Trying to Smart-In-Up and Cleanup Our Act by Linking Regional Growth Planning, Brownfields Remediation, and Urban Infill in Southern Ontario Cities

Christopher De Sousa
Additional contact information
Christopher De Sousa: School of Urban and Regional Planning, Ryerson University, Canada

Urban Planning, 2017, vol. 2, issue 3, 5-17

Abstract: The reuse of brownfields as locations for urban intensification has become a core strategy in government sustainability efforts aimed at remediating pollution, curbing sprawl and prioritizing renewal, regeneration, and retrofitting. In Ontario, Canada’s most populous, industrialized, and brownfield-laden province, a suite of progressive policies and programs have been introduced to not only facilitate the assessment and remediation of the brownfields supply, but to also steer development demand away from peripheral greenfields and towards urban brownfields in a manner that considers a wider regional perspective. This article examines the character and extent of brownfields infill development that has taken place in three Ontario cities (Toronto, Waterloo, and Kingston) since the provincial policy shift in the early 2000s. Using property assessment data and cleanup records, the research finds that redevelopment activity has been extensive in both scale and character, particularly in Toronto where the real estate market has been strong. While the results are promising in terms of government efforts to promote smarter growth that builds “in and up” instead of out, they also reveal that government could be doing more to facilitate redevelopment and influence its sustainability character, particularly in weaker markets.

Keywords: brownfields; contamination; development; infill; smart growth; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/1026 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v2:y:2017:i:3:p:5-17

DOI: 10.17645/up.v2i3.1026

Access Statistics for this article

Urban Planning is currently edited by Tiago Cardoso

More articles in Urban Planning from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().