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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
Depends. there are only 2 municipalities achieving the 40% rate in the places to grow act IIRC, and those are Kitchener and Toronto. Markham is slightly below it however, I believe. But while most municipalities are failing, Toronto almost entirely makes up for it. Its taking in roughly 25-30% of annual population growth in the GTA, and its 100% intensification. While I wouldn't be surprised if the Greater Golden Horseshoe is achieving 40% overall, most areas are failing and failing miserably. Some municipalities like Brampton seem to be barely making an effort.
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I imagine Markham is doing well simply because of the new "downtown" developments and infill around city hall. Not that those are a bad thing, but they were easy targets for intensification. Right now it seems that most intensification outside the City of Toronto is based on having readily available large vacant lots (usually along arterials) well within the urban boundary.
New developments in Markham aren't too bad either, using a new urbanist model and forcing retail to be integrated. Most of this retail is vacant or subpar now, but I think it's important to be included. It's easy to forget that even on major streets like Bloor the retail fronting the street was built up to a decade after the residential areas. If you look at old fire insurance plans / aerial photos you can see vacant lots fronting most major streets in areas that were "new" at the time.
Brampton does suck at intensification, but the new developments around Mount Pleasant have a lot of promise. The area right beside the GO station looks quite nice, has retail, and is very dense for a suburb. Burlington is exceeding the target I think, but like Toronto it has virtually no greenfield land left (think there is only a few hundred ha.). I imagine Mississauga is well over the threshold as well, as it's also down to basically no greenfield, and much of what's left will be used for employment.