Brampton can’t shake its addiction to sprawl

By: Isaac Callan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer

The planning and development committee is the unsung hero of public engagement with Brampton City Hall.

Major hiring decisions, changes to transit service and even deliberations on how your tax dollars will be spent often sail through council meetings without the public blinking an eye.

But when it comes to new development proposals, residents have for years flooded City Hall’s council chamber with their pointed views.

Under the Planning Act, cities are required to hold public meetings before making decisions on how their neighbourhoods will be shaped. Folded into the general planning and development agenda, during any given meeting, residents are encouraged to express concerns and ask questions about proposed projects.

At Brampton’s most recent planning and development committee, four applications came forward.

They revealed a clear example of the City’s failure to plan.

Brampton has, throughout its history, sprawled out across empty fields one development proposal at a time, as private builders dictated to elected officials how the city would be shaped, to fit their construction model and maximize their profits.

When Linda Jeffrey came to power in 2014, after easily defeating Susan Fennell, who had been mayor since 2000, and who had established a close relationship with the developers she called on each year to donate handsomely to her annual mayor’s gala and her annual mayor’s golf tournament, the former provincial Liberal cabinet minister vowed to sever the control builders had over City Hall.

The arrangement had left a city planned around low-cost, high-return cookie cutter subdivisions that forced residents to rely on their cars to navigate a maze of cul-de-sacs and far flung suburban planning.

But Jeffrey was defeated by Patrick Brown in 2018 before being able to establish any real mandate around growth.

Since his arrival, a lack of vision from the very top has allowed homebuilders to push whatever projects they like without a coherent plan for walkability, transit or density.

Brown and others on council have shown they care little about establishing a progressive, cohesive vision that aligns transit goals, urban density, affordable housing and smart growth with the broader commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Council passed a climate emergency declaration, but its actions continue to reveal the hypocrisy of Brampton’s local elected officials.

Across the four applications dealt with Monday that triggered public meetings, developers are asking permission to build almost 6,000 new units on undeveloped land—known as greenfields. They are not bringing much-needed infill (construction in already built spaces) to areas of the city well served by transit, nor are they intensifying areas identified by the Province and City Hall as future urban growth corridors. Instead, the applications suggest adding more subdivision-style housing to the fringes of the city least serviced by urban infrastructure.

Three applications ask to build along The Gore Road in northeast Brampton, and the fourth calls for a 1,550 unit subdivision in the northwestern Heritage Heights area. The latter request is subject to a request from Brampton City Council for a Minister’s Zoning Order that, if granted, would allow the developer to skip consultations with the public that would otherwise be required.

It is a style of directionless growth Brampton was supposed to have left in the past.

Almost four years ago, the City published its 2040 Vision: Living the Mosaic. The guiding master plan document was penned by Larry Beasley, a progressive urban planner based with his team in Vancouver, with input from more than 13,000 local residents. It showed what Brampton could look like if it embraced 15-minute communities, density and abandoned the all encompassing reliance on the car.

The Vision called for an overarching and carefully coordinated approach to city building where each application was carefully considered in the context of how the city would look in 2040. It suggested deliberate planning for every inch of Brampton, the antithesis of developer-led sprawl.

It was embraced wholeheartedly by the incoming council in 2018. Brown called it a “foundational document” during the election campaign. “If I’m mayor, you’re going to have a partner to make sure we can actually realize that vision,” he claimed.

Since taking office, the positive platitudes have continued. “Together, we are on a journey to Brampton 2040,” he said in a January 2020 press release.

But land for future development had already been bought up by builders and they have always had their own plans to follow a business model and construction style that maximizes their returns.

Brown and others on council have failed to confront these developers with their own vision, unlike their neighbours to the south who continue to rapidly transform Mississauga into a dense, urban centre that will look nothing like its sprawling suburban past when a series of massive new projects are completed in the next decade.

Brampton’s reliance on single family homes has slowly dwindled over the past 10 years, without a clear strategy from City Hall to move toward a greener, denser, more dynamic future.

Between 2006 and 2010, an average of 60 percent of all houses completed in Brampton were single family homes, according to data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. That figure has come down slowly since, and between 2016 and 2021 an average of 45 percent of all homes completed in Brampton were single detached units.

