The Policy Plan and the Governance Manual have a combined 270 policies, said Blum. The policy plan is the city's General Plan. Its components are land use, mobility, community design, economics, an environmental impact report, safety, social resources, housing as well as parks and recreation.

Breaking from tradition, the city decided to take the plan online. By switching to the Web, it allows the city to keep the document updated.

In the past, any time the city made changes to the general plan, it would have to make sure all of existing copies were replaced to reflect the changes.

As "groundbreaking" as the Ontario Plan may be, it is a characterization, honing a direction that has been established for the past decade, Devereaux said.

The document will provide a vision for the council for the next decade, but it's not a departure of their direction in the past, Devereaux said.

The Ontario Plan outlines how the city will grow in the future. Housing in the city is expected to increase from more than 45,000 units to 104,000 in 30 years. The population is expected to double from 173,000 to 360,000 people.

Jobs in the city will go from 103,394 to 326,000, said Brian Judd, vice president of community planning and design for the Planning Center.

Build-out will be mostly for intense urban uses. All areas will be walkable and designed with the pedestrian in mind, he said.

Office-oriented jobs will be the focus of the build-out in the plan, Judd said.

What also makes the plan special is that the city will be able to monitor public feedback "to make sure it's meeting its growth," he said.

Discussions with city officials about going Web-based started about five years ago, Bell said.

The final product, which was adopted by the council on Wednesday, turned out better than he originally planned, he said.

"Most plans are not useful in the real world," Bell said. "What we have here is not a book but a tool for making sound and powerful decisions."

Bell, who has been in the planning profession for 50 years, called the plan the best program he has ever been involved in.

In 2005, the city realized its general plan from 1992 had reached its limit of "usefulness and needed to be updated," Blum said. At that point, there were two general plans as a result of the 1998 New Model Colony general plan that was created, he said.

"The New Model Colony plan created inconsistencies with the city plan as a whole," he said.

Three years ago, the revision process began, and the city knew it did not want to do just a traditional approval of a general plan.

"The city came up with a policy-driven and not programs-driven plan," Blum said. "Greg was the driving force to redoing the general plan process."

The City Council's governing and leadership provided the framework for the plan, he said.

From there, public meetings were held and the Planning Center, an expert in development for the region and county, was brought on as a consultant.

Residents also expressed their views, which also helped influence the plan.

Dave Bartlett, vice president of Brookfield Homes, said he wanted to show his support to the city not only as a developer, builder, and member of the city but as an investor.

He encouraged the city to continue to keep the public involved in the planning process.

"The vision will be shared, and working together, we can make it in the form of a complete community," Bartlett said.

As the council was giving its final review Wednesday, Blum outlined new changes in the plan since members had last seen it several months ago.

The first being that language on low-income housing needed to be clarified with the state Housing and Community Development Department.

Second, the city has been negotiating with the state Attorney General's Office on the plan for the past seven to eight months. The attorney general was asking for stronger language in relation to greenhouse gas emissions.

The last was agreeing to zone the east side of Magnolia Avenue as rural residential, after discussions with residents of REAL Ontario.

All of the changes were approved by the council.

Councilman Jim Bowman, who called the plan revolutionary, said the Attorney General has even recognized it as being "unique and far-reaching."

"We're going to continue to do the best for Ontario and for the future and that's what this plan is all about," Mayor Paul Leon said.

To view the Ontario Plan, visit www.ontarioplan.org.