Urban Design Guidelines

Design Guidelines

Design guidelines are a set of design statements to guide land development to achieve a desired level of design quality for the elements of the physical environment. They outline and illustrate how the city's urban design goals and objectives will be achieved.

Design guidelines may be developed for certain types of building forms, land uses, streetscapes, streets or specific areas in the city. Council-adopted design guidelines are utilized in the review and evaluation of development applications or projects initiated by the city.

The City of Burlington's urban design guidelines reflect our commitment to a high standard of design.

Mid-Rise Building Guidelines
Share your feedback on a draft of the Mid-Rise Building Guidelines - November 2018
View existing Design Guidelines

Mid-Rise Building Guidelines

As the city grows, Burlington will continue to receive applications for all sizes of developments, including mid-rise buildings. To help evaluate these applications, the City of Burlington is developing Mid-Rise Building Guidelines.

What are mid-rise buildings?
Mid-rise buildings are bigger in scale than houses but smaller than towers and have a good relationship to the street. This means that while the walls of a mid-rise are tall enough to provide lots of usable space inside the building, they are low enough to let the sun in and open the view to the sky from the street. A well-designed and placed mid-rise building should also support a comfortable pedestrian environment and make the street come alive by lining the sidewalk with doors and windows that house things like stores, restaurants, services and community uses.

The height of mid-rise buildings varies. In Burlington, mid-rise buildings range between five and 11 storeys. Mid-rise buildings may contain a single use, like an office or residential apartment, but usually contain a mix of uses, which may include things like retail, office, community services, and residential all in the same building.

What are Mid-Rise Building Guidelines?
Burlington is creating design guidelines for mid-rise buildings. These guidelines will be used by city staff to evaluate development applications where mid-rise buildings between five and 11 storeys are proposed.

Feedback from the public is needed to help shape the guidelines which will be presented to Burlington City Council in early 2019.

The mid-rise building guidelines will address things like:

• building use, e.g. retail, commercial, residential
• building step backs from street wall to allow for sunlight and sky views
• street level features, e.g. sidewalks in front of buildings, trees, benches.

The mid-rise building guidelines do not outline where mid-rise buildings can be located in the city. This is determined by the city's new Official Plan and the Zoning Bylaw. 

Why are mid-rise building guidelines important?
As the Burlington’s population grows over the next 50 years, new business and residential growth will be accommodated in the areas around the city’s major transit stations (called mobility hubs) in the form of higher density developments, including tall and mid-rise buildings. These buildings will play an important role in how the city will feel and look.

When development applications for mid-rise buildings are submitted to the city, the design guidelines will be used to evaluate the applications and ensure the proposal meets the city’s urban design standards.

Draft of Mid-Rise Building Guidelines now ready for review

Thank you to those who attended one of the City of Burlington’s Mid-Rise Building Guidelines open houses on Aug. 22 and 30, 2018 and/or completed the mid-rise building guidelines online survey. We appreciate your feedback.

Based on the feedback gathered, a draft of Mid-Rise Building Guidelines for the City of Burlington is now ready for review.

View the draft Mid-Rise Building Guidelines

Tell us what you think
Please review the draft guidelines and share your feedback in one of the following ways:

Drop-in open house

North Burlington
Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018
6 to 8 p.m.
Mountainside Community Centre – Community Room 2, 2205 Mt. Forest Dr.

South Burlington
Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018
6 to 8 p.m.
City Hall – Atrium, 426 Brant St.

Online
Not able to attend an open house event? Share your feedback online at www.getinvolvedburlington.ca

Email
Please send your feedback to todd.evershed@burlington.ca.

Your feedback will help city staff to further refine the guidelines before they are presented to City Council for consideration in early 2019.

What We Heard - August 2018

Based on feedback gathered from the online survey and the public open houses in August 2018, members of the public have told us they value the following when it comes to mid-rise design:

• Mid-rise building designs where upper levels have large stepbacks from the building at street level. The stepbacks make the buildings feel less imposing for pedestrians at street level.
• Taller ground floor with larger commercial units.
• Outdoor patios that are located above the podium.
• No driveways, parking or garage entrances along the front of the building.

When it comes to design features of mid-rise buildings, participants ranked the following items, from most important to least:

1. Street level features, e.g. sidewalks, benches, trees
2. How the building fits in with buildings around it, e.g. houses and neighbourhoods
3. How the building steps back from the street at upper levels to allow for sunlight and sky views at street level
4. Height of building in relation to street width
5. Building uses, e.g. commercial or residential

Other top design features identified, included:

• Parking
• Green features, e.g. green roofing
• Landscaping
• Common outdoor space
• Architectural features

View the presentation from the open house 

For more information, please email todd.evershed@burlington.ca

Completed Guidelines

 View other existing Design Guidelines