18-Geom-B6 Land Use Planning and Environmental Management · May 2013
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams, May 2013 — 04-Geom-B6, Land Use, Planning & Environmental Management. Three hours; closed book (approved Sharp/Casio calculators permitted). Format: seven questions of equal value (20 marks each); the paper directs that answering any five (5) of the seven constitutes a complete exam (100%), and the first five as they appear in the answer book are marked. All seven questions are solved in full below so the set serves as a complete study resource. Content is framed in the Canadian planning context (the Canadian Institute of Planners definition of planning; provincial planning legislation and official community plans; Canadian metropolitan and small-town examples), consistent with the Engineers Canada / EGBC syllabus for this exam.
Reference texts: G. Hodge & D. Gordon, Planning Canadian Communities: An Introduction to the Principles, Practice and Participants (Nelson, current ed.) — the standard Canadian reference for this exam code; Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), definition and code-of-professional-conduct materials; World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report, 1987); R. T. T. Forman & M. Godron, Landscape Ecology (Wiley, 1986); C. A. Perry, The Neighborhood Unit (1929); provincial planning statutes (e.g., Ontario Planning Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. P.13; British Columbia Local Government Act) and representative official community plans / regional growth strategies (Metro Vancouver, the Greater Golden Horseshoe Growth Plan, the National Capital greenbelt).
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
Land-use planning follows the rational, cyclical process that grew out of Patrick Geddes’ classic sequence of “survey – analysis – plan.” In modern Canadian practice it is normally described as a series of connected steps that close into a feedback loop, so that a plan is continually reviewed and renewed rather than fixed once and forgotten.
1. Identify issues and set goals and objectives. The process begins by defining the problem the community faces — growth pressure, decline, environmental risk, servicing deficits — and by articulating, with the public and council, the goals and measurable objectives the plan is to achieve. This step sets the values against which everything later is judged.
2. Survey and data collection (the inventory). Planners assemble an inventory of existing conditions: population and demographic trends, the economic base, the current pattern of land use, the transportation and servicing networks, and the natural environment (soils, slopes, watercourses, hazard lands). Geomatics supplies much of this base — cadastral fabric, topographic and land-cover data, and GIS layers.
3. Analysis and forecasting. The data are analysed to project future population, employment and land demand, and to test the capability of land to accommodate it (constraints and opportunities analysis). This produces the quantitative basis for how much land, of what type, will be needed and where it can go.
4. Generate alternative plans. Several alternative land-use arrangements or development options are prepared — for example, compact versus dispersed growth, or alternative locations for a major facility — each internally consistent and capable of meeting the stated goals.
5. Evaluate the alternatives. Each option is weighed against the goals and objectives and against cost, servicing feasibility, environmental effect and public acceptability. Techniques range from goals-achievement matrices to cost-benefit and environmental assessment.
6. Select and adopt the preferred plan. Council, informed by public consultation and (where required) provincial review, chooses and formally adopts the plan as the official community plan. Adoption gives it legal standing.
7. Implement. The plan is put into effect through zoning bylaws, subdivision and development control, the capital works and budget program, and land acquisition.
8. Monitor, review and revise. Conditions are monitored, the plan is reviewed on a regular cycle, and results feed back to Step 1 — making planning a continuous loop rather than a one-time act.
