Official Community Plan Refresh

Draft Official Community Plan (OCP) Now Available for Review!

Langford's Official Community Plan sets the direction for future growth to 100,000 residents, guided by community input.

For the first time in over 16 years, the City of Langford is strategically updating its Official Community Plan (OCP). This refreshed and reimagined Plan outlines how and where the city will grow to address both current and future challenges while ensuring accountability, transparency, and follow-through on community objectives.

This refresh/rethink builds on the city’s strengths while introducing bold new ideas and modern approaches to shared challenges, including climate, housing affordability, equity, public health, and rising infrastructure costs – referred to as the “Five Crises”. Focused on implementation and outcomes, key sections of the OCP have been refined, reorganized, and consolidated to drive meaningful progress while making the best use of public time and resources.

Rather than planning for a fixed number of years with uncertain outcomes, the refreshed/reimagined OCP plans for a population of 100,000 residents. This approach offers the key advantage of focusing on what Langford needs to support that milestone, no matter how long it takes to get there. It’s an example of planning for outcomes, not timeframes; a best practice that keeps city growth strategies relevant over time.

How the Draft Official Community Plan Came Together

Public Input and Engagement
City of Langford staff led the development of this draft Official Community Plan (OCP) with valuable input from external experts and extensive community engagement. Public consultation was a key component of the process, ensuring that community voices directly influenced the Plan alongside in-depth research on current and future opportunities and challenges, a review of best practices, and technical analysis. To review the engagement process, please see the public engagement summaries in the document section of this project page.

Addressing Community Concerns
While there was broad support for the proposed vision and all of the associated “Big Ideas” for the Plan, some residents also raised concerns about potential overcrowding, traffic congestion, limited green spaces in certain areas, affordability, and financial impacts, including potential increases in property taxes. These concerns were carefully considered alongside technical analysis and expert recommendations in drafting the OCP.

As a result, the Plan takes a strategic approach, directing growth to the City Centre, Corridors, and Urban Centres; areas where existing infrastructure can support development, and where frequent transit and active transportation options, such as walking/rolling, and cycling, are most viable. This approach reflects the balance between accommodating growth, addressing community concerns, and applying expert guidance to ensure a sustainable and livable future for Langford.

Which Key Parts of the Current OCP Are We Keeping?

This draft OCP is based on the strong foundation provided by the 2008 OCP. Much of the policy intent has been retained, while consolidating, reorganizing, and clarifying repetitive or overlapping policies, incorporating current information, and highlighting the actions necessary to achieve the desired outcomes and targets.
More specifically, the following key policies of the 2008 OCP have been carried forward into the new draft:

• A sustainable and complete community is the vision and framework for all policies.
• Achieve a mode-share of 42% of all trips to be made by walking, rolling, cycling, and transit by 2038. This has been updated to align with the OCP outcome of 100,000 residents rather than a date.
• Implement a modal hierarchy to direct all transportation infrastructure improvements according to the following:

1. Pedestrians and movement with mobility aids
2. Cycling and micro-mobility
3. Public transit
4. Shared vehicles
5. Commercial vehicles.
6. Single-occupant vehicles

• Social community uses, such as parks, community gardens, and daycares, are permitted on public and private lands in all areas.
• A wide range of housing sizes, types, and tenures are enabled in residential and mixed-use areas.

The draft OCP “connects the dots” more deliberately and effectively between the intent of these existing policies and the proposed new Land Use and Growth Management Strategy.

Phase 1: Community Vision and Priorities

The first phase of engagement invited community members to share their vision for Langford’s future, along with their priorities and values related to key planning and growth management concepts. This public input was essential in shaping the plan’s direction. Participation was strong, with over 3,260 residents engaging through events, online surveys, and social media. This included:

• More than 600 in-person interactions at pop-up events
• 404 survey responses
• 3,260 visits to the project webpage on Let’s Chat Langford ([link to Phase 1 engagement summary])

The feedback gathered in this phase provided critical insight into the community’s aspirations and concerns, forming the foundation for the next stage of policy development.

Phase 2: Ideas Paper and Policy Development

Building on this initial input, the second phase of work focused on refining ideas into actionable policy directions. The Ideas Paper ([link to Ideas Paper]) was developed to connect community priorities with best practices and technical expertise, resulting in a set of Initially Preferred Options: policy ideas that aligned with both public feedback and expert recommendations for sustainable, high-quality city building.

Residents were again invited to participate, and their continued engagement helped refine and shape these policies. The second phase saw:

737 survey submissions to four surveys from 347 individuals

• Attendance by approximately 85 people at an open house
• Social media outreach reaching thousands more ([link to Phase 2 engagement summary])

Key Themes and Community Priorities

Throughout each step of the engagement process, residents expressed strong support for the overall vision, “Big Ideas” and preferred outcomes that were proposed, and that now have been integrated into this draft OCP. Community input reinforced several key priorities, including:

• Directing growth to already built-up areas rather than expanding outward
• Expanding transportation options to improve mobility choices across the city
• Establishing clear urban design expectations to support livable urban density
• Creating broader public space policies, including urban plazas and transformed streets
• Improving access to amenities such as shops, cafés, and green spaces within neighborhoods

The strong alignment between public feedback, expert analysis, and best practices underscored the importance of community participation in shaping Langford’s future.

The City of Langford has launched Phase 2 of its Official Community Plan (OCP) refresh/rethink and invites you to participate in a survey about the ideas gathered in Phase 1 public engagement.

In Phase 1 of public engagement, the priorities and feedback from the community were identified. The City has now released an “Ideas Paper” that takes what we heard from the community, and connects that feedback to important new ideas and approaches to high quality city-building. These ideas are referred to as “initially preferred options” throughout the paper.

Phase 2 public engagement aims to assess public support or concerns early on to allow for adjustments before the draft OCP is finalized.

Your feedback will help determine whether these ideas should be developed further and included in the draft OCP, which will be shared for additional input during Phase 3.

The survey is open until November 20^th.

OCP Refresh Launch: July 2024

Langford is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. Can we make Langford the BEST growing city in Canada? Yes, we can – with a refreshed Official Community Plan!

For background information on the project and various topics related to the OCP Refresh click here.

An official community plan shapes how a city will grow and what kind of place it will be. It is aspirational and practical. It impacts the places we call home, how we get around, what future development will look like and where it will be.

Your City Council, together with the community, local planning staff, and urban planning experts are delivering a refreshed plan for the future that will address:

• The needs of a population of 100,000 people
• Housing affordability
• Better Transportation, land use and infrastructure
• Public health and social equity
• Climate change planning and prevention
• And more!

To learn more about the OCP refresh, Please view the FAQ and Timeline sections on this page. If you would like to receive project updates, including information about upcoming public engagement opportunities, please register with Lets Chat Langford.