After its first year of operations, the City of Toronto’s development review division unveiled its new strategic plan at the executive committee. The division launched in April 2024 to reduce delays and ensure projects are developed at scale as people across the city search for affordable and suitable housing options.
According to Valesa Faria, the executive director of development review, last year, Toronto welcomed more than 140,000 new residents and approved over 46,000 residential units. “Each year, the city receives over 450 new development applications and 1,200 resubmissions—more than any other Canadian municipality,” she wrote in a recent memo. “Growth is accelerating, and so must the systems that shape it.”
Since its launch, the division has reduced major application decision times across all categories. This new plan builds on this success and aims to strengthen relationships across governments and with Indigenous Rights-holders, equity-deserving groups, communities and the development industry. The division also aims to create an easier system to navigate for applicants, staff and community members, while modernizing legacy systems, introducing performance dashboards, and updating the Application Information Centre.
As well, strengthening transparency and accountability extend to performance targets, satisfaction surveys, improved public engagement responses and tracking equity outcomes.
Here, Valesa Faria discusses more about the plan’s impact on Toronto’s development industry.
Q: How will the new development review strategic plan help achieve city-building goals?
A: At the heart of this Plan is a bold commitment to people-centred urban growth, which recognizes that development must respond to the diverse needs of residents and support the creation of complete, inclusive and livable communities. Aligned with this the introduction of a human rights-based approach to development review, which emphasizes that while technical compliance is critical, people and equity must also be embedded in the development review process.
Additionally, the Plan introduces something that we believe will be a game-changer: Toronto’s first Customer Service Charter for Development Review — to be co-developed with the industry, including the Indigenous and non-profit sector, over the upcoming months. This will help strengthen trust, clarify expectations, and create a more collaborative relationship between the City and our city-building partners. We have already reduced major application decision times by 80 per cent, and see our new Strategic Plan as an opportunity to utilize Development Review as a lever, not a bottleneck, for creating more housing for diverse residents across Toronto.
Q: How will it impact condo developers?
A: We streamlined our draft plan of the condominium process to be much more efficient. In our new process, we have created two review streams for condominium applications – routine and technical. This has reduced the number of studies that we request from applicants to as little as five for routine applications. So, this means faster approvals and less cost for applicants to support getting projects built in a challenging market environment. Not only that, but all condominium developers will benefit from our new strategic priorities such as implementing standard operating procedures, modernized tools and technology, and a problem-solving approach from an interdisciplinary team of city-building experts who want to collaborate with applicants to find solutions where needed.
