And while city officials have championed the reforms, calling them long overdue, they say the transition plan will cause turmoil at city hall. Queen’s Park voted last week to reform the province’s most powerful tribunal — responsible for land use planning disputes and how cities are built — and replace it with a new Local Planning Appeal Tribunal aimed at giving power for planning back to cities. There are currently 1,177 major applications in the pipeline, according to the city planning division. While she remains optimistic developers will want to work with the city, Kerri Voumvakis, who is in charge of city planning policy, noted they continue to see an increasing number of appeals. “This is an example where the developer’s application, while still half-baked, wasn’t far out of the range for what I think city planning would eventually support,” he said.

Source: thestar December 18, 2017 23:15 UTC