How can growing Canadian cities shrug off their aging, restrictive zoning bylaws to build vibrant, healthy, unsegregated communities while limiting sprawl? Experts say Edmonton has the answer.
The city set “an excellent precedent” for local governments across Canada in January when it implemented its new zoning bylaw, said panelists at a recent webinar hosted by Climate Caucus. And one key to enabling it was a large-scale community engagement process that started over four years ago, in 2020. This crucial step was needed to gain buy-in from many of Edmonton’s roughly million residents to overhaul stagnated zoning from the 1960s that was first drafted for a population of 300,000.
Through its Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative, new city-wide changes will gently increase density and are expected to help Edmonton welcome one million more residents by 2065, and house at least half of them within its boundaries as planned.
Put simply, the new zoning is about “more housing everywhere,” said Travis Pawlyk, acting manager of development and services for the city’s Urban Planning and Economy Department, during a webinar where he shared lessons from implementing the bylaw. In Edmonton’s once single-family post-war suburbs, “as of right” developers can “put up to eight units on every single one of those spots,” Pawlyk said.
The city also streamlined its 125 different land uses down to 51—with the newer and wider categories expected to facilitate a more convenient, walkable city with shops and amenities built near homes. Edmonton’s vision : “Next time you run out of milk, you won’t have to get in your car.”
“We need to make deliberate choices around urban intensification, changing our settlement pattern to integrate mass transit and urban development to create those mixed use and pedestrian-friendly communities,” Pawlyk said. By limiting sprawl, these choices also lead to greater protection of natural ecosystems and biodiversity.
The new bylaw cuts the number of standard city zones from 46 to 24, reducing the need to rezone for future development, Pawlyk added.
“We’re young, ambitious, and building something extraordinary here,” he said. The city is booming as Canada’s fifth-largest economy, with a housing market 20% more affordable than Calgary’s, 2½ times more affordable than Toronto’s, and three times more affordable than Vancouver’s.
“Keeping Edmonton affordable and prosperous and making it climate resilient will require growing differently, growing with intent,” Pawlyk added. Zoning that is “out of date” and doesn’t reflect the needs of a modern city and its population will block resilience and prosperity.
Reaching Zoning ‘Tipping Points’
Bylaw renewal requires dedicated focus through “multiple years and multiple efforts,” Pawlyk said. For Edmonton, the process started back in 2010 with a Municipal Development Plan that set a target of 25% infill in existing neighbourhoods. Infill levels stood at 15 to 18% at the time.
The city introduced a series of regulatory and policy changes to meet that 25% target, including moves to allow the subdivision of 50-foot lots into two 25-foot “skinny” houses and permits for “garage suites” in 2015. Both measures resulted in added density within Edmonton’s base residential zones.
In 2018, Edmonton eliminated single-family zoning through regulatory changes to allow duplexes and semi-detached homes in all residential zones. that laid the groundwork for a focus on the “missing middle” in 2019, with three- to six-story builds given the nod.
Pawlyk said the city also made efforts to smooth the building process, including “a little bit more flexibility in terms of setbacks, and height.”
Then in 2020, in a Canadian first, Edmonton removed its minimum parking requirements. Pawlyk called that a “tipping point” regulatory change that felt seismic at the time.
“We had an application for an affordable housing building which required X amount of parking stalls, and the only place to put it was underground,” he recalled. “The builders ended up spending a bunch of their grant money building a very fancy parkade underground that nobody parks in.”
That experience, coupled with the previous decade of policy advances and deepening anxieties over land scarcity created, “that flash in the plan to change the rules,” Pawlyk said.
That year also saw the declassification of affordable and supportive housing as a separate use class. Now those projects can move forward as quickly and smoothly as any other residential build.
Keeping Equity Front and Centre
Edmonton’s initiative had four components: the “user-friendly” bylaw aligned with the new policy direction; city-wide rezoning to match the new rules; technology updates to improve user experience; and implementation, which “doesn’t usually get the time it deserves,” Pawlyk said.
Ensuring a “smooth transition to the new zoning bylaw through education, training, and resources, both internally and externally, was a large undertaking” for Edmonton.
To draft the actual bylaw, Edmonton combined public feedback “with research into municipal best practices, development trends, and new and emerging state policy.”
Building an equitable Edmonton was a priority, with user-based regulations replaced by genuinely land-based ones, Pawlyk said. He explained that under the old zoning bylaw, regulations were really user-based in ways that “targeted certain populations and social demographics.” Under the new law, an affordable housing unit and a market unit look the same, with the identity of those living in a particular home irrelevant to land use questions.
The update also prioritizes inclusivity, with accessible language throughout and fewer, more enabling and inclusive zones.
Consulting Early And Often
“Involving Edmontonians in developing the zoning bylaw was critical to its success,” said Pawlyk, noting that the city did not follow the typical trajectory where “all of the feedback comes at the end when the project in question is most tangible.”
“Getting people excited about something that isn’t exactly dinner table conversation four years out was difficult,” he added. But Edmonton managed it, using a three-stage process which involved podcasts, informal chats between public and planners, videos, standard public engagement at open houses, and online engagements.
Phase One (Research and Foundations, October 2018 to November 2020) had nearly 700 people sharing feedback through 15 pop-up events, eight workshops, and an online survey in the first 10 months. Over the latter half of 2020, around 4,000 Edmontonians viewed 12 discussion papers and offered more than 400 comments in online surveys. The city also conducted information sessions and industry and community-based meetings, many of them focused on equity.
Phase Two (Develop and Build, February 2021-April 2023) saw the in-depth consultation continuing through well-attended information sessions and workshops.
In autumn, 2022, planners received another 3500+ comments courtesy of 11 workshops, 14 open houses, 13 pop-up events, and 12 “chats with a planner.”
During Phase Three (Finalize, May-October 2023), community consultation continued full-on, with almost 10,000 residents viewing a draft of the bylaw and more than 700 commenting. Even weeks out from the city council meeting on the bylaw, the public was encouraged to email the project team with ideas and queries, Pawlyk said.
A critical piece in the communication puzzle was an online tool called “Know Your Zone,” an interactive map that made it easy for citizens to discover everything they needed to know about existing and future zoning regulations.
The 4+ years of consultation culminated in a marathon, six-day public hearing. It ran about 12 hours per day and heard from 293 Edmontonians, in what Pawlyk called a “huge testament to the power of public engagement.”
Planning for Next Steps
“Monitoring is probably the least fun part of any discussion when we talk about these planning tools. But we have a plan for that as well,” Pawlyk said.
Part of that plan is to understand that the zoning bylaw is “a living document” that “is going to change as Edmonton evolves, and we look to adapt to our future needs.”
In the short term, Edmontonians are now being invited to identify minor errors, unintended consequences, and opportunities for improvement, via an online feedback form.
Pawlyk added “a little word of caution” because change is difficult “for everyone from the public, to politicians and the building industry.”
So “courage will be required to implement that change and stick to that vision.”
