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Strategic Plan

What does it mean for a city to move? To see its people belong and connect? To prosper? To become green? Those are the pillars that are helping Mississauga grow and succeed as a 21st century city.

The City of Mississauga’s Strategic Plan remains our largest community engagement project to date.

In 2009, we heard thoughts and ideas about how we can make Mississauga a great place to be from more than 100,000 residents. This feedback formed our Strategic Plan.

The Plan guides us on our journey to make Mississauga a world-class city.

Our Strategic Plan incorporates your ideas, dreams, and vision of the great possibilities in our city’s future in these areas that matter most to you.

This document will help guide decision-making, set priorities and focus the City’s efforts on those specific areas of strategic change that will make our Vision for Our Future Mississauga a reality.

City Council is committed to making Mississauga the city in which you can continue to be proud to live and work. But Council and City staff can’t do it alone. We’re counting on you – our residents, community and business leaders, partners and stakeholders.

Take an active part in helping our City achieve our bold new strategic vision by continuing to participate in our City’s strategic initiatives as they move forward.

The Plan will ensure we make the right choices as we continue to build our community by expanding our transit system, creating walkable neighbourhoods, developing innovative live-work neighbourhoods and building great public spaces – the kind of sustainable, exciting urban environment our residents say they want.

The Action Plan is meant to be fluid, a work in progress. These actions reflect our best thinking today. Some require additional research before we commit to implementing them, and we need to do more work to identify detailed targets. As we continue the conversation with our community while implementing the Plan, we’ll monitor all the actions and may modify some.

It’s important to note that the actions aren’t ‘one size fits all’. Our neighbourhoods are distinctive, so not every action will apply to every area. As well, some actions will be quick wins; others are more challenging, and require a longer time horizon to plan, fund and execute. Some actions we can do alone; others require us to partner in new and innovative ways, with other organizations, levels of government and institutions.

This Plan captures the collective ideas of the community. All of our stakeholders will have numerous opportunities to continue to be part of the process, take on an action they feel passionate about, and help make it happen.

Strategic Pillars for Change

The Strategic Plan is our municipality’s highest level policy document, created to shape and direct strategic decision-making for our city. Drawing on the Drivers for Change, City Council, advisory groups, City staff and the community developed the Vision Statement and five Strategic Pillars for Change.

Every action that the City has committed to is organized under one of the Pillars for Change, represented by a symbol. Each Pillar has its own unique direction statement and principle, along with specific strategic goals to ensure the vision is achieved.

Direction – Our Future Mississauga is a city where people can get around without an automobile, and where transit will directly influence and shape the form of the city. Transit will be a desirable choice that connects people to destinations, and will underpin an environmentally responsible, inclusive, vibrant and successful city.

Principle – Mississauga is a city that values clean air and healthy lifestyles through the promotion of transit as a preferred, affordable and accessible choice.

Strategic goals

Develop environmental responsibility – to contribute to environmental responsibility by reducing private automobile use and developing compact mixed-use development.

Connect our city – to contribute to a vibrant, successful city by connecting communities within Mississauga and within the Greater Golden Horseshoe to support a 24-hour city.

Build a reliable and convenient system – to make transit a faster and more affordable alternative to the automobile, one that is frequent, clean, safe, reliable and convenient, with a transit stop within walking distance of every home and an intricate web of higher order transit.

Increase transportation capacity – to add capacity to the transportation system through strategic investments in transit, additional links in the street network and active mobility choices.

Direct growth – to direct growth by supporting transit-oriented development policies and deliberate civic actions.

Direction – Our Future Mississauga is a city where people can spend their entire lives – where teenagers want to be; where young professionals choose to locate; where immigrants are welcomed and their cultures become a visible part of the city’s fabric; and where people can age in place gracefully.

Principle – Mississauga is a city that thrives on its social and cultural diversity.

Strategic goals

Ensure affordability and accessibility – to provide a range of affordable and accessible housing, transit and service options.

Support aging in place – to provide alternative housing types, designs and tenures in each neighbourhood.

Attract and retain youth – to create opportunities for enterprise, cultural and artistic destinations and expression.

Attract post-secondary institutions – to be an internationally recognized centre of higher learning, with a range of post-secondary educational opportunities.

Nurture diverse cultures – to provide more cultural exchange, understanding and opportunity for small-scale entrepreneurialism.

Integrate places of religious assembly – to build upon the synergies of places of religious assembly to create complete communities where cultural diversity can become reflected in the physical form of the city.

Direction – Our Future Mississauga is a beautiful, sustainable city with safe neighbourhoods that support a strong, connected and vibrant community – a place where all can live, work and prosper. People can play as a child, walk to meet a friend, fall in love, raise a family and grow old.

Principle – Mississauga is a city that nurtures a unique quality of life within each neighbourhood, where residents value the beauty and variety of the natural environment, engage in active transportation and support a rich, healthy and prosperous social and cultural mosaic through all stages of the life cycle.

Strategic goals

Develop walkable, connected neighbourhoods – to develop compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods that will give residents the ability to engage safely in all aspects of their everyday lives, within walking distance and easy access. Evaluate all development and infrastructure projects against a test of “pedestrian-first.”

