Commentary on the Ontario Government's Proposed Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe

This commentary on the Ontario Government's Proposed Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, "Places to Grow," is based on new and past Neptis research findings. The commentary presents research on the Plan's policies and targets for residential intensification, Urban Growth Centres, greenfield development, and the projected distribution of population growth. It concludes that although the Plan is urgently needed and sets an appropriate policy direction, it seems unlikely to achieve its own goals because the measures proposed may be unenforceable, ineffective, too generic, or too difficult to achieve. This is a revised edition. A factual error in the first edition of the Commentary was brought to our attention. While the error did not affect the research conclusions, it required correction. Therefore we have made amendments to the second and third paragraphs on page 20 and point 4 of the summary.