Official Community Plan

The plan builds upon the many strengths in Victoria’s built form. Strengths that grew from the activities and settlement patterns of the Lekwungen peoples, to the historic working harbour and a network of community villages that grew up around the streetcar. The plan retains the strong and historic downtown core and the network of villages that have contributed to Victoria’s enviable complete communities. It enhances that network with new, denser nodes near affordable, low-carbon mobility options. It makes way for diverse forms of compact housing and business in between, creating more options for more people to live, work and stay in the city, even as their needs evolve. 

Climate action — both reducing emissions and adapting to a changing climate — is a cornerstone of the plan. The envisioned Urban Form and Land Use emphasize low-carbon growth — development that is built and designed to limit emissions from construction to operation to end-of-life. It facilitates low carbon lifestyles with diverse, affordable mobility options, compact, complete communities, and the foundations for sustainable living. It prioritizes environmentally responsive infrastructure and development designed to be resilient to climate impacts.

Recognizes that natural assets are foundational to city infrastructure — trees, healthy waterways and diverse ecosystems are necessary to public health and wellbeing in an urban environment. The built form envisioned in residential areas facilitates, over time, Victoria’s version of a perimeter block — a pattern that maintains green space and tree-growing area on the interior of a block, even as the built form intensifies. The plan introduces mechanisms for expanding functional green space in the public realm as well, including through linear parkways — connected, park-like areas on streets that integrate green infrastructure and improve the public realm. 

A healthy, flourishing community relies on strong community infrastructure. Infrastructure includes pipes that bring clean drinking water or move waste, electricity that heats our homes and trees that cool the city and purify the air. It also includes the public facilities and social systems that keep people safe, well and thriving. The plan seeks to ensure sustainable, equitable delivery of community infrastructure as Victoria grows and urbanizes. It sets forth an approach that maximizes the function and accessibility of the City’s limited public spaces — including City streets — to serve the greatest number of people. It enables innovative approaches to meeting local community need, including through public-private partnerships. 

Victoria will continue to build on its competitive advantages as a coastal city with a deep water harbour. This plan provides a land use framework and strategic directions to increase innovation and economic opportunity by preserving important employment lands and encouraging the innovative use of them. It provides direction to be adaptable and flexible in an ever-evolving and sometimes rapidly shifting economic landscape. It creates new opportunities for entrepreneurship and business development throughout the city, with more options to work close to home and meet daily community needs.