By Doug McLarty, Ottawa Citizen, March 9, 2020
The City of Ottawa’s planning staff have a fantastic mission and responsibility right now. They are to create a master blueprint for the next 25 years to guide smart growth of the National Capital Region that best utilizes our land, our environment, and our financial resources.
We all need to pay attention to this important task if we ever hope to manage housing affordability, availability and choice. Never has the future relied so much on opening our eyes to what Ottawa can become.
It may be a stroke of luck that Ottawa finds itself in the middle of an extraordinary corridor between Toronto and Montreal. Nowhere else in this country is there a city as great as Ottawa, lying in wait for the next generation.
About 400,000 new people will become Ottawa residents in the next 25 years, and they will need 195,000 homes, of some kind, to live in. These homes will require an Official Plan that provides choice, and that choice requires a good balance of urban expansion and intensification.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/mclarty-ottawas-next-official-plan-can-present-a-vision-of-diversity-and-sustainability