On October 4-5, 2022, City Council heard from 73 speakers and deliberated amendments to the existing land use district bylaw for rowhouse (i.e. Residential – Contextual Grade R-CG) and a new bylaw for a new medium density housing form (i.e. stacked townhouse, rowhouse, courtyard townhouse, and others) to allow for innovative “missing middle housing” expected in Calgary’s established communities.
The proposed land use bylaw amendments were approved in a 9-6 Council vote; I voted against for reasons outlined here. I did not feel that the proposed amendments had enough technical nuance to account for the uniqueness (i.e. character, heritage, culture) of each community. I also believed that The City’s Administration did not fully engaged citizens prior to bringing forward these proposed changes. As the Ward 7 Councillor, I will always advocate for Calgarians because they have a great wealth of lived experiences and knowledge to shape the rules that are approved by Council.
Currently, the North Hill Communities are the only communities that have an approved LAP. An LAP provides definitive locational criteria for H-GO. In communities without an LAP, I advocated to restrict H-GO to one of the 200m from a City-defined Main Street or Activity Centre, 400m from a Bus rapid Transit stop, or 600m from an LRT station within the Centre City and Inner-City area as classified in Calgary's long term land use and mobility plans buffer areas with early community consultation of where the Neighbourhood Connector and Neighbourhood Flex urban form categories could be considered. The categories are typically where a bus transit line or higher traffic volumes exist; not in quieter low residential areas where a Neighbourhood Local urban form category would apply (this is 90% of residential areas). This rejected unanimously by City Council unfortunately as the will was to allow the market to define the locations. While my proposed amendment was unsuccessful, I will continue to listen, learn, and advocate for balanced outcomes for Ward 7. Click to read more.
