Unintended consequences: UBUAs become focal points for growth

Neptis has found that some municipalities are planning to direct significant amounts of subdivision-style development to UBUAs and to count these developments as intensification. They include municipalities in Simcoe County, which has the largest amount - about 38 percent -of unbuilt land in UBUAs in the Outer Ring (see Figure 2). Simcoe County's Official Plan states:

Where a settlement area has an undelineated built-up area by the Province, the entire settlement area is considered to be a built-up area, and all new residential units within such settlement areas contribute towards the intensification target [emphasis added].[1]

Figure 2: Unbuilt UBUA in Outer Ring

Figure 2: Distribution of unbuilt land in undelineated built-up areas among Outer Ring municipalities

Simcoe has planned for almost 40 percent of its growth to be in the form of intensification. But rather than directing intensification to locations with well-established urban infrastructure, institutions, and amenities - such as Collingwood, Midland, Alliston, or Wasaga Beach - a review of the County's land budgets shows that about 65 percent of the units that have been approved as intensification in Simcoe County are being directed to UBUAs; 83 percent of these units are in the form of single detached housing units.[2]

This type of scattered development, on this scale, undermines the goals of the Growth Plan while allowing the County, on paper at least, to meet and even exceed its minimum intensification requirement (which, for Simcoe County as a whole, was adjusted to 32 percent[3]). Figure 3 shows how intensification units have been allocated in Simcoe County.

Figure 3: How intensification units are allocated in Simcoe

Figure 3: How intensification units are allocated in Simcoe County

Some of the development being planned in the UBUAs in Simcoe County reflects leapfrog development pressures first identified in the early 2000s.[4]