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Jordan Moffatt is an Ottawa-based writer who completed a master’s degree in geography at Carleton University, where he wrote a thesis on the development of residential zoning in Ottawa.

In Canada’s capital city, planners are completing the first rewrite of the municipality’s comprehensive zoning bylaw in a generation. Expected to be passed early next year, the updated measures include major reforms such as ending “exclusionary” zoning by allowing multiunit buildings in formerly single-detached-only neighbourhoods, in the name of expanding housing options for more people in more places – an important shift given our housing affordability crisis.

Ottawa’s planners should be commended for their work. But if the capital really wanted to lead the country in reforming its land-use policy, it would scrap zoning altogether.

This wouldn’t unleash some sort of libertarian or anarchic free-for-all. Ending zoning doesn’t mean the end of planning; in fact, not only should cities plan, they must. Ontario municipalities are required to create official plans that set the broad strategy for growth and then pass a more specific system to implement it. Zoning is just one of many possible systems in use around the world.

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Zoning was intended as the bedrock of urban control: a system of rules that, once in place, would finally settle land-use conflicts for good. But it’s clear that zoning isn’t doing what people want it to do. It’s supposed to provide clarity, but zoning bylaws are long and difficult to understand. It’s supposed to provide certainty, but developers frequently receive amendments, eroding public trust. It’s supposed to enable orderly development, but the costly and contentious review process delays........

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