Build vibrant communities – to link urban areas and neighbourhoods that offer commercial, social, artistic, cultural, civic and recreational experiences accessible to all.

Create great public spaces – to provide opportunities for every-one to enjoy great parks, plazas and unique natural environments.

Celebrate our community – to promote our past, take pride in our diversity, get excited about the future, and celebrate our uniqueness and innovation through art and culture.

Provide mobility choices – to provide all with the choice to walk, cycle and use transit or active modes of transportation in all seasons, because it is convenient, connected, desirable and healthy.

Build and maintain infrastructure – to deliver infrastructure in a sustainable way.

Nurture “villages” – to promote “village” main streets as destinations, not simply places to pass through.

Maintain a safe city – to actively maintain Mississauga as the safest large city in Canada.

Create a vibrant downtown – to develop a vibrant downtown that will be the civic and cultural soul of the city, as well as a strong economic centre.

Direction – Our Future Mississauga is a global hub of creative and innovative activity where talent and business thrive.

Principle – Mississauga is a city that values a strong global business future, fostering a prosperous and sustainable economy that attracts and grows talent.

Strategic goals

Develop talent – to be an international destination rich in global and local talent, including post-secondary education, creative enterprise and foreign-trained professionals who can realize their potential.

Attract innovative business – to be a dynamic, urban environment that is the preferred location for innovative, creative and knowledge-based businesses and emerging industries.

Meet employment needs – to provide the infrastructure and network of services and opportunities that business requires to thrive.

Strengthen arts and culture – to foster arts and culture as a key contributor to attracting talent, providing quality of life and supporting creative businesses.

Create partnerships for innovation – to leverage opportunities with colleges, universities, centres of excellence, research institutions and cultural institutions to foster innovation.

Direction – Our Future Mississauga is a city that co-exists in harmony with its ecosystems, where natural areas are enhanced, forests and valleys are protected, the waterfront connects people to Lake Ontario, and communities are nurtured so the future generations enjoy a clean, healthy lifestyle.

Principle – Mississauga is a city that values its shared responsibility to leave a legacy of a clean and healthy natural environment.

Strategic goals

Lead and encourage environmentally responsible approaches – to lead and promote the utilization of technologies and tactics to conserve energy and water, reduce emissions and waste, improve our air quality, and protect our natural environment.

Conserve, enhance and connect natural environments – to be responsible stewards of the land by conserving, enhancing and connecting natural environments.

Promote a green culture – to lead a change in behaviours to support a more responsible and sustainable approach to the environment, that will minimize our impact on the environment and contribute to reversing climate change.

Reports on the Plan

We’re committed to tracking and reporting on the progress of our Strategic Plan. Our success is measured by the energy and enhancements we see, feel and hear around us.

Annual progress reports track our growth as we continue to achieve our strategic goals.

As of 2017, the annual Progress Report will be integrated into the City’s Business Plan and Budget. The Business Plan and Budget’s Executive Summary will provide an overview of our annual priorities, while each of the City’s Service Areas will report on how they are advancing the City’s Strategic Plan.

Past progress reports remain available on this page.

Within the Strategic Plan, each Strategic Pillar for Change is connected to specific action items which will propel the Plan forward. These key action items include key indicators, targets, actions and funding options for each Pillar.

The Strategic Plan will come alive through the work that’s created through these key actions.

The Progress Report is an annual report on the activities, projects and plans that are bringing the Strategic Plan to life.

Download current and archived versions of the Progress Report here:

Within the Strategic Plan, each Strategic Pillar for Change is connected to specific action items, outlined in the Action Charts here, which will propel the Plan forward:

Background of the Plan

Like every forward-thinking municipality, the City of Mississauga needs to confront the challenges, embrace the opportunities, and capitalize on the assets that will allow us to continually grow. We need to think about how we can develop in a dynamic and sustainable way, in every respect – socially, culturally, economically, physically, recreationally, and environmentally. And we need to create a workable plan to help us achieve our collective vision.

In June 2007, Council initiated a project that will help Mississauga to do just that. It was called Our Future Mississauga, and it was designed to be a conversation – the most comprehensive conversation ever held in the city.

This conversation has allowed individuals representing all parts of the city and all aspects of city life – all interests, ages, geographic areas, socio-economic groups, cultural backgrounds, and ranges of experiences – to share their hopes and dreams for the city.

Although Council, City leadership and staff contributed greatly to the process, Our Future Mississauga reflects the ideas and vision of the people who live and work here.

This civic conversation was divided into five phases, each building on and informing the next. The first three – Reconnaissance, Inspiration and Vision – captured the initiatives and innovative thinking already underway in Mississauga and gathered literally thousands more ideas. This led to phase four, Direction, where we distilled the common themes heard during the outreach and consultations into 18 Drivers for Change. These, in turn, formed the basis of phase five, Plan: creating a Vision for the city and updating our Strategic Plan.

A comprehensive Community Engagement and Directions Report, released in June 2008, summarizes the process.

You can see videos, reports and presentations, event photos and more from our archived website that started the conversation, and the following background documents:

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