After two weeks of public hearings, a slew of questions of city administration, a handful of proposed amendments and healthy debate, Calgary city council has repealed citywide rezoning.

City councillors wrapped up the repeal process on April 8, 2026, with a vote to revert to the 11 pre-2024, prescriptive land uses, and a return to public hearings on each individual land use redesignation.

It also proposed changes to the R-CG land use to address some of the ongoing concerns around lot coverage, building heights, density calculations, contextual setbacks, removing zero lot lines, and dealing with parking.  

While the first reading was approved, and rezoning was repealed, councillors still had to mull potential amendments.

Later, despite several amendments being put forward, only one survived. It was an initial one from Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, which changed some of the parameters around the R-CG properties, eliminating contextual setbacks, density modifiers and the one limiting rowhouses to one primary building per lot. These were later brought back in a motion arising for further testing.

The second and third readings were also approved.

Citywide rezoning was a lightning rod issue for the back half of the last Calgary city council, and it turned into a big municipal election issue in some wards. That lingering promise of repeal was realized when Coun. Andre Chabot set the wheels in motion last December.

Councillors voted 12-3 to approve the first reading of a bylaw change to repeal citywide rezoning and return to the prior land uses. Couns. Nathan Schmidt, Myke Atkinson and Andrew Yule were opposed.

In his open on the issue, Coun. Chabot said he committed to at least bringing the item forward this term.

“We heard from a lot of members of the public, and received a lot of submissions, as far as written submissions, and I think the majority overall between the written and public submissions still is overwhelmingly in favour of us moving forward with this redesignation,” he said in council on Wednesday.

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean said that the citywide rezoning hasn’t done what was intended. Further, there were several unintended consequences.

“Blanket rezoning does not reduce the cost of building. It hasn’t sped up development timelines. It does not get homes built faster or cheaper,” he said.  

“What it has done, however, is divide communities. It has created uncertainty. It has eroded trust. It is attempted to fundamentally change the character of communities across our city without meaningful case-by-case consideration, and that is not how we build strong communities.”

Redevelopment strategy feels ‘extreme’: Coun. Clark

Ward 12 Coun. Mike Jamieson said that while it was clear the majority of speakers and submissions were in favour of repeal, there’s strong support for “thoughtful densification.”

“The path starts today with a full repeal and then taking time to develop a better approach, one that allows targeted densification with meaningful community input,” he said.

Ward 9 Coun. Harrison Clark said that as he knocked on doors during the 2025 campaign, he spent a lot of time with people talking about how they’ve built their lives in their respective communities.

“I’ve heard again and again over the course of this public hearing that our redevelopment strategy feels extreme, that it’s erasing a community identity that has taken generations to build, and that people who live here don’t feel they have a real say in what’s happening around them,” he said.

“What the public hearing has done is reveal the real-world impact of a planning strategy developed here on the fourth floor and applied across communities without earning their confidence or consent.”

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt said that too often, citizens speak of housing as though it’s pollution; that it needs to be relegated to places that are less desirable. He said that the decision should be about the Calgary six months from now and the Calgary six years from now.

He said that the policy needed a renovation, not a rebuild. Particularly to ensure that all Calgarians can find a home.

“There’s no system or policy perfect enough to manage the most personal thing in all of our lives, which is the place we call home now, or aspire to call home in our future,” he said.

“Our decision must come from more than campaign promises or a political calculus, more than what might set us up for re-election three-and-a-half years from today; our decision must be about everyone who participated in this public hearing, about everyone who lives in our wards.”

Does a repeal move the City of Calgary ‘Onward’?

Chris Davis, who represented the Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth organization, which firmly supported the repeal, said that they were feeling pretty good as a group about city council’s decision.

“I’m involved with a group that represents a much larger slice of the community. We’re happy that council really did listen,” he said.

“You never know how council is going to vote, and that’s a good thing, because that means they’re actually doing their job.”

Davis said with the repeal complete, the real work begins.

“I don’t think any of us is so naive as to think we don’t have to respond positively and effectively to density. It was all about how we get it,” Davis said.

“This is an opportunity now for all Calgarians to come together and work collaboratively to find solutions that not only respond to that notion of density, but also tackle meaningful issues like housing and hunger and how we look after the disadvantaged in the community.”

Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly said that he supported the repeal because citizens in his ward didn’t like the blanket approach, and it was not delivering the outcomes for them. He said the repeal can’t be the end of the conversation – it has to be the beginning.

“Repeal carries consequences, and those consequences deserve to be stated openly.

“In Ward 4, where population decline is already strained local services, this decision will affect our ability to provide safe, frequent, and reliable transit. It will influence whether neighbourhood schools can remain open, and without a clear, deliberate approach to supporting population growth, it will place additional pressure on property taxes while making the case for infrastructure investment in established communities more difficult.”

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule, who didn’t campaign on either repeal or keep citywide rezoning, said he went back and forth on the issue. The one thing that stuck with him was the City’s motto: “Onward.”

He asked whether a repeal moved the city forward. For his residents, it didn’t, Yule said.

“For me, I have to look at the interests of Ward 3, and this is not a fair deal for us on the fringes of the city. We’re just not spreading the tax burden across the city. This is pushing it to the outskirts,” he said.

“I just can’t support a full repeal until we find something better as a council, and we can do that. We have time. We just have to move onward.”

Changes to revert properties back to their pre-2024 zoning will happen by August, the City of Calgary has said.