The New Official Plan

The New Official Plan team has continued to review all comments submitted on the draft New Official Plan and the revised version can be found here.

As part of the continued engagement process, the New Official Plan team invite residents to join City Staff at a Public Open House on September 29^th at 6:30 p.m. to learn more about how the revised draft has changed.

Please register for this meeting here.

Please submit your questions here.

The Public Open House will be followed by the consideration of the draft New Official Plan by Committee and Council on the following dates:

• Thursday, October 14^th - Joint statutory meeting of the Planning Committee and Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, under the Planning Act, convened in accordance with Subsection 88 of the Procedure By-law pursuant to the delegated authority granted by City Council at its meeting on February 10, 2021. The location and format of this meeting is to be determined. Details will be communicated at a later date.
• Wednesday, October 27^th - City Council Consideration of the report on the final draft of New Official Plan.

Thank you for your continued engagement with the New Official Plan.

The City of Ottawa has had over 100,000 engagements with residents over more than 130 activities during each phase of the development of 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.

In order to provide the most time for residents to review, sections of the revised New Official Plan will become available on this page as they are finalized. Please be sure to check back over the coming weeks for additional material.

The documents below have been left in their track-change format. This is to allow readers to clearly see where changes have been made and make it easier to review the large volume of information.

The 21 one-pagers on key themes found in the New Official Plan have also been updated and can be found here.

The City will be hosting a Public Open House later this summer. Details are being confirmed and residents are encouraged to stay tuned to the Engage Ottawa for more information.

Revised Draft Official Plan

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2:Strategic Directions

Section 3: Growth Management Framework

Section 4: City-Wide Policies

Section 5: Transects

Section 6: Urban Designations

Section 7: Greenspace Designations

Section 8: Greenbelt Designations

Section 9: Rural Designations

Section 10: Protection of Health and Safety

Section 11: Implementation

Section 12: Local Plans

Section 13: Definitions

Schedules:

- A Series

- B Series

- C Series

Volume 2B: Rural Secondary Plans

Volume 2C: Area Specific Policies

Updates are continually being made to the Official Plan Sections since the first Sections were uploaded on July 26, 2021. The updates are to address technical or content issues being brought to the attention of Staff after the revised draft New Official Plan went live to the public. A summary of the Sections that have been updated since the live post, is below for full transparency:

In order to provide additional time for public review of the draft sections of the New Official Plan in advance of Committee and Council consideration of the final staff report, the Planning Committee co-Chairs and the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee Chair have agreed to move the joint statutory meeting of the Planning Committee and Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee to October 14, 2021.

Please be advised of the following revised dates in respect of the consideration of the comprehensive final draft of the New Official Plan:

• Wednesday, September 29^th – Public Open House. The location and format of this meeting is to be determined. Details will be communicated at a later date.
• Thursday, October 14^th - Joint statutory meeting of the Planning Committee and Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, under the Planning Act, convened in accordance with Subsection 88 of the Procedure By-law pursuant to the delegated authority granted by City Council at its meeting on February 10, 2021. The location and format of this meeting is to be determined. Details will be communicated at a later date.
• Wednesday, October 27^th - City Council Consideration of the report on the final draft of New Official Plan.

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. A full report on the 15-minute neighbourhood study will be released in the Fall.

The maps below represent the findings of this initial research.

Maps

Map explanations

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 held a public session in March 2021 to discuss the 15-minunte neighbourhood concept.

The full presentation can be found here.

The Q&A portion of the event can be found in the New OP FAQ document here.

The City-Wide Interim As We Heard It report provides transparency around how the feedback received is impacting the development of the draft New Official Plan. The report highlights the key city-wide themes captured through stakeholder engagement and how City Planners propose we amend policies to address this feedback.

The full report can be found here: New Official Plan City-Wide Interim As We Heard It report

Updated Transect Map
Updated Transect Map (Ward)

The City has also committed to releasing a series of 23 Ward specific Interim As We Heard It reports. These will be posted here as they are completed.

The City will host a public session on each transect. These sessions will help residents learn how feedback was responded to by City Planners. Please register using the links below:

June 22^nd 6:30 p.m. Transect – Rural Public Meeting

June 23^rd

• 5:30 p.m. Transect – Suburban Public Meeting
• 7:00 p.m. Transect – Outer Urban Public Meeting
  
  

June 24^th 6:30 p.m. Transect – Downtown Public Meeting

June 28^th 6:30 p.m. Transect – Inner Urban Public Meeting

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.

Thank you for your interest in the draft New Official Plan. The draft New Official Plan is a complex document. In order to facilitate your feedback, we have created a series of one-pagers on the key topics we heard in our engagements so far.

There are twenty-one of these documents providing a brief overview of the New Official Plan proposed policies. You can select the topics of interest to you or go through them all.

A link is also provided below each one-pager, taking you to a tailored feedback form. This allows you to give feedback directly on this area of interest.

If you have any questions or would like to provide general comments, you can always do so through newop@ottawa.ca.

We understand there are many one-pagers and feedback forms. You will have until March 12, 2021 to complete these. Please feel free to take time to go through these at your own pace.

For a high level introduction to what is new in the draft New Official Plan, please start with our Introduction one-pager.