A decade ago, regional planning alarm bells rang loudly at Queen’s Park. Low density urban sprawl was spinning out of control. Transit infrastructure construction had come to a complete halt, and Toronto’s commute times had slipped to second worst in North America. It was an urgent moment that required immediate and bold action by the Province of Ontario. And just such boldness was delivered. In less than two years the new provincial government legislated the Greenbelt, a nearly two-million-acre urban containment zone around the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Next came the Regional Growth Plan, a sweeping provincial planning document that required all municipalities to align their Official Plans toward modern urban form and density. Then the regional transit agency, Metrolinx, was created, followed soon after by the Big Move plan to guide massive new commitments to building transit infrastructure.

Ten years later there is a lot to show for the turnaround in public policy. Sprawl is now at its slowest rate since the Second World War. Stunning urban densities are being achieved, none more impressive than in Toronto’s downtown core. The most ambitious transit infrastructure program since the construction of the Yonge subway is well under way. Walking and biking numbers are rapidly climbing and transit ridership is at its peak after a 20-year slump.

But the alarm bells should still be ringing. The crisis is far from averted. Gridlock has worsened still, while transit projects lumber along behind schedule or never get off the ground. Commitments to finance regional transit for decades lack any serious dedicated funding plan. Meanwhile population growth continues to be predominantly at the urban edges, only 15 per cent of which is located along subways, GO Rail, or planned high order transit lines and stations.

New urban issues have taken on significant urgency. Affordable housing for low income residents is now a full-fledged crisis on its own, while spiraling market housing prices are threatening to deny a generation home ownership. Where market affordability is being modesty achieved, it is in massive high-rise neighbourhoods that are severely lacking in basic community amenities to sustain full life cycle residency. But unlike the crisis moment of a decade ago, little public policy boldness seems to be emerging from Queen’s Park.

Yes, the Regional Growth Plan is being reviewed this year. But municipalities will have five long years to comply. Urban Growth Centres, the backbone of the plan, will only absorb about 10 per cent of future population growth (and that assumes they achieve targets). Up-zoning along transit corridors are left to municipalities to define and approve, forcing the level of government most susceptible to local NIMBYism to do the heavy political lifting. And funding to scale up the offering of affordability for low income residents seems to be falling almost entirely on the mid-market home buyer through what appears to be the near naked reliance of inclusionary zoning as the instrument to deliver.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Much has been done to slow the market on the urban edges of the region (and obviously cutting supply), but little has been achieved to crack open as-of-right zoning supply along transit corridors and Urban Growth Centres.

Could the province use its massive transit infrastructure investments as a rationale to dictate immediate up-zoning and efficiently open up new development opportunities along transit corridors and urban growth centres? Such a gesture would likely attract more transit oriented development (TOD) and ease market pressures associated with choked-off supply of ready-to-roll planning approvals.

Could the province respond to the growing demand to reform how transit governance works in the region, at the very least for capital planning? The very same bifurcated governance that has caused Metrolinx and municipalities to zig zag their transit plans over the past decade is still in place. Could the province finally deliver a dedicated funding program for transit infrastructure to achieve long-term planning certainty for TOD across the region? Could the province use its many levers of land value creation to harvest necessary dollars to build affordable housing rather than force these costs onto market units that are already skyrocketing in price?

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Let’s not waste ours. It’s time to be bold again.

Reprinted with permission from Building Magazine