City of Pickering Official Plan- Edition 6

CHAPTER NINE -- COMMUNITY DESIGN
The City recognizes the value and benefits of ensuring for
its residents, business-people and visitors, the creation of
high quality built and natural environments. In addition to
achieving a distinctive physical form that expresses the
City’s image as the western anchor of Durham Region,
many social, economic and environmental benefits are
realized by achieving well designed environments.
As Pickering continues to grow and evolve, design
excellence must be promoted when the basic community
building blocks are constructed, including the streets, parks,
public squares, shops and residential neighbourhoods.
Community design should focus on the relationships
between, as well as the visual character and aesthetic
qualities of, the City’s basic community building blocks.
This Chapter sets out a strategy for addressing community
design over the next twenty years of Pickering’s evolution.
It is derived from the planning principles, goals and policies
contained in Part One, and addresses the existing and future
needs of the City’s urban, rural and ecological systems. The
strategy supports and is supported by the other strategies
and policies of this Plan, including land use, transportation,
economic, housing, community services, cultural heritage
and resource management.
Pickering’s Ten
Community Design
Concerns
Human Scale
Pedestrian Comfort
Mixed Uses
Permeability
Context
Building Adaptability
Places versus Buildings
Attractive Public Spaces
Legibility
Natural Heritage
In general, the strategy focuses on ten community design
concerns important to the creation of high quality built and
natural environments. These concerns have been translated
into objectives which set out the City’s overall approach to
community design, and provide a means of identifying the
strategic areas which Pickering must focus on in order to
achieve design excellence.
PICKERING OFFICIAL PLAN EDITION 6: Chapter Nine -- Community Design 122