The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) recently handed down a decision [1] to deny the residents of West Queen West Triangle in Toronto the right to plan for the growth and sustainability of the artist community based there.

Active 18 [2] formed to oppose condos proposed for the site that did not take into consideration the surrounding neighbourhood, need for green space, or the historical and living importance of a heritage building on the site that houses about 80 artists and businesses. Active 18 were "YIMBY"s who are not afraid of development in their community, understanding the need for density to combat urban sprawl and smog from commuter traffic.

Not In My Backyard - or "NIMBY" - attitudes are what politicians have largely come to expect from the public. But the savvy, well-financed Active 18 group instead hired a lawyers and worked with committed architects and planners who advanced their own development plan for the area that included condos, but challenged the notion that they could simply be dropped in without any consideration for the spirit of the community.

Now the City is all up in arms about the decision and many residents and City Councillors are threatening that the OMB must be shut down. People have been saying that since it was first set up by Conservation Premier Mike Harris in 1993. Ontario is the only province to have an overseeing governing body on land-use disputes.

Bruce Livesy [3] writes: "The board's power is breathtaking. These unelected adjudicators can overturn the decisions of any Ontario municipality on land-use matters. And the OMB's word is usually final: the courts rarely hear appeals on its decisions." If developers don't agree with Council decisions, they simply appeal to the Board. And almost 40 percent of developers do just that.

But why would the province crack down so hard on land-use issues in metropolitan regions? Livesy quotes Myer Siemiatycki, a professor of politics at Ryerson Polytechnic University: "Land-use decisions have a major impact on economic development, and this Conservative government -- which is so reliant on campaign contributions from the development industry -- wants to keep its developer friends happy... One of the ways the province does this is to perpetuate an OMB stocked with its own favoured appointees who have a pro-growth and pro-corporate ideology."

Clever of the Tories, huh?

But there feels like some smoke-screening going on at 100 Queen St. Last week when Council met there was plenty of hand-wringing about the death of our "creative city" due to the OMB. "OMB Murders Bohemia" they claimed. And they may be right, but what about what the City itself does to murder bohemia? Two Councillors - Vaughan and Milcyn - spoke to this issue - asking the City to introduce its own planning growth strategies and artistic supplements, subsidies and incentives if it really cares about the fate of la vie boheme.

Then this morning in the Toronto Star I read Christopher Hume's urban affairs article [4] that echoed many of these same points. Gentrification means death to interesting communities all over the continent, but it feels especially gutting here in Toronto where a sort of banal lethargy can make even the most ethnically diverse, safe, affordable metropolis feel like Nowheresville.

There must be a million ideas cities can adapt to maintain neighbourhoods and to challenge the tyranny of ownership: what developers want, developers get: it's their land, after all.

Afterthought: here is a quote from FUSE magazine where Leah Sandals outlines some great ideas for improving the cultural lives of cities in her article "Supporting Creativity: But only for 12 hours?": "...Under-18 admission to the Georges Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris is always free, while for $7 a year, Montreal grants residents a special card that gets them 15 to 50 percent off admissions to museums, galleries, festivals and cinemas. Brooklyn's Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Cetnre preserves low-rent spaces for artists in a gentrifying neighbourhood. And the UK's Creative London provides a coherent voice to promote and advocate for the creative industries to forge connections between the many delivery agencies working across the city."

I find this inspiring and would love to find a group of people interested and willing to put together a proposal for the emerging Civic Engagement Office in Toronto to think of ways to rethink property rights in Toronto on the basis of creative entitlements...