City of Pickering Official Plan- Edition 6

creating a legible and lasting framework for
community development that provides a sense of
permanence and certainty, yet allows for on-going
change and evolution;
encouraging a broad range of uses and activities
within this framework to meet the changing needs
of the residents, and continually re-examining these
needs; and
improving our knowledge and understanding of
the community’s diverse groups, elements and
systems (social, environmental and economic),
their relationships and interdependencies.
Principle 5: To manage
change while recognizing
uncertainty.
In a rapidly changing world, people are often more
concerned with crisis management than long-range
planning. Events that are unforeseen (and which may not
be foreseeable) cause people to have less confidence in
future predictions, forecasts and goal-setting exercises.
Yet, when uncertainty about the future is high, rather than
becoming less important, long-range planning can increase
the likelihood that positive changes will occur in a
community. This requires a long range planning process
that maintains a future-oriented, visionary focus, yet is
sufficiently flexible and adaptable to respond quickly to
change. To do this requires:
establishing an appropriate planning system for
dealing with change and uncertainty, while
avoiding “overplanning”;
thinking long-term, but operating incrementally,
so that community planning decisions can be
evaluated regularly, and adjustments can be made
on an on-going basis;
maintaining and applying valid, up-to-date
analytical techniques, but not being trapped into
inaction on important issues because of imperfect
information, or “analysis paralysis”; and
viewing the occurrence of unrelated, seemingly
chaotic events as normal, recognizing them for
the contribution they make to the community’s
evolution.
PICKERING OFFICIAL PLAN EDITION 6: Chapter One -- Guiding Principles 16