At the same time, the rate of row houses has shot up. Between 2006 and 2010, just 12 percent of all homes completed were row houses, but that has climbed to an average of 31 percent across the past five years. Apartments have dropped from 14 percent of all housing completions down to an average of just 10 percent over the same period.

In 2020, no apartment units were completed in Brampton.

Brampton may be gently turning its nose to the future with these figures, but not through a particular strategy. The fact the drop in single family homes has been accompanied by a drop in the number of apartments being built suggests developer strategy and market forces at play, not municipal direction (high-rise construction was supposed to drive growth along the city’s designated urban corridors).

Building permit data show the current council may even be moving in the wrong direction.

The number of permits granted to developers in 2019 and 2020, since Brown and his council took office, offer some insight. In 2018, under the past council, 684 building permits were issued for single family homes, rising to 893 in 2019 and then 827 in 2020. The latest number of single family home building permits represents a 21 percent increase over 2018, and this was partly during the pandemic when many builders slowed down their requests for permits.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explicitly called on local governments to help fight against climate change by avoiding this type of planning. It noted sprawling developments built around the car were one of the biggest culprits of climate change and said it was down to local municipalities to plan density for a green future.

Some positive signs do also bubble under the surface in Brampton.

The number of building permits for townhouses has increased under the current council. Considered by many to represent the ‘missing middle’ between high-density units and a spacious family house, townhomes can help to create walkable communities without moving to full condo towers and Manhattan-style hyper-density. Brampton issued 333 building permits for townhouses in 2018, jumping to 928 in 2019 and 508 in 2020.

The latest four greenfield development proposals show a meandering, unplanned approach continuing. Two (10263 and 10159 The Gore Road) include a significant number of medium and high density units amid single family houses, offering more density than the subdivisions built in the past. A third development proposal, at 10365 The Gore Road, is more of the same. It offers 118 low density homes, 177 medium density units and no high density development.

To achieve the 2040 Vision, council needs to carefully plan every acre of undeveloped land to ensure it meets targets for density and walkability, while leaving as much property as possible for greenspace and other non-residential, non-commercial uses. Two of the four applications Monday that involved public meetings require amendments to Brampton’s Official Plan, meaning they do not fit the vision City Hall set for the area.

Brampton is currently in the midst of rewriting its official plan to incorporate the 2040 Vision. It remains unclear if the proposals fit into the approved master plan, and the final amendments to the city’s urban boundary land use strategy will not be known until changes are finalized under the current review taking place.

One of the four applications will be of particular concern to those who hope to see the 2040 Vision realized. The proposal to build 1,550 new units in the Heritage Heights area flies in the face of the Vision.

The area was explicitly identified by Beasley and his team as a space to be carefully developed with more density and is subject to a master plan that council agreed upon more than a year ago.

“Let’s end the sprawl,” Wards 1 and 5 Councillor Paul Vicente said in July 2020 when he voted in favour, along with the whole council, of a plan to develop Heritage Heights. The area was frozen for development until the beginning of that year for the City to decide how it wanted to plan one of its last greenfield areas. The ultimate decision was to aim for a dense, mixed-use community around a potential GO Transit stop.

An initial Heritage Heights plan, released in 2014, estimated 60,000 residents living in 16,000 houses with 18,000 jobs. The new plan has Heritage Heights hosting an estimated 36,000 houses and 43,000 residents. It is a radical change that requires radical leadership from councillors committed to a much more urban, transit-oriented future.

Council, contrary to its climate emergency declaration and commitment to the 2040 Vision master plan, is forging ahead with old habits. The request to build a standard subdivision in the area was wholeheartedly endorsed by Brampton City Council. Councillors even sent a letter to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing requesting a Minister’s Zoning Order, used to fast track a development without the usual local planning authority or public consultations.

Details included in Monday’s public meeting show the developer-led project will bring a mix of housing to the area. Argo, the builder behind the proposal, has suggested 169 low-density, 913 medium-density and 468 high-density units.

No final decision has been made on any of the four applications. Councillors will consider the projects when they return to the planning and development committee with staff recommendations.

What they decide will signal whether Brampton’s local elected officials, who passed a climate emergency declaration and claim support for smart growth, can stand up to the demands of developers in an election year when campaigns are often heavily funded by builders.