Hi Geoff,
Great points and totally agree. Your post reminded me of an article I read recently in Plan Canada which is the Canadian Institute of Planner’s official magazine. The article, titled “Too Many Plans?” was written by Andrew Burns and Jill Grant. Their thesis is that Canadian cities are producing so many plans — ranging from Active Transportation Plans, Housing Plans, Land Use Plans, and more — that it is becoming hard to effectively coordinate land use planning and policy implementation. Their recommendation: it is extremely important to effectively coordinate policies across multiple plans to ensure coherence of planning practice.
While their conclusion may seem obvious, it is worth repeating. I agree with you in that the Victoria CEEP is linked backed to existing municipal plans which makes it easy to understand how the objectives of one plan are complimentary to another. The CEEP references a number of municipal plans and clearly states how the CEEP’s policy objectives and desired results relate to those plans. As an example, some of the recommendations (e.g. advance the energy efficiency requirements of the BC Building Code) clearly indicate which OCP objective they relate to. This is transparent and a good example of coordinating planning policies across municipal planning documents, in my opinion.
