Impact assessment and urban planning: An investigation of their integration in the larger municipalities of Ontario.

摘要

The objectives of this thesis are to: (1) examine the nature and attributes of impact assessment and urban planning as processes; (2) determine the utility of integrating impact assessment (IA) with urban planning; (3) investigate the extent to which the larger municipalities in Ontario have achieved integration of impact assessment and urban planning; (4) provide an inventory of the characteristics exhibited by those municipalities in Ontario using impact assessment in their urban planning process; (5) suggest avenues that can be explored by future research within the impact assessment/urban planning domain. For the purpose of empirically investigating the extent to which the integration of IA and urban planning exists across the province, a questionnaire was sent to the urban planning departments of Ontario's thirty-three largest municipalities. In addition, the survey was supplemented by case studies of two municipalities (Ottawa and Oakville) that use impact assessment in their urban planning processes.;The key research finding is that although the potential utility and support for integrating impact assessment with urban planning is high, the level of integration actually achieved across the province tends to be limited either to development initiatives that are contiguous with environmentally sensitive areas, or that involve contentious issues with a high public profile. In general, therefore, while the advantages of integration are as yet largely unrealized across the province, the portents of change are becoming evident in municipalities such as Ottawa, Metropolitan Toronto and North York where the mandate of impact assessment has been enlarged to include either policies or private initiatives, or both.