The Ontario Land Tribunal ruled Monday that the City of Hamilton must expand its urban boundary by at least 1,600 gross developable hectares to accommodate residential growth to 2051.
The ruling goes against a vote made by Hamilton City Council in May 2022 to freeze Hamilton’s urban boundary.
The province briefly overrode Council’s decision in November 2022, ordering a roughly 2,200-hectare expansion, only to reverse that move a year later amid the fallout from the Greenbelt land-swap controversy.
Shortly afterward, the Ontario government replaced the old provincial growth rules with the 2024 Provincial Planning Statement, which permits landowners to apply directly to the Tribunal for urban boundary expansions at any time.
The Ontario Land Tribunal decision, authored by tribunal member Eric S. Crowe, found that the city’s No Urban Boundary Expansion Policy cannot be reconciled with the province’s 2024 Provincial Planning Statement.
The case combined three separate appeals from the Elfrida Community Builders Group, Upper West Side Landowners Group, and Whitechurch Landowners Group.
In Elfrida, located east of Upper Centennial Parkway and south of Mud Street East, there are 1,131 hectares of gross developable area which could house an estimated 114,900 people.
The lands were identified by the city as the next residential growth area as far back as 2006.
The Whitechurch lands, southeast of Hamilton International Airport and east of the Mount Hope community, have 340 hectares of gross developable area.
And the Upper West Side Lands, south of Twenty Road West and west of Upper James Street, have 105 hectares of gross developable area, which could have 4,200 residential units, housing approximately 10,200 persons.
It should be noted that the ruling only determined how much land the city needs to add to the urban boundary and does not address which specific parcels are approved, what projects are built, or what density those projects are permitted to have.
Those questions will be answered in separate hearings for each of the three applications.
The Whitechurch hearing is set to begin this fall, the Elfrida application’s next phase is scheduled for early 2027, and the Upper West Side case has already begun but was paused.
The Ontario Land Tribunal heard from 10 expert witnesses in land-use planning and land economics before making the urban boundary expansion ruling.
In his decision, Crowe wrote, “Although Counsel for the City did an admirable job in defending the Council’s decision for a No Urban Boundary Expansion Strategy and agrees with the City’s submissions that City Council members are elected officials by a democratic process, their decisions have to be made in accordance with provincial policy and plans which in this case is now the PPS 2024 and the Planning Act.”
He added that all of the land economists who gave evidence in the hearing, including the economist called by the city, “determined that additional land is required to be added to the City’s settlement area boundary to provide for an appropriate range and mix of residential land uses, and to provide for an appropriate range and mix of housing options and densities.”
One witness, Daniel Bailey, said that “artificial constraints on ground-related housing,” which is the result of the No Urban Boundary Expansion Scenario, “do not change the underlying market demand for apartments and tend to push households to move to other municipalities that have their desired housing options.”
The No Urban Boundary Expansion Scenario would require 80 per cent of all new households in the city to be apartments.
Crowe continued, “The Tribunal prefers the evidence of the Land Ownership Group economists who convert the population into the total number of households that need to be accommodated, and take into account the types of housing that are needed, such as apartments, basement apartments, single detached houses, semi-detached houses, and row houses. [Provincial policies call] for an appropriate mix of housing options and densities.”
Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath spoke out against the Ontario Land Tribunal ruling, saying that the decision “flies in the face of Hamilton’s efforts to rein in sprawl and protect farmland and natural areas, which erodes our climate resilience efforts.”
Growth forecasts for the City of Hamilton by Ontario’s Ministry of Finance say that the city’s population is expected to rise to over 853,000 by 2051.
According to the 2021 census, Hamilton’s population at the time was 569,353.
The City of Hamilton is also forecasted to have 357,000 jobs by 2051 (a 119,000 increase over 2021) and 332,800 households (a 110,300 increase over 2021).
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
