Metro has now come out with its grand design, the purpose of its being. It is the development plan for the metropolitan area, a book of rules for the use of land in Winnipeg. It is no revolutionary document in that it doesn't make any startling changes in the profile of the city. But it can be of far-reaching significance in that it provides, for the first time, a healthy, integrated development for the entire metropolitan area.

It is a distillation of all past planning, into a blueprint for "orderly, economic and aesthetic growth." This is the master plan for growth in the city for the next 25 years, to be reviewed at five-year intervals. As one official calls it, "it is a perpetual 25-year plan" with periodical reviews to take into account any unforeseen trends or any experience which proves the plan to be wrong.

It has been produced on the premise that Winnipeg will reach a population of 900,000 by 1986 and land has been earmarked for this increase which will more than take care of residential and industrial growth.

Still missing from the plan are two vital ingredients to a healthy city — urban renewal and rapid transit — but these are promised later.

While it is largely a synthesis of past planning, nevertheless it is the first blueprint embracing all the city's components to ensure one hand knows what the other is doing.

Schools, sewer and waterworks systems, thoroughfares, people in their homes and at play, commerce and industry have all been designated in the scheme of things. This has been compiled through numerous surveys and consultation. For example, Metro researchers visited every home in Greater Winnipeg for an origin-destination survey to plan major thoroughfares.

Rules for the use of all land in the city may sound like a pretty arbitrary decision. But many of these uses have already been set in the past. There is no great change in acreage, but there are hundreds of small revisions in the use of land which will affect many people and investors.

For example, land just west of Sherbrook St., north of the General Hospital has been changed from residential to industrial. Industrial zoning, on the other hand, has been eliminated from either side of Donald St. South. land north of the beachline in Transcona has been changed from industrial to residential.

Armstrong point, in the bend of the Assiniboine River, has been designated a Density 2 area, allowing six to 12 dwellings per acre, or 23 to 36 persons. Armstrong Point is now zoned the first rating residential area, but Metro planners are taking into account the fact that some of the old fine homes have been converted to multiple family dwellings and that more apartment blocks will be built in this desirable area.

Such changes will no doubt arouse opposition from property owners, who will see a challenge to their private rights. But this is the design the planners have compiled for the common good, based on how the city is growing and how it should grow. The plan will be discussed at open hearings.

Metro is taking an approach never envisaged or possible before. In allocating industrial areas, for example, it does not apportion it to municipalities as a tax source.

In the past municipalities, have vied for industry, offering it concessions in location and taxation at the expense of proper planning. Metro planners take the view that tax revenues from industry must be applied to the entire area.

The plan is expected to reduce land speculation because it will show precisely where development will take place. For instance, land now designated as agriculture in the periphery of the city won't be used otherwise for years and will discourage trading.

On the other hand, areas indicated for early development may go up in value. However the fact that Metro has more than sufficient land set aside for industrial and residential development, will tend to curb rather than promote speculation.

The blueprint makes it easier for private developers and anyone who wants to invest money in the city. The detailed development plan will give the answers at a glance as to where the city is heading. Capital expenditures for services have been scheduled on a five-year program.

And all this is necessary when you consider that by 1986, the population will have increased by 80 percent and an additional 100,000 homesites required, ore than are now developed.