The city could be made up of 65 per cent green space if it goes ahead with the latest proposed draft of the Official Community Plan (OCP).

City planners unveiled the draft at a media briefing Monday afternoon before bringing it forward to begin adopting it as a bylaw at the evening's council meeting.

The latest draft comes after public consultation was done.

In the first draft of the revised document, which acts a guiding document in city planning over a 20-year span, the green space network plan showed green space taking up less than 60 per cent of space, city planner Mike Ellis told reporters.

The newest version shows a map that features 18 per cent of the city as designated development areas – land that has been or will be developed, another 17 per cent as future planning (changed from future development to be a more accurate reflection of what will be done) and finally the 65 per cent green space.

The move to bump up the amount of green space came out of consultations with the Ta'an Kwachan Council and Kwanlin Dun First Nation, which proposed designating parts of their land claim settlements as green space in the OCP, Ellis explained.

The expansion of green space, he continued, will help focus development in the city's core rather than going out to outlying areas.

"The goal is to develop more in the middle,” he said, adding that it's a positive step in ending sprawl and concentrating development.

New and revised policies also call for no net loss of wetlands and a retention of ecosystems in an effort to deal with climate change.

It also proposes to be clearer on ensuring there are mitigative measures taken when road or utility crossings cause a disturbance.

Those proposals come in response to the many comments the city received arguing for more clarity on roads and corridors going through environmental areas.

Other proposals in response to public concerns would see:

• a 500-metre buffer established between heavy industrial areas and residential site;

• initiatives to deal with potential infill developments in Riverdale, such as a transportation study;

• trail work, and so on;

• removing duplexes as a permitted use in country residential developments; and

• many map changes to clarify plans, including one that shows a 250-metre corridor for wildlife along McIntyre Creek and another showing the Whitehorse Copper expansion area as greenspace rather than country residential, which planners determined is not sustainable.

Those changes were made after the public consultation on the first draft.

Prior to that, officials spent much of 2009 getting input on the document with neighbourhood meetings, community cafés and sessions with stakeholder groups among the many events aimed at finding out what people want in the plan.

"It's the (public's) document,” Mayor Bev Buckway told reporters following Monday's meeting, as she voiced her hope that most of the issues have been hashed out.

"(It has had) pretty phenomenal public input,” she said.

Even if council votes in favour of passing first reading of the bylaw to adopt the plan, she added, there will still be another chance for people to let officials know what they think of the latest proposal.

"This is still just a draft format,” Ellis said of the updated document during the media briefing.

First reading would push the matter into a formal public hearing that would happen at the June 28 council meeting.

Depending on what comes out of that hearing and how council wants to proceed, yet another potential draft that would address those concerns could then come forward before second reading at the July 26 meeting.

The plan would then undergo a ministerial review at the territorial level into September.

Provided the review is done on time, third reading and adoption of the plan would then come forward on Sept. 27.