A Special Policy Area (SPA) is an area, as outlined in the City of Niagara Falls Official Plan document, indicating specific policies for land use are in place due to a unique character and/or circumstance. This spatial data set contains polygons representing the Special Policy Areas (SPA) referenced in the LAND USE POLICIES section of the City of Niagara Falls Official Plan document. This data set should be considered as supplementary and supporting information to the policies outlined in of the Official Plan, and DO NOT form part of the Plan itself. Attributes in this dataset include the Special Policy Number which corresponds to the text of the Official Plan document (NUMBER) , and a unique identifier for records of the data set (SPA_ID).This layer is updated by GIS upon requests from Planning, as necessary, following the passing of amending by-laws..................................................................................................Schedule A to the Official Plan, Future Land Use, illustrates the guideline for future use of the lands within the City over a 20-year planning horizon. Excerpt from City's Official Plan (c.2019):LAND USE POLICIES establishes twelve (12) land use designations with preambles which highlight the intention of the land use designations and policies which describe permitted uses and various physical development guidelines. The land use designation for Section 10 prescribes that the policies of the Niagara Escarpment Plan, as amended from time to time, shall be applied to the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area. Unless otherwise specified, the policies of Parts 3, 4 and 5 of this Official Plan will not be applied to the lands within the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area. In addition there are certain special policy areas which because of unique character and/or circumstances will be subject to special policies. For more information, see: CITY OF NIAGARA FALLS OFFICIAL PLAN This data set is in WGS 1984 geographic coordinate system.
Open Data Quality Rating (Beta): 95.7/100(as of April 12, 2026)
Completeness
100.0
Validity
100.0
Recency
100.0
Uniqueness
100.0
Understandability
82.7
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