Question 3 of 7: Growth Management and the Municipal Control Options

Question 3: Growth Management and the Municipal Control Options (20 marks)

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.

The growth-management approach. Growth management is a deliberate, proactive approach in which a municipality (or region) guides the rate, amount, type, location, cost and quality of new development so that growth is orderly, fiscally efficient, environmentally responsible and matched to the community’s capacity to service it. It reacts against unmanaged sprawl — scattered, low-density, leapfrog development that is costly to service, consumes farmland and natural areas, and generates car dependence. Rather than simply reacting to applications as they arrive, the municipality sets a vision and targets in its official community plan (a compact urban form, protected greenspace and agriculture, growth concentrated where infrastructure exists) and then uses a coordinated tool-kit to steer development toward that vision. Growth management does not usually mean stopping growth; it means directing it — controlling where and when it happens and ensuring it pays its way. In Canada it is expressed through instruments such as urban containment / growth boundaries, regional growth strategies (Metro Vancouver), and provincial growth plans (the Greater Golden Horseshoe).

The major categories of control options. The tools a municipality can use fall into a few broad families:

(1) Public (statutory) planning and regulatory controls. The core legal tools: the official community plan setting policy and designations; zoning controlling use, density and form; subdivision and development-permit control governing how land is divided and developed; and servicing/subdivision standards. Growth-specific regulatory devices include urban growth boundaries / urban containment areas, phasing or staging provisions that release land for development in step with infrastructure, agricultural-land and greenbelt reserves (e.g., B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve, Ontario’s Greenbelt), maximum/minimum density and interim-control by-laws, and holding (“H”) zones.

(2) Public spending and infrastructure (capital) controls. Because development follows services, the timing and location of capital works — roads, water, sewer, transit, schools — is itself a powerful growth-control lever: extending or withholding trunk services, and using a capital-works program and infrastructure phasing to open some areas to growth and defer others (“adequate-public-facilities” or concurrency requirements that tie approval to available capacity).

(3) Fiscal and financial controls. Tools that shape growth through cost and price: development charges / development cost levies that make growth pay for the infrastructure it requires; property taxation and differential tax rates; density bonusing (community amenity contributions in exchange for extra density); and user fees and servicing charges that price the ongoing cost of serving dispersed development.

(4) Land-acquisition and public-ownership controls. Direct public involvement: purchasing land, land banking, dedication and reserves, conservation easements and covenants, and public development of parks and greenways — removing key lands from the speculative market and securing open space and public facilities.

(5) Incentives, agreements and voluntary measures. Non-regulatory encouragement: tax incentives, grants and density bonuses to steer development to preferred locations (e.g., infill and brownfield redevelopment), development agreements, and public education and participation to build support for the growth-management vision.

An effective growth-management program combines these categories — regulation to set the rules, infrastructure timing to enforce the geography of growth, fiscal tools to make growth pay and to price it correctly, land acquisition to secure the essentials, and incentives to encourage the desired pattern — all aligned to the community plan.