We have things like Saanich plans for Foul Bay Road in 2008, Victoria adopted a new plan in June 2012 that is written as if Saanich had no plans for the road and now Oak Bay will have new plan in 2014. One street with three different OCPs created over more than five years.
Our OCPs in the region are not as good as they could be because they plan for the arbitrary borders that exist and not for the communities that really do exist. We have neighbourhoods split up by the planning process and not being allowed to holistically work as a single community.
The OCP process is also very exclusionary. Just because someone lives on one side of the street their opinion on the other side of the street does not get counted as an equal voice. It is also exclusionary because there are so many planning processes. There is no way anyone can keep on top of any of them. It also means the media does not pay attention to them either. We end up with much less input and from a narrow segment of the city's population.
We need amalgamation simply so that we can plan properly for the whole city.
List of Current OCPs
- 1995 - November Metchosin
- 1997 - April Colwood
- 1997 - June Oak Bay - starting their OCP process again
- 2003 - July Willis Point
- 2003 - August CRD Regional Growth Strategy
- 2004 - August Port Renfrew
- 2006 - February Malahat
- 2007 - March Esquimalt
- 2007 - May Sidney
- 2007 - May North Saanich
- 2007 - May East Sooke
- 2007 - July Shirley/Jordan River
- 2007 - September Highlands
- 2008 - June Langford
- 2008 - July Saanich
- 2008 - October Central Saanich
- 2009 - November Sooke
- 2010 - March CRD Rural Resource Lands
- 2010 - March Otter Point
- 2011 - April View Royal
- 2012 - June Victoria
- Draft Otter Point - this is the third major review of the OCP in the last decade
4 comments:
What a load of CRAP !!!
To believe any of what you have said on the amalgamation topic one would have to think that the democratically elected officials of this regions municipalities are brain dead zombies.
In reality they have been effectively managing the region since before your parents were born !!!
"But the problem isn’t that there are 13 OCPs when there should be just two or three, it’s that there are 13 OCPs when there should be none! Centralizing plans cannot work because central planners cannot acquire and evaluate all the knowledge they require in order to undertake such a task successfully. To think otherwise is to fall victim to what Friedrich Hayek called ‘The Fatal Conceit‘. The solution to what ails Greater Victoria (and most every other city) is to strip all coercive governance down to its core functions as quickly as possible, and privatize those core functions to the greatest degree possible. Any things else is just an exchange of one set of problems for another."
http://www.libertarianbookclub.com/2012/06/17/proposing-the-wrong-solution/
Um, I guess this is a sensitive topic. I agree with you 100%, Bernard, and thanks for posting. The great cities of the world are planned with care by elected individuals working together toward some common goals. Victoria should get its act together.
Nothing proves your critical thinking and communications skills better than hitting ctrl-B and piling on the exclamation marks. If he had replied in all caps, that would have made it a perfect trifecta of stupidity.
I guess that top poster must have low standards when it comes to 'effective management'.
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