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Urban planning is more than just designing great buildings and streets—it’s about creating communities that involve land use, infrastructure, housing, the overall environment, and most importantly ‘People’. Urban consulting services focus on the physical and social development of a city, fostering sustainable and livable spaces.
At Urban Mind, we specialize in people-centric urban design services, delivering expert solutions that shape communities for the better. Whether you are seeking assistance with an urban design plan or need Professional consulting on city development, Urban Mind can help you envision a better tomorrow.
At Urban in Mind, we are focused on the GTA but work all over Ontario, from Thunder Bay to Ottawa to Windsor to Niagara. Anyone looking to develop their land in Ontario stands to benefit from hiring us as a legitimate land development agency to guide them on their path. With over 40 combined years of experience in the planning field, we know this industry. As legitimate land development consultants, we also continue learning and educating ourselves to keep on top of new significant policy changes. Our priority is to help create promising developments that benefit our clients and their communities as a whole while making the planning side of the process as accessible as possible for our clients.
We specialize in working with minor- to medium-sized developers in addition to “Mom & Pop” landowners, as we strive to provide an effective, personal service that will help educate our clients and help them realize their development dreams. We do this partly by being open about how long certain processes can take and by being up-front about the realistic potential costs involved. On occasion, our land development agency also works for municipalities or large developers because we have the needed experience to take on the tasks that have overwhelmed their existing staffing situations. These clients work with our firm for several reasons, such as our reports being knowledgeable, thorough, and effectively covering applicable policy from the federal level down to individual neighborhood design guidelines. Planning Justification Reports (PJR) are documents that need to be prepared and stamped by a registered professional land use planner. Most applications require these reports, so even if you don’t want to use a planner for the majority of an application, you may still need one for a PJR. We want every client to feel like we have helped them, even if that means a bit of hand-holding learning through the process itself. At the end of any project, our land development consultant hopes that our clients know more about how planning works and could potentially not even need our services for simple future applications.
We also manage projects from the idea stage up to planning approval (and approval condition fulfillment). Organizing all the professionals required to get some projects through an application process can be overwhelming, but we are here to help. Urban in Mind can represent you in planning matters, such as presenting a project to the City Council clearly and professionally, being able to answer any tough questions and effectively deal with any concerns, or even being your expert witness for an appeal case. Our land development agency deals with many approval authorities on a regular basis, such as the Regions, Conservation Authorities, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, Indigenous Interest groups, Municipalities, and the Ontario Land Tribunal. This means we have plenty of experience with what works and what doesn’t. This contributes to Property Development Feasibility, saving you time and money by not wasting it on near-impossible applications or how you can make minor changes to your plans and make your project much more likely to succeed.
We also work regularly with a wide variety of professionals who specialize in fields like architecture, landscape design, stormwater management, surveying, engineering, and environmental and municipal law. The work of land severance professionals is needed for the majority of projects to reach completion, but determining when to hire them, in what order, and even what is absolutely required is part of what we do for our clients. Any land development will essentially require a survey of the land, but an old survey may be sufficient, so you may not need to have a new one. In short, what we do is help our clients navigate the complex bureaucracy involved in land development services and, in turn, save them money.
Land development companies combine several diverse professions and are typically broken into several parts. Most people perceive land development as just Construction. While Construction is a significant part of land development, it is only the last step. Urban In Mind a professional land development agency focuses on transforming a site and increasing or altering its use as per Site Plan Development. Renovating a home to include a second/third dwelling unit is land development, just like putting up an apartment building on a vacant lot or simply changing the permitted use for a single property.
Even just altering the grading of a property to alter how storm water is controlled is development. Some developments are simply more dramatic than others. Typically, the more dramatic a development is, the greater the planning work that goes into it. Land development can be seen as simply building something on a single property, as per Photometric Planning Services. Still, it also pertains to greater scales like the municipal, provincial, and even federal levels. All land development should be well planned and account for the interconnected nature of surrounding land uses. Authorities regulate land severance within their jurisdictions, and the lower the authority, the more finely controlled it is.
The first step in land development should always be Planning and site design in accordance with Site Plan Development. Good land development thoroughly plans and accounts for the subject property’s details, the adjacent lands, and the community as a whole. Planning should be the most crucial step, but many people overlook it and get shocked by the amount of time and money development can take.
