The New Official Plan

The New Official Plan team would like to once again thank all residents who took the time to engage with the City over the last two years. The New Official Plan is an important document that will help shape the growth of Ottawa for the next 25 years.

The policy was amended and passed by City Council on October 27^th, 2021. The revised version was adopted by Council on November 24^th, 2021 as by-law 2021-386 and can be found below.

Volume 1

Volume 2A

Volume 2B

Volume 2C

A French version can be found here.

Please stay tuned to learn more about how the New Official Plan will be implemented once approved by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Thank you,

New Official Plan Team.

The Final As We Heard It report tells the story of how we got to the revised New Official Plan. The revised New Official Plan includes bold policy recommendations and aims to guide growth in Ottawa for the next 25 years. Many of these policies are a direct result of the feedback we have heard over the last two and a half years.

City-wide As We Heard It Report

Ward Reports

You can also see the Interim As We Heard It Reports shared throughout the development of the New Official Plan below:

June 2021 Interim City Wide Report

Ward reports

December 2019 Interim Report

Ottawa’s New Official Plan provides us with a blueprint for building healthier and more inclusive neighbourhoods, learn more via this Infographic.

The City has engaged over 100,000 residents through over 130 activities during each phase of development for the New Official Plan. All feedback as been tracked and reviewed. After thorough consideration, City Planners have revised the draft New Official Plan to reflect some of the major themes and concerns.

The 21 one-pagers below have also been updated to better reflect the revised draft New Official Plan. These focus on the key topics heard in our engagement with residents. The one-pagers are intended to help residents gain a better understanding of proposed policies through a series of brief plain language highlight sheets.

Introduced in the ‘Five Big Moves’, the principles of 15-minute neighbourhoods are integral to the strategic directions contained in Ottawa’s Draft New Official Plan. The concept of 15-minute neighbourhoods supports a variety of objectives relating to intensification, economic development, energy and climate change, gender equity, and culture. Additionally, planning for 15-minute neighbourhoods represents a critical means of embedding health resiliency in planning in order to achieve healthier, more inclusive communities.

15-minute neighbourhoods are compact, well-connected places with a clustering of a diverse mix of land-uses; this includes a range of housing types, shops, services, local access to food, schools and day care facilities, employment, greenspaces, parks and pathways. They are complete communities that support active transportation and transit, reduce car dependency, and enable people to live car-light or car free.

The 15-minute neighbourhood study is the first step at understanding the components of a 15-minute neighbourhood as they evolve across Ottawa’s urban, suburban, and rural transects. This study of 15-minute neighbourhoods is composed primarily of two different mapping exercises. One looking at access to available services and amenities; and the other focusing on the safety and enjoyability of the pedestrian environment with respect to walking to these services and amenities.

Report

Maps:

Map A1: Service and Amenity Locations
Map A1-1: Grocery Store and Supermarket Locations City-Wide
Map A1-2: Park Locations City-Wide
Map A1-3: Retail Service Locations City-Wide
Map A1-4: Bus Stop Locations City-Wide
Map A1-5: Health Service Locations City-Wide
Map A1-6: O-Train/Light Rail Transit Station Locations City-Wide
Map A1-7: Indoor Community Centre, Recreational Facility, and Library Locations City-Wide
Map A1-8: Elementary and Secondary School Locations City-Wide
Map A1-9: Childcare Facility Locations City-Wide
Map A2: Service and Amenity Diversity City-wide
Map A3: Service and Amenity Diversity with Priority Weighting from Survey City-wide
Map A4: Service and Amenity Concentration with Priority Weighting from Survey City-wide
Map A5: Access to Services and Amenities, Combined Scores City-wide
Map A6: Pedestrian Environment, Commercial Street Classification City-wide
Map A7: Pedestrian Environment, City-wide Assessment City-wide
Map A8: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment City-Wide
Map A8-1: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Downtown Core
Map A8-2: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Inner Urban
Map A8-3: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Outer Urban
Map A8-4: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Kanata-Stittsville
Map A8-5: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment South Nepean and Riverside South
Map A8-6: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Leitrim
Map A8-7: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Orléans
Map A8-8: Access to Services and Amenities, and Pedestrian Environment Villages

Appendix B

Appendix C

Healthy and Inclusive Communities Infographic

The New OP team recently held 5 public sessions to discuss the City Wide Interim As We Heard report and the themes that were heard from each of the 5 transects. Below are links for both the presentations that were provided and the transcribed Q&A session.

June 22^nd Rural Transect

• Presentation
• Q&A

June 23^rd Suburban Transect

• Presentation
• Q&A

June 23^rd Outer Urban Transect

• Presentation
• Q&A

June 24^th Downtown Transect

• Presentation
• Q&A

June 28^th Inner Urban

• Presentation
• Q&A

If you have a question that has not been answered please email newop@ottawa.ca

The New OP team is currently working on making changes to the proposed policies based on a large amount of feedback.

How the proposed policies are changing will be shared with residents via an As We Heard It report later this spring.

A revised New OP will be released this summer followed by an Open House. The final report will be presented to Committee and Council this fall.

Please read this FAQ to see if it answers your questions. If you have a question that has not been answered below you can email it to newop@ottawa.ca.

We continue to answer questions submitted and we will add those responses to this page as they are developed.

Interested in more information about the 613 Flats – please review some different ideas of how they could be built. Each of the below is a different form or typology for the 613 Flats concept.

If you have feedback on these, please use the 613 Flats Feedback Form.

Typology 1

Typology 2

Typology 3

Typology 4

Typology 5

Typology 6

Based on selection criteria outlined in the Growth Management Strategy that Council adopted in May 2020, staff have identified and ranked clusters of land recommended for inclusion within Ottawa’s urban boundary. The report recommends lands to accommodate new neighbourhoods as well as industrial lands to accommodate employment projections.

Read the full report here.

GROWTH MANAGEMENT STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION MODELLING REPORT

GMS Calculations

Interested in the materials that went into the selection criteria decision in May 2020. You can review those materials below:

New Official Plan Growth Management Strategy Report

Residential Growth Management Strategy for the New Official Plan

Selected Growth Management Policies, Provincial Policy Statement 2020

Vacant Urban Residential Land Survey

Village Residential Land Survey

Analysis of Residential Net to Gross Ratios in the City of Ottawa

Urban Expansion Detailed Evaluation Criteria

Stakeholder Comments and Response to Urban Expansion Criteria

The Preliminary Policy Directions are more detailed policy ideas for the New Official Plan, building on the 5 Big Moves. They recommend:

• a new framework of urban designations intended to better address neighbourhood context,
• a proposed approach to growth management with intensification focusing on low-rise building forms along corridors and nodes,
• improved support for active transportation and better alignment of land use and transportation policies, revisions to the employment area policies,
• integration of public health,
• climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation policies throughout the Plan,
• and revised policies for the rural area that will support rural and village character and rural economic development.

Read more details in the following reports:

• Staff Presentation New Official Plan Preliminary Policy Directions
• Staff Report New Official Plan Preliminary Policy Directions
• Document 1: Growth Projections for the New Official Plan
• Document 2: Preliminary Policy Directions
• Document 4: As We Heard It report