The City of Ottawa has released new intensification targets for different parts of the city, and a new definition for highrise buildings that allows up to 40 storeys, in the lead-up to a major debate and vote this fall on its new official plan.

Municipal planning staff posted several chapters of the long-awaited final draft to the city’s website last Friday, leaving visible the language they have cut and added since their much-dissected earlier version released in November 2020.

Now, residents are again wading through those hundreds of pages of urban planning to discern how the document could transform streets and neighbourhoods.

Targets, not requirements, for density

Staff now propose setting targets instead of requirements for how many dwellings it wants per hectare in different parts of the city. The contested 80 dwellings in “inner urban” areas built before the 1950s, for instance, will instead have target densities of 60 to 80 units. “Outer urban” neighbourhoods could see 40 to 60 dwellings instead of the previous 40.

Kitchissippi ward resident Roland Dorsay wonders what that will look like in practice, however, and expects housing densities to veer toward the top end of the new ranges.

“A lot of it looks to be more wordsmithing than it does to be substantive change,” said Dorsay, who chairs a collective of community associations called “K9”. He’s in the midst of studying the new draft line by line, and is still waiting for more chapters to be posted in the coming days or weeks. 

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