However, proper planning can dramatically reduce costs by lowering risks and fruitless endeavors, thus saving money on a project overall. This step can include specific works such as property investigation, zoning applications, land severances, surveys, site design, concept building drawings, and conservation permits.
The second step should be Engineering and detailed building design. This step deals with the technical details involved with designing a building to fit the planned use and designed site. This step can sometimes be combined into the first step as a means of ensuring feasibility, but this can dramatically front load costs for projects that may not get through the planning stage. Some aspects of this step can include hydrogeological studies, traffic studies, architectural drawings, landscaping design, storm water management, floodplain analysis, and
The last step of land development deals with the actual Construction and physical production of the designs and plans. This step puts all the previous work to the test. If the previous steps were not thoroughly done, there may be something that ruins the development as a whole, causing significant delays, cancellations, and unforeseen costs.
For example, digging into a buried pipe can typically be avoided with proper planning/engineering that will take known site information into account. This step will involve all the work needed to complete a project, such as building physical Construction, landscaping, and servicing connections.
In essence, Land Use Planning is the efficient management and control of land development by categorizing, regulating, and organizing the varied uses of land. Municipalities and other authorities control and manipulate development within their jurisdictions by means of land use planning. They employ official plan policies with Zoning and Minor Variance Services by-laws to govern how land is used.
Planning out what land uses can go where is a significant tool for managing municipal growth. The direction of which areas are to be residential, commercial, or industrial land has substantial effects on the subject areas and neighboring areas. Properly planning out Land severance and land development regulations in the area ensured that the natural habitat was preserved despite the growing demand for development. What land uses are allowed to coexist beside each other helps land development progress efficiently and effectively, reducing difficulties ranging from simple complaints to major health and traffic concerns.
The provincial government uses the Planning Act to govern how planning and Land severance regulations in the area ensure that the natural habitat is preserved despite the growing demand for development to be carried out in general and who is responsible for what at a high level. The province also employs provincial policy statement (PPS) and other provincial plans to set overarching policies that govern lower-tier plans.
Regions and Cities use an official plan (OP) to apply the provincial policies to the municipalities under them. Municipalities have their official plans to more finely interpret the policies from higher tiers, followed by the zoning by-laws, which are the legally enforceable requirements for development within their boundaries. Sometimes, a municipality is large or complex enough that it will have secondary or even tertiary plans to further refine policies in specific areas.
Planning out how and where a municipality grows is a complicated, interconnected process that can be made more simplistic when putting all of the potential uses into categories. The basic land use categories are Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, Institutional, Residential, Recreational, and Natural Environment. These categories have many different ‘uses’ under their umbrellas. Still, these categories typically include uses that are compatible with the other uses in the same category and can largely be intermixed without negative impacts. A rather interesting factor for this categorical separation of uses is the more recent rise in mixed-use zones. These mixed-use zones permit uses from two or more categories that typically or traditionally don’t coexist. These zones are often more specifically controlled but typically include residential uses above commercial uses in a downtown-type area while showing that a diverse group of uses can complement each other in some contexts.
The higher order authorities don’t control specific Land severance regulations in the area to ensure that the natural habitat is preserved despite the growing demand for development uses, but rather the more broad categories and guide as to how to situate best urban vs. rural areas within municipal boundaries. Typically, a provincial or regional plan refers to these areas as land use designations. Without this approach, cities could expand and sprawl uncontrolled, with developments creating opposing uses right next to each other and destroying vital farmland. These broad designations become more precise and more refined at the regional and municipal official plan levels. These OPs are required to follow the guidance of the plans above them. Still, there are always new plans, amendments, or updates that make a trickle-down effect of updating plans, which can leave a mess of conflicting policies in place, affecting specific properties. This can make development and planning applications with said properties quite problematic and difficult to navigate. Fortunately, the only portion of all this regulation that directly and legally affects what is permitted on a piece of land is the Zoning and Minor Variance Service by-law. Everything else essentially guides how the zoning by-laws are made and modified.
Municipalities and land development agencies use zoning by-laws to create more specific areas, called zones, that can vary slightly in their restrictions from zone to zone. For example, under the general land use of Residential, a zoning by-law may have 12 or more residential zones with varied limits on building height, lot area, density, and particular uses like semi-detached dwellings or apartment buildings. One commercial zone may not allow medical clinics, while another commercial zone may not allow retail stores. The specific permissions of the zone that property falls under dramatically limit what can be developed there. Such zoning by-laws differ significantly between municipalities due to multiple factors such as physical land mass and location, political stressors, population density, and even weather concerns.
