The municipalities of Vaughan, Brampton, and Richmond Hill collaboratively developed a Sustainability Metrics Program to evaluate and score the environmental sustainability performance of new development applications. It includes a menu of metrics that applicants can select from, with each metric worth a certain number of points.
The metrics are organized into four categories encompassing the major elements of sustainable community development. There are three levels of sustainability performance, of which applicants must achieve a minimum threshold score to proceed through the application process.
The sustainability metrics encompass healthy, well-designed communities with integrated green spaces, pedestrian and transit networks and offers a variety of options for housing, transportation, and employment. Sustainability metrics help municipalities alleviate pressures from population growth and urbanization by using infrastructure and resources efficiently.
Clean Air Council continues to facilitate efforts to support municipalities in developing and advancing their sustainability metrics. Clean Air Partnership has developed a Towards Low Carbon Communities toolkit, which provides a milestone framework to support municipalities to advance their sustainability metrics.