Ontario Thinks Business home
Community Development

Community Design

Go to:

All members of the community—residents, business owners, workers, visitors, and investors— need places and spaces that are both functional and appealing. 

Quality design of the built environment can: protect existing investments; achieve sustainable environments; create safe, comfortable, and pleasant places where people want to live, work and recreate; and add value to the community.


Purpose

The Community Design Element:

  • Distinguishes Ontario as home to a unique, highly aesthetic built environment that fosters enjoyment, financial benefit, and wellbeing for the entire community.    
  • Articulates design qualities that will create locally and regionally significant places. 
  • Utilizes community design to help achieve the Vision in the areas of economic development, land use, housing, community health, infrastructure, and transportation.

Principles

The City believes:

  • Quality design of buildings, streets, public spaces, City gateways, and open spaces is vital to prosperity and makes Ontario a place where people want to be.     
  • Strategically located urban districts that are designed around transportation systems help define Ontario’s regional identity.   
  • Ontario’s unique history and heritage – expressed in its streets, landscaping and buildings – help define the community’s identity. 
  • Well maintained property and infrastructure are required to protect and encourage community investment.  
  • A diverse mix of residential and commercial neighborhoods, centers, corridors, and districts is vital to achieving the Vision.

Community Design Element Sections