As City Hall prepares to open swaths of rural London to more greenfield residential development, the population projections justifying the decision are being called “unrealistic” by Coun. Skylar Franke. In 2022, City Council endorsed the medium growth scenario with the Population, Housing and Employment Growth Projection Study (2021-2051) as the City of London’s corporate growth forecast for the development and updating of matters related to the Planning Act, Development Charges Act and other long-term strategies. A staff report to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (SPPC) reads, “The purpose of the December 2022 direction was to ensure one set of growth projections be applied to all City initiatives, including for City Multi-Year Budgets, capital planning, servicing master plans and new growth and development allocations.” Those council-endorsed projections are embedded in: However, recent updates to the Land Needs Assessment (LNA) and Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) are based on different data, the much more optimistic growth projections put forward by Ontario’s Ministry of Finance (MOF). The report to SPPC reads, “The 2024 MOF projections are more than 51 per cent higher than the 5-year annual average, and 64 per cent higher than the 10-year annual average of actual (housing) builds.” “I think they’re completely unrealistic and could cause a lot of problems down the road when we start to realize we don’t have enough money to pay for this new growth,” Franke warns. The optimistic provincial projections were used to justify a large amount (1,476 hectares) of land for future residential and commercial development being moved within the Urban Growth Boundary. Meanwhile, the less optimistic Council-endorsed projections are being used to plan the servicing and infrastructure needed to support that housing. Franke adds, “I think responsible growth is important, but if we don’t have enough money to pay for new sewers and new roads and new sewage treatment facilities - growth will not occur.” Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis doesn’t share Franke’s concern. “When we’re talking about land that we’re setting aside for development for the next 25 years, the next 30 years, the next 50 years, that’s not to say that we’re going to let land on the 50 year extreme edge (of the UGB) get developed tomorrow,” Lewis says. “There are still a lot of processes in place that let (Council) have checks and balances on those things.” The UGB is a powerful municipal planning tool intended to control development and prevent sprawl by restricting where new residential and commercial development can occur within the broader city boundary. Last year, a consultant’s report estimated land values increase 5.5x to 8x higher than their original value when moved within the urban growth boundary. The only beneficiary of having land brought in from outside of the Urban Growth Boundary with no intention or ability to actually build on it (are) therefore people who own property,” explains Franke. “Developers or speculators will be receiving more money because the land will automatically go up in value because it will be more developable.” Later this month, city staff will present a draft map to the Planning and Environment Committee showing which properties are being recommended for inclusion in the UGB to meet London’s residential land needs for the next 30 years. “We don’t know if some of the land inside the Urban Growth Boundary today can be used for housing development, so we need to have that extra land,” explains Lewis. “We also have to look at those extenuating circumstances around federal immigration policy (and) around the economic growth plans that the province has.” The province’s MOF population projection represents the entire London Census Metropolitan Area, so for the purposes of the LNA and UGB, city staff used a portion (84 per cent) based on London’s historical average population share over the past 25 years. Members of SPPC will consider the report about the two different growth projections on June 17.