Sometimes, when a landowner wants to develop something that is not allowed on their property, they can change the policies or Zoning and Minor Variance Services to enable it. This is far from guaranteed and is more complicated than it sounds, but it can be done in several ways.
Just like a municipality deals with greater detail in their locality than a region or the province, a landowner may know more information about their property that affects how the Zoning and Minor Variance by-laws pertain to their Site Plan Development. This can lead to applications for Minor Variance (MV) to change minor zoning requirements. For example, if the zoning by-law requires a setback from side lot lines to ensure sufficient access to the rear yards of lots, and an applicant shows that their lot backs onto another public road and, therefore, has plenty of access, an application to reduce that requirement to only may be approved. Conversely, an application to allow an apartment building in a zone that only allows single detached homes is unlikely to be approved and should probably have been attempted as a Zoning By-law Amendment (ZBA).
A ZBA seeks to either completely change the zone of a property or change enough requirements that it is beyond the scope of an MV. This could mean switching a zone from residential to commercial or from one residential type to another. These are typically allowed when the new zone would fit better within the municipality’s official plan (OP) or the city desires the change and the proposed new development and possibly has not had the opportunity to change their OP to match. ZBAs are not as cheap nor as simple as MVs, so people often try to apply for an MV even though their application would be more appropriate as a ZBA. Having professional help from a land use planner in determining your best course of action can save you time and money simply by selecting the correct application type to make.
Each municipality and region sets its own fees for these applications, and the higher the level, the higher the cost. The most unfortunate part for any applicant is that these fees are simply for applying, not for being approved.
Municipalities make planning decisions in several different ways. This is partly due to the grey areas in planning law. Some municipalities are more politically influenced, with politicians choosing to ignore the recommendations of technical staff in favor of what their constituents supposedly desire. On the other hand, some are more engineering-focused with a black-and-white approach where decisions are made without regard for the debatable ‘intent’ behind the zoning by-laws and simply apply their interpretation with a hard line. These extremes can be challenging to manage, but the best way to know what side of a decision a municipality is leaning before even making your application is to attend a Pre-Consultation Meeting (Precon). This person meeting is usually a relatively cheap application that can help an applicant flesh out their plans, fully understand the application requirements, and get a general idea of where the municipality’s opinions lie. The more involved and complicated a development, the more critical the pre-con meeting. A land use Planner can help determine which applications should go through a Precon, even if they don’t require it.
One of the most straightforward applications a land owner can make could be seeking consent to sever (consent). This is the process of dividing land into smaller parcels. Simple consent applications divide a lot in two or three because the old lot is a remnant from many years ago, and the current zoning permits much smaller lots. This is usually due to urban area expansion, urban sprawl, or even increased densification.
A more complicated version of the same idea is creating a subdivision or condominium (typically 5+ lots). These are different applications from simple consents, as they involve more dramatic changes to land use and are generally far more costly. They usually include creating many new lots or dwelling units with shared or common space. They often require added infrastructure like roadways or amenities like parkland as part of the development.
Finally, if everything looks good, you and your team jump through all the metaphorical hoops from the authority involved, and all the requirements are met, but the decision comes down against you, and not all hope is lost for your project. You can still Appeal the decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) or Toronto Local Appeal Board (TLAB) to have your decision overturned. This is an expensive and lengthy process, but sometimes a necessary process.
All of the applications mentioned above take time, strategy, and coordination. Even the simplest MV or Precon takes time to complete. This is partly due to how effectively you are able to deal with the municipality and how well-informed you are going into the process. Simply not getting all of the correct documents correctly filled out, signed, dated, stamped, and delivered on time can set a project back by a month or two because you have to wait until the next meeting of the council, which will make the decision or the availability of a group of staff to advise you at a Precon meeting. A land use Planner will likely save you time and money when developing land.
This all goes to show why hiring a planner as early as possible in the process can help you navigate the costly and complicated arena of land use planning. Contact us to schedule a consultation now!
At Urban in Mind, we represent developers, builders, municipalities, landlords, special interest groups, neighbourhood associations and individual residents, to name a few… all in the hope of creating “Good” development for all. With over three decades of experience in the municipal planning, education planning and development planning field, we are confident that your project couldn’t be in safer hands.
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