examines e-commerce growth over the past thirteen years in Canada and demonstrates how this is prompting changes in both land markets through two case studies. Case studies identify implications that e-commerce will create for land use policy in Toronto moving forward. Recommendations presented to address these implications prompt upper levels of government to collect data to inform decision making at the municipal level. Recommendations for the City of Toronto are aimed at relaxing land use policies to create a strategy to facilitate efficient goods movement. Key words: E-commerce; Land Use Policy; Toronto, Canada


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsey Prentice

The Ontario government has provided little guidance for municipalities regarding planning for retail development, despite expecting their land use policies to achieve the goals of sustainable and complete communities mandated through provincial policies. This paper examines the evolution of commercial land use policy over the past twenty years, in order to describe how municipalities have been planning commercial retail development to meet the objectives of the Growth Plan. During this time period, a new form of retail emerged known as “power retail”. This new form of retail has disrupted land use planners’ mandate to maintain the planned function of commercial hierarchies. Case studies of three municipalities in York Region (Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Markham) reveal that commercial land use policy has moved away from creating a commercial retail hierarchy based on planned function and have instead established an urban structure based on a hierarchy of intensification areas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsey Prentice

The Ontario government has provided little guidance for municipalities regarding planning for retail development, despite expecting their land use policies to achieve the goals of sustainable and complete communities mandated through provincial policies. This paper examines the evolution of commercial land use policy over the past twenty years, in order to describe how municipalities have been planning commercial retail development to meet the objectives of the Growth Plan. During this time period, a new form of retail emerged known as “power retail”. This new form of retail has disrupted land use planners’ mandate to maintain the planned function of commercial hierarchies. Case studies of three municipalities in York Region (Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Markham) reveal that commercial land use policy has moved away from creating a commercial retail hierarchy based on planned function and have instead established an urban structure based on a hierarchy of intensification areas.


Author(s):  
Waziri Babatunde Adisa

Land use policy is central to the development of urban life and the emergence of cities. In many developed capitalist societies, both the planning and expansion of the cities are usually anchored on sustainable urban land policies such that the growth of urban sprawl is effectively controlled. In most developing countries, land use policies are not only disparate, they are usually not connected to the growth of cities because policy makers are after the money they could make from private investors. This chapter argues that though the coming of the Land Use Act 1978 ended the era of disparate land law regimes, it has, over the years, sealed the control of urban lands to state governors, a development that has created massive corruption and arbitrariness in the allocation and utilization of urban lands. This approach to land administration has also hindered effective and sustainable urban and regional planning in many Nigerian cities. This study suggests the review of the 1978 Land Use Act and effective utilization of modern technologies in the monitoring of urban sprawls.


2010 ◽  
Vol 161 (8) ◽  
pp. 291-294
Author(s):  
Mario F. Broggi

In order to operationalise the concept of biodiversity for biological variety, it has been applied at three levels: ecosystems, species and genetic diversity. In most cases the debate has been reduced to the aspect of the variety of species, ignoring the fact that the interactions are considerably more complex. In order to do justice to our responsibility for diversity, further efforts are needed, which could be subsumed under the heading “sustainable development”. At the moment, however, our ecological footprint is clearly too big. A strong focus must therefore be placed on such ecosystem services as fertility of the soil, carbon sequestration, maintenance of the hydrological balance, etc. That ultimately leads to economic arguments, which in turn will have massive impacts on current land use policies. Climate change and the increasing cultivation of biofuels are creating new effects, whose impacts on biodiversity were until recently unforeseeable. The underlying message must accordingly be that in the biodiversity debate we must focus on the landscape as such and an appropriate land use policy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Larkin

Cemeteries are important to society and represent a key piece of the fabric of municipalities. In the Province of Ontario, land use policy as articulated through official plans often fails to recognize cemetaries as a necessary element of municipalities. This paper examines the official plans of selected municipalities to ascertain the extent to which appropriate land use policies are provided to guide the development of cemetaries. Official plans are reviewed for the ten largest municipalities as determined by their population, all adjacent municipalities, and all associated regional municipalities of counties. In total, the official plans of forty-six municipalities are reviewed. The analysis focuses on eight key policy criteria identified in this paper that relate to cemetary development: need, planning horizon, location, size, intensification, compatibility, environment, and permanency. The review confirms the hypothesis that there is a general lack of appropriate land use policy necessary to guide cemetery development in Ontario.


Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (13) ◽  
pp. 3012-3033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenjia Zhang ◽  
Ming Zhang

This article develops an analytical framework to connect the theories of market and planning failures with the reasoning of incorporating land use and pricing policies for reducing driving and car dependence. A multilevel multinomial logit model (MML) is applied to estimate the effects of neighbourhood land use characteristics and price variables on travel mode choice of non-work trips and their interaction effects in the city of Austin, Texas. Results reveal that pricing policies are more efficient for reducing auto travel while land use policies appear better for adjusting non-auto travel. The practical significance of land use policies for reducing car dependence are more reflected in the modified effects of land use on pricing elasticities of driving probability. Pricing policies are more effective for reducing driving in neighbourhoods with a higher sidewalk density and a better accessibility to mixed-use activity centres. These findings validate the theoretical analysis and demonstrate the importance of coordinating land use and pricing policies together in the transportation planning practice.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Larkin

Cemeteries are important to society and represent a key piece of the fabric of municipalities. In the Province of Ontario, land use policy as articulated through official plans often fails to recognize cemetaries as a necessary element of municipalities. This paper examines the official plans of selected municipalities to ascertain the extent to which appropriate land use policies are provided to guide the development of cemetaries. Official plans are reviewed for the ten largest municipalities as determined by their population, all adjacent municipalities, and all associated regional municipalities of counties. In total, the official plans of forty-six municipalities are reviewed. The analysis focuses on eight key policy criteria identified in this paper that relate to cemetary development: need, planning horizon, location, size, intensification, compatibility, environment, and permanency. The review confirms the hypothesis that there is a general lack of appropriate land use policy necessary to guide cemetery development in Ontario.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdishakur W. Diriye ◽  
Osman M. Jama ◽  
Jama Warsame Diriye ◽  
Abdulhakim M Abdi

Public preferences for sustainable land use policy instruments and the motivations behind such preferences are important to make appropriate policies. Based on survey data (n = 309) from northeastern Somalia, we examined preferences for a set of land use policy instruments relative to no policy (i.e. the current status quo) and how cultural worldviews predict such preferences. We used a multinomial logit model to analyze the comparative evaluation of choices due to its interpretability and robustness to violations of normality. Overall, the results show that the respondents are likely to consent to all types of land use policy instruments relative to no policy and are more inclined to market-based and informational policy instruments. Specifically, preferences for regulatory policy instruments are positively associated with hierarchy and egalitarian worldviews and are negatively associated with fatalism and individualistic worldviews with only hierarchy and fatalism are significant. The market-based policy instrument is desirable to all cultural worldviews except fatalism, but only egalitarian and individual worldviews are significant. Preferences for informational policy instruments are positively associated with all cultural worldviews but only egalitarian worldviews showed a significant effect. Although there are some contradictions, these results are broadly consistent with the proposition of the cultural theory of risk. This study highlights that preferences for land use policies are heterogeneous with cultural worldviews mainly explaining the sources of this heterogeneity. It is evident that the respondents were willing to consent to land use policies relative to the status quo of no policy and indicates the need for concerted effort to reduce land degradation and deforestation in the country. We, therefore, recommend that policymakers incorporate the different ways that humans perceive and interpret social-environmental relations into policy decisions to achieve sustainable policy outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2501 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Barros ◽  
Alexandre Tavares ◽  
Mário Monteiro ◽  
Pedro Santos

The objective of this study is to evaluate the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use in the city of Leiria, which is located in central Portugal, and its relation to the planning framework. The analysis is based on land-use change recognition in the period 1958–2011, calculation of the stability grade indicator, the losses and gains between classes, and the rate of artificialization. The results show an increase of the artificial areas, namely in continuous and discontinuous urban fabric, contrasting with a continuous decrease of the agricultural land-use classes, giving origin to peri-urbanization and rurbanization processes. We can also observe a large fragmentation of the landscape in the city of Leiria, representing rapid urban expansion that is fundamentally related to the increase of residential and industrial areas, and afterwards, tertiary growth. This study also demonstrated the relation of a land-use and planning framework that works as a driving force for land-use changes. This underlines the importance of strategic regional planning instruments in managing urban sprawl and the artificialization processes of medium-sized cities.


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