We recently had the opportunity to co-sponsor the Regional Forum on Centres and Corridors. The consistent message from speakers and the audience was that investment in public transit should be the first priority in making centres and corridors thrive. They also said designing and building town centres linked by fast, convenient public transit helps to shift people out of their cars.
Speakers from York Region and the City of Toronto along with renowned urban planners and architects spoke about managing growth in York Region over the next 20 years. They examined lessons learned from the past to help improve growth management strategies in the future.
To help manage growth, the Region has a plan to focus development around four “downtowns” away from valuable farmland and environmentally important greenbelts. These centres (in Markham, Newmarket, Vaughan, and Richmond Hill) include residential, business and recreational development connected by transit.
The new centres are being developed as live-work-play communities. We will be posting a blog in the near future that talks more about this idea.
To learn more about the Centres, Corridors + Subways program, please visit their website
Read the Official Regional Plan
4 replies on “Transit helps make Centres & Corridors a successful concept”
Your post Transit helps make Centres & Corridors a successful concept | vivaNext was very interesting when I found it over google on Wednesday by my search for region centre. I have your blog now in my bookmarks and I visit your blog again, soon. Take care. Parejaspareja.es
hey this is a very interesting article!
I would like to see renderings and more information regarding vivaNext from RichmondHill Center to York Universtity (basically the Centre Street portion of the vivaNext. is this going to happen?
DaleA: Hi Emiliano
The rapidway segment from Richmond Hill/Langstaff Urban Growth Centre to Highway 7 has been funded as part of the Province’s April 1 announcement. York Region is now set to begin building rapidways that will transform the streetscape through this corridor.
While we do not have renderings of all the stations at this point, the station and rapidway drawings you see on our website – with terracotta coloured centre transit-only lanes and trees and benches on the sidewalks – is very representative of what you can expect in this area.
Anybody who has been to the Vaughan Corporate Centre can see that this area was built explicitly car-centric over the past 10 years. Big box retail here is surrounded by many acres of parking lot.
What is the region doing to prevent this kind of development on lands which are designated to be “downtowns”?
DaleA: Hi Luke,
Thank you for your question, it is a good one. I asked David Clark, chief architect of infrastructure and development for vivaNext, and here is what he said.
“Regional Centres & Corridors Official Plan policies for urban intensification at urban centres and along transit corridors such as Vaughan Corporate Centre are designated as Urban Growth Centres; as such they have set density targets of 2.5 FAR. The Region has also adopted transit oriented development guidelines to assist in promoting higher density mixed development in the centres such as Vaughan Corporate Centre. The Region continues their forward thinking and are considering setting minimum targets which would prohibit low density developments such as big box retail in these areas.”