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Cities are living entities—they grow, evolve, and sometimes face the need for transformative change. Blanket re-zoning is one such change that the City of Calgary is exploring, and it has the power to redefine the city's landscape, presenting both opportunities and challenges. If you're a builder or other custom home adjacent service provider - or a future custom home owner yourself - and you're in or around Calgary, read on :)
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What is zoning?
Zoning is your land use bylaw and it's a legal document with a lot of verbiage in it. We're not going to get that detailed today, but specifically it outlines what you're allowed to or not allowed to do on your property.
What changed in Calgary on August 6th, 2024?
What happened in August was that most residential lots in the city of Calgary were re-zoned to a zoning called RCG. What that means is that on a standard residential lot, you can still do things like a house, a side-by-side duplex, secondary suites, and all that. But you can also now, in addition to all of those, do a townhouse or row house style building (multi-family) at the discretion of the community.
What's good about the change?
The city's intention by the bylaw modification is that they're trying to increase housing supply. And let's just add a quick side note on economics; putting in more houses ideally brings down the cost. One of the challenges in Calgary specifically is that, the demand is growing so fast that the supply just never seems to be able to catch up. The best case scenario, it stabilizes, right? And this could bring about a stabilization.
What's challenging about the change?
When you design multi-family housing, the reality is your building is going to be bigger than the little tiny house that was there. And as designers, we have two options. Either design it with the rest of the community in mind, or as a stand-alone building; and there's lots of really beautiful, intentional ways that you can design these buildings so they fit into the community. For example, recently we were hired to do a fourplex design in a community with mostly single family homes. And the design that we did, we actually designed it in a way that it very much felt like a single family home. To do that, one of the exercises that we went through in design was to do a shadow study. So, we took our client's lot and we said, "theoretically, if we were to put a single family home on it, with a detached garage, what type of shadow does that cast?" When you know that, and then design your fourplex, you can create a shadow impact that's actually very similar.
And, of course, we're increasing density. There's going to be more parking requirements and those kind of things. And those requirements still get distributed through multiple different departments in the city to get reviewed. I think that the concern is that you add more people to these communities and you add bigger buildings that are higher requirements for servicing, that that's going to have a strain on the systems. And whole to some degree that is probably true, people are moving here regardless. We've got to put them somewhere, right? What I think we need to understand is that once you start building multi-family, there becomes multiple layers of professional involvement; civil engineers, storm drainage reviews, etc. And if the city infrastructure can't handle it, the developer is required to pay money into a levy that the city then uses to upgrade the infrastructure. Which, as the infrastructure ages, can also be a benefit. Things like sidewalk repairs, new trees, light posts and that sort of stuff.
What are some of the myths floating around about this change?
One of the myths is that in every scenario you're going to end up with a monstrosity of a huge building right next to you. But within the land use bylaws, whether it's RCG or not, there's criteria that you have to meet for each neighborhood. Things like height restrictions, setback requirements, etc. Another one is that everyone just thinks that there's going to be a fourplex on every single lot in the in the city now because of this new zoning. That's just not true. What you COULD do is not the same as what people will LIKELY do.
Are there any additional processes in place that might prevent a multi-family build?
The short answer is yes. Even if somebody were to apply to do that type of building, there is still a discretionary review process that takes place not only within the city, but there's a community consultation process that happens where the community associations and the neighbors can all provide their comments on that particular development. So really, at the end of the day, just because it's zoned RCG, does not mean whatsoever that there's any guarantee of that approval. There are things called local area plans (LIP;s) in a lot of the communities in Calgary which layer on top of the zoning and it is also a document that needs to be followed. So, what the re-zoning has actually done has passed the discretionary aspect down to the communities to decide specifically what they want on those properties. Which keeps the communities in control and also speeds up the city timeframes.
How has the change impacted timelines?
Before the blanket rezoning, everyone was really familiar with the bylaw and how it operated, the approval processes, all of that. And so, the timelines were pretty consistent. However, with the blanket re-zoning, there was a huge volume of applications that came in as a result. And the reality is, the city on their end, and I think just industry as a whole, we're still trying to figure out. So it's hard to say.
What does the future look like?
Well, nobody can predict the future, obviously. But for our single family clients that are doing these beautiful custom homes, nothing really changes. There are some stricter rules which which will affect building heights and setbacks and some minor details. but nothing major has changed.
What were some nuances that might have been missed?
There are some pieces of conflicting information now between bylaws, so it's important to have someone on your build team who can interpret those correctly. Als, because of the change, development permit timelines continue to get longer and longer and longer, which, if the goal is to increase housing supply, is a little counterintuitive. But as that continues, they're going to find ways to remove some of the red tape.
What is the future of blanket rezoning?
You know, and this this is going to probably sound very controversial, but I think this is just the beginning of what we're going to see. I don't think that this is something that's going to really slow down in a sense, because, when you look at other markets, let's use Vancouver as an example, density needs just keep increasing. And there it's really interesting because it it was welcomed by the communities (in general). For example, Burnaby just experienced a recent blanket re-zoning and it was very well accepted by the community because it definitely created much needed housing.
The Judicial Review
On December 11th, 2024, there was a judicial review where a group of citizens got together trying to get the blanket rezoning reversed. The judge's ruling is going to come out mid January, but there are a couple different things that can happen. The first one is, nothing. The judge could rule there is no case and the re-zoning will stand. The other thing that could happen is that the judge decides to reverse the blanket re-zoning. And likely what will end up happening in that case is that they will re-categorize the current applications into different categories based on where they're at in the process. And then they give deadlines for that. So for example, they'll say something like, all the development permit applications that are currently in progress, those ones are going to be treated this way up to this certain date. The ones that have already been approved and maybe not released, those will be treated one way. And then those that are already in construction, we're going to treat them this way.
Something most people don't know...
In reality, nothing really changed with the re-zoning because there was already a mechanism in place that allowed someone to take a single property and rezone it to RCG and do something. And that was always based on their local area plans or discretion of council. So, to calm the fears, there's discretion.
For our developer friends...
On the developer side of things, it's not really any different. I really looked at it the whole time as politics, where the city is using these big words to do this and then they change the bylaw language and ultimately it's the exact same as it was.
If anyone has questions about the blanket re-zone or any of these specific zoning topics, definitely reach out. Since it's related to legal documents, it can get pretty technical. And, you know, our team is reading these things every day. It's one of those things where understanding what you're designing and what you can do is going to be very important. If you're looking at the custom home project in the Calgary area and you'd like either of these expert voices to take a look, simply email hello@phase1design.com to book an introductory video conference.
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