The Government of Alberta is mandating that Calgary maintains its pre-2024 city zoning bylaw and is directed to review its land use bylaws to develop a balanced approach to density.

Premier Danielle Smith, along with Minister of Municipal Affairs Dan Williams, made the announcement in Edmonton, noting 2024 bylaw changes in both Calgary and Edmonton that became known as “blanket rezoning,” according to Premier Smith.

“From the outset, many of our residents expressed concerns about the potential impact on parking availability, traffic, utility capacity, including water and wastewater infrastructure, and whether local roads and other infrastructure could keep pace with growth,” she said.

“Calgary has since acknowledged those concerns and demonstrated that it is possible to increase housing supply while also taking into account the practical realities of neighbourhood infrastructure and service capacity.”

While the tenor of the conference was directed at Edmonton, where broad infill rules still exist, Calgary’s new land use bylaw will have to follow a framework delivered by the province.

The City of Calgary will be expected to create an overlay identifying lands restored to previous low-density zones. Edmonton has three months to make changes to its current land use bylaws.

The new approach, according to the province, will set provincewide expectations that established area development will be appropriately scaled, supported by adequate utilities and water infrastructure and responsive to local conditions.

Calgary repealed citywide rezoning earlier this year, with Aug. 4 being the final implementation date. The city is also in the middle of its Calgary Plan delivery, a long range city growth plan, which was pushed off to early 2027.

After that, an overhaul of Calgary’s Land Use Bylaw is expected.

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt said the province’s intrusion into the city’s current land use review shows a lack of understanding on how municipal policy works.

“I guess to me, this feels like the cart before the horse. We’re in the middle of a new draft of the Calgary Plan, which we need before we make a new zoning bylaw,” he said.

“They are just directing us to do something without actually truly understanding what it is that these massive policy updates are set to achieve.”

Blanket rezoning ‘unfair and inappropriate’: Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth

Rusty Miller, a member of the group Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth, a citizen-led advocacy group who fought against Calgary’s citywide rezoning rules, said that the province’s edict won’t make a practical difference for Calgary. With rezoning already appealed, the upzoning rules have already been limited.

“In that regard, the province’s stance on curbing ‘blanket’ rezoning—the practice of automatically granting high-density development rights across entire cities or neighbourhoods without site-by-site review—is appropriate,” Miller wrote in an email response.

“CFTG actively opposed the original bylaw because it allowed increased density ‘as-of-right’ without following the traditional planning process, which protects a property owner’s right to be notified of zoning changes. Ultimately, the issue relates to the approval mechanism rather than low or high-density zoning itself.”

CFTG member Patricia McCunn Miller said that the provincial rules give the City of Calgary the opportunity to honour the letter and spirit of the repeal without reintroducing citywide rezoning through the “back door” of the Calgary Plan or Land Use Bylaw.

“The Premier’s announcement gives Calgary an opportunity to reset its approach,” she said.

“City council should take the time to work with individual communities to develop thoughtful, balanced plans that accommodate growth while respecting neighbourhood character and infrastructure capacity.”

Provincial decisions on growth come without thought to the municipal impact: Schmidt

Schmidt said that one thing that’s often lost in these growth conversations is the bigger issues municipalities are struggling with – infrastructure, service delivery and financial health.

“All of those things are suffering. There’s clear evidence that tells us that the way that we’ve been building makes those things harder to accomplish,” he said.

“What this will end up doing is we have to continue to rely on new growth at our fringes, and that that is something that puts additional strain on our ability to support infrastructure to renew infrastructure to deliver services to everybody.”

Minister Williams, upon getting a similar question during the news conference, said that it was a false dichotomy to connect outward growth with greater taxpayer expense.

“If the only way to do density is to destroy the quality of life of neighbourhoods and neighbours that have been established there, then I think that we’ve got it wrong,” he said.

“I just refuse to believe that that is the only path forward. I have confidence in Edmontonians and that council, and in Albertans, to find a better path. I think that it will require a tough conversation, a bit of vision and creativity, but I’m here for that.”

Ultimately, for Schmidt, it’s another in a long list of provincial interventions – municipal library functions, bike lanes, ability to do photo radar, contributions to low-income transit passes, and now planning and development — that concern him about the pattern of democracy at play.  

“There’s just the list of things that we spend a lot of time and effort as municipal governments working with our constituents every day, and then the rug is being pulled from under our feet while those are mid process,” he said.

He made the governance link to a drop in popularity due to the Oct. 19 referendum.

“As we get closer to the referendum, there’s going to be more stuff that’s going to be a surprise because they need to divert attention away from something that has been clearly a massive loss for their popularity.”