Council recently agreed to submit a grant application for $150,000 from the provincial Complete Communities program to undertake a land use assessment mapping project to help make decisions on housing initiatives and Official Community Plan changes.
With funding provided by the BC Ministry of Housing and administered by the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), the program is aimed at supporting local governments to make evidence-based land use planning decisions and advance such goals such as diversifying housing options, reducing infrastructure costs, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing walkability, a staff report explains.
Complete communities are communities, or areas within a community, that provide a diversity of housing and wide range of employment opportunities, amenities and services, while understanding infrastructure needs and costs in relation to land use as a key component.
“This assessment would assist in generating an urban structure framework for Delta. The urban structure framework would identify corridors, nodes, town centres and major centres across the City as a whole, as well as strengths and challenges to community completeness within each geography. Through the assessment, certain indicators would provide insight into how Delta’s existing infrastructure can be used efficiently as the community continues to· develop over time,” the report notes.
In particular, the assessment would test different scenarios of housing density enabled by current initiatives such as pre-zoning, housing choices in single-detached neighbourhoods, and development along the Scott Road corridor to indicate where infrastructure and transportation investments could be prioritized, or where more services might be needed,” the report adds.
The report also notes that the outcome will be “a report with recommendations on next steps for land use and infrastructure planning to improve community completeness.”
