While I appreciate the move…

While I appreciate the move to eliminate the requirements for sun, shadow, and urban design studies, I don’t believe this will be effective as municipalities will still be able to refuse developments based on sun/shadow and wind, and non compliance with urban design rules and will likely slow the approval process even more by conducting these studies in-house.

This would be much more effective if the policy eliminated the use of these tools completely when reviewing development applications so municipalities do not find back-door ways around the study requirement.

These are all Urban Design related studies, and I think reforming the role and purpose of Urban Design departments would be helpful in unlocking more homes across Ontario. These studies continue to be explored and developed by municipal urban designers who want to play architect, when the development industry already pays a lot to hire and retain architects. Architects have a professional duty to design safe, attractive buildings. This duty should be relied on, and enforced as opposed to creating more layers of review and responsibility. This would also allow Urban Design staff to be redeployed to focus on general streetscape and public spaces, an area where their expertise can be valuable to help make our cities better places for our growing population.