Carboo Avenue, Toronto

What did you do on World Town Planning Day?

I was planning the revamping of Rosedale into a social housing project, similar to the Regent Park Revitalization project. I’m not doing it out of spite, though that would be one way to celebrate being a Planner. It‘s actually for our first year design studio project (PLA 1652H Introductory Studio in Urban Design and Planning). Could we do something more unrealistic than that? Nope.

I also went to a Ward 18 Candidates meeting with Ram. I thought it was very informative and unlike Ram, I think it was very well attended. I’ve heard horror stories where nobody shows up to public meetings (I’ve helped organize one where just 5 people showed up!). So good job Ward 18 residences. There was also a little bit of drama that had to do with a topic that hits home. Talk about applying academic knowledge to real life situations.

First person with a reasonable answer wins a prize:
For 35 odd years a few auto-body shops in the ward have been using the sidewalks of a dead-end street to park/store their vehicles illegally. Recently, the residents of a new townhouse development have taken notice of the lack of enforcement and have voiced their concerns to their local councillor. After numerous attempts to remove these obstructions (ticketing owners and putting temporary barriers haven’t worked) the city was called in to put up concrete barriers to stop the business owners from infringing on the public right-of-way, leaving a lot of angry shop owners. What rights do the shop owners have? What other ways could the city have dealt with this?

I talked this over with Vince today as we walked to school (we have a real awesome research project we’re working on that I’ll write about tomorrow), and we couldn’t remember if there was some sort of precedence for situations like this where x has been taking place for y amount of years without complaints from anyone else and therefore the law doesn’t apply anymore (if there is something like that, how many years is the minimum?)? I’m hoping Tiff will jump in and save the day, or how about any of you aspiring Planners-in-training. <- That’s what they call us here. I should tell them I’m already a Planner! hah..

I wrote this on 9 November 06 when I was feeling .

Comments

  1. Jason says,

    You're basically asking if there is a statute of limitations on a non-conforming use (I'm assuming this action in question was never legal). Could the auto shop owners have applied for an easement (i.e. a Consent)?

  2. Jason says,

    hmmm now that I think of it, it isn't even a non-conforming use, since the rights to sidewalk was never conferred to the auto-shop owners anyways... Wouldn't this fall under the category of squatter's rights? Does Ontario have any provisions for this at all? I suppose another thing that the shop owners could do is to apply to have the road closed, and then buy the street (obviously, they'd then have to get the new land appropriately zoned and what not) Do I win a prize? :)

  3. ramanan says,

    I don't have no book learnin' on planning, but I do know from playing SimCity that you don't get points for putting zone residential next to industrial units. Oh Snap!

  4. Liz Lau says,

    YAY! Shimie's back!! =)

  5. tiff says,

    adverse possession! How funny that my property class just started on this topic. in the limitation act i think it's 10 years (but don't quote me. i need to do the reading for that class), basically outlines your remedy for the true owner of the property. if someone trespassed onto a property and occupied and used it for a consecutive period of 10 years (or whatever the statute says), and the true owner of this property did not do anything to exert their ownership (doing anything to show ownership other than just to scream "I own this land." it has to be a positive act - like picking of a cherry. it's weird but that's what happened in a case), then the property is now adversely owned by the initial trespasser. in this case, i'm not sure if ownership is different because is public property. Presumably the city was the true owner of the side walk and they did nothing for 35 years, to me the simple answer is that the auto body shop has earned the property through adverse possession. The concept of adverse possession is a controversial one but is part of the legacy of the common law system. it's apparently "invented" at a time when land titles were not recorded on paper and after a certain number of generations, people no longer remember who owned what. so to encourage / faciliate the transfer of land title and avoid uncertainty to ownership, adverse possession is invented so that if you earnestly worked on a piece of land for a period of time (that could be 10, 12 or 20) you can claim ownership. Easement is another way to have done this, but in this case since the true ownership is not granting easement there's no point. plus adverse possession already cleared the land. again, i dont know if there's some statute that says if the true owner is a public authority, the situation would be different. But to me, adverse possession should treat all owner as equal. Just becuase you're a public authority there should not be a more lenient system to allow ownership claims. Also, 35 years of adverse possession is very hard to dispute. Adverse possession precisely does not allow people to drift away for half a century and clog up land when there's someone who may see value in using it. in a way it's facilitating trespass and theft, which are both illegal. but if you don't exert your right to ownership, you've given it up according to common law. BUT, i need to finish those reading. I think I'll bring this question up in my class.

  6. tiff says,

    ah here's the relevant excerpt to this situation from the Real Property Limitation Act (Aka the Limitation Act), RSO 1990 s. 4 No person shall make an entry or distress, or bring an action to recover any land or rent, but within ten years next after the time at which the right to make such entry or distress, or to bring such action, first accrued to some person through whom the person making or bringing it claims, or if the right did not accrue to any person through whom that person claims, then within ten years next after the time at which the right to make such entry or distress, or to bring such action, first accrued to the person making or bringing it. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.15, s. 4. however, my friend Lisa from law school thinks it's different with public authority. Otherwise people in the North can just stake claims in crown land b/c it's impossible for government to enforce their ownership. Also, it seems that the problem of whether or not the city knew about the adverse possession matters. Even though the auto shop has been doing it for 35 years or so, if the city didn't know until last year...does the limitation period start counting only when the city knew about the adverse possession? I don't know. Sorry :(

  7. tiff says,

    UPDATE your auto body shop has no right to claim land because the adverse possession excludes crown land including roads and sidewalk. (official answer from professor.) here's the relevant section of the act, the Real Property Limitation Act, RSO 1990 s. 16 Waste or vacant land of Crown excepted 16. Nothing in sections 1 to 15 applies to any waste or vacant land of the Crown, whether surveyed or not, nor to lands included in any road allowance heretofore or hereafter surveyed and laid out or to any lands reserved or set apart or laid out as a public highway where the freehold in any such road allowance or highway is vested in the Crown or in a municipal corporation, commission or other public body, but nothing in this section shall be deemed to affect or prejudice any right, title or interest acquired by any person before the 13th day of June, 1922. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.15, s. 16.

  8. brenbren says,

    welcome back! ... i have no comment on your planning-ness...

  9. ramanan says,

    I think comments are working sort of again. I’ll make this comment box bigger.

 
Some things to keep in mind: You can style comments using Textile. In particular, *text* will get turned into text and _text_ will get turned into text. You can post a link using the command "linktext":link, so something like "google":http://www.google.com will get turned in to google. I may erase off-topic comments, or edit poorly formatted comments; I do this very rarely.