More on growth: The debate last year on warning from Ontario’s senior planner

AWARE Simcoe – August 22 2010
The province’s plan for growth in Simcoe County places urbanization in the worst possible areas – Bradford, Alliston and the Highway 400 corridor, with dire consequences for Lake Simcoe and the Nottawasaga basin. That was the conclusion articulated by Ontario’s senior planner, Victor Doyle, whose comments on the “Simcoe Area: A Strategic Vision for Growth” report were the subject of a lively debate in the media last year.

Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Doug White dismissed Doyle views on plans for employment-creating development along Highway 400 north of the Holland Marsh as “the opinion of one, unelected provincial bureaucrat.”
White added, in a letter to the Toronto Star, that “progressive planners know that major highways, like the 400, must not be catalysts for bedroom communities or mere corridors for commuters and products. Employment lands along such arteries must also be used to help anchor and provide the economic lifeblood for communities such as mine.
“If these lands are not used for employment, our residents will be forced to continue to commute long distances or be stuck in low-paying, service-sector jobs that dominate our county.”
In a submission he made as a private citizen to Ontario’s Growth Secretariat, Doyle painted a stark picture of unsustainable sprawl, congestion and skyrocketing infrastructure costs if the province proceeds with a controversial strategy to urbanize large swaths of Simcoe County north of the Greenbelt.
Doyle was a key architect of the groundbreaking Greenbelt plan, His warning focused on the combined impact of lightning-speed growth in Barrie and proposals to create two massive employment zones along pastoral Highway 400 in Bradford West Gwillimbury and Innisfil.
“The cumulative effect will be to open up a new linear pattern of urban sprawl along Highway 400 running virtually from the Holland Marsh to north of Barrie,” Doyle wrote.
Text of Doyle’s letter