Posts Tagged ‘community organizing’

Lessons learned from a 10 year long city planning fight

July 12th, 2017 by Iler Campbell

Charlie Campbell, one of our founding partners,  has just published his history of the planning fight over the development of Toronto’s West Queen West Triangle lands from 2005 to 2016. These are the lands south of Queen St from Dovercourt to Gladstone, bordered on the south by the rail line, that have seen massive transformation into a veritable ‘condo forest’ in recent years.

But it’s a lot more than a history – it  includes a host of his trenchant observations and conclusions on what’s good and what’s bad with the planning process for new developments in Toronto. It’s also a valuable guide for how other communities facing development pressure can influence the process, which often feels rigged in favour  of developers.

Charlie is a key volunteer member of Active 18, the community group that took the lead in advocating for good design, parks, arts and artists’ workspace, heritage preservation and other community focused goals in the new developments in the West Queen West Triangle. It makes for fascinating reading from anyone interested in planning issues and the intricacies of dealing with developers, city hall, the OMB and various other interested parties. It’s also not without some of Charlie’s infamous absurdist humor. Look for the almost entirely redacted section in the middle of the “WQW at the OMB” chapter that insinuates that Putin was somehow involved in the ordeal. Charlie’s hope is that community groups dealing with similar issues will find it useful.

Read the history here.