Item - 2023.IE5.6

Infrastructure and Environment Committee recommends that:

1. City Council direct the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning and the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with Urban Forestry, to report back to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee in the fourth quarter of 2023, recommending:

a. how the City should plan and achieve streetscape and road safety improvements in areas undergoing intensification of residential use;

b. how the relevant roles and responsibilities should be allocated among City Planning, Urban Forestry and Transportation; and

c. a process for public consultation, as appropriate.

On streets undergoing conversion to residential use, such as Dupont, current streetscapes are often inadequate. They frequently feature a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists, with narrow or obstructed sidewalks and no street trees or seating. These features are incompatible both with Vision Zero and with TransformTO.

It is the city’s responsibility to design and achieve improved, connected and harmonious streetscapes on such streets.

However, the city currently has no coherent process to do so, and has not assigned responsibility for developing such streetscapes to any department. Nor is there a process for appropriate public consultation. Instead, the city relies on one-off improvements designed by individual developers for their particular development, and delivered by that developer for its immediate frontage. This process does not and will not deliver a consistent, connected, well-designed public realm with adequate infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.