The inner city builders have had major difficulty in acquiring development property in the SW and NW locations where infill building is in greatest demand. This is as an issue of artificial scarcity versus a true shortage of space. There is and will continue to be plenty of land, but up until recently there has been a massive disconnect between the type of development land in demand, and the type available given the land use regulations.
In large part, the development land that comes available is locked into a tightly defined land use district, RC2. This is basically a land use that allows single homes and semi detached homes, nothing else is possible. Over time this has led to a real shortage of move up type properties that are larger and more family oriented than condo apartments (lots of those, endless supply), and pricey detached homes (young families can rarely afford these - also good supply, particularly during the recession). The multi-family zoned land has been at times virtually impossible to purchase, and inventory non-existent, or only listed for sale at pricing levels that would make the land seller the sole beneficiary of any future redevelopment proceeds (and this shortage really feeds into the realtor behaviour regarding the sale of development property for multi family projects).
While a huge amount of R2 semi-d development has taken place, including by yours truly, the overall land use of communities has really become archaic in the context of a changing city. You could argue that the builders are now designing homes just to comply with city bylaws in the multi-hundred page zoning bylaw. It appears that the city plans examiner is the end customer of the house based on where design effort is directed, rather than an actual family that wants a home in the inner city.
I think this Council has, more than any previously, latched on to this huge disconnect to the type of City that currently exists, and the transformation that has to take place to welcome the next one hundred thousand, or even half million Calgarians. Under current demographic and growth pattern, Calgary would just sprawl endlessly in an anonymous, poorly serviced, culture deficient wasteland of suburbia, with some isolated pockets of exceptional livability. And based on the cost to service these distant communities, the City would go broke while getting bigger. It seems that the future development needs to be a net positive to the City, rather than drain the taxes out of the desirable areas to subsidize a kind of hamster wheel car based sprawl that brings in more traffic and dilutes the capacity of the entire transportation network.
Obstacles remain in place to growing Calgary smarter. The biggest issue is the individual community area redevelopment plans (ARP). These map and policy documents basically lock in a land use from when Calgary was half its current size and ideas were very different on neighbourhood design. The ARP has become a very valuable tool to stop any kind of change, even sensible changes. Many areas with redevelopment potential would decay under the confines of the land use allowed in an ARP, and many outspoken community residents would resist any change to the ARP through a contentious public hearing process (I know all about this too). Updating an ARP is a difficult process, many in the community want to just change the date on the cover page and use that new ARP to continue to block redevelopment perpetually.
The City planners have become way too smart to get bogged down in multi-year ARP reviews. Instead they brought in a process called the Main Streets Initiative. This allows re-designation of major chunks of communities along important routes, and it brings in new mixed use districts not previously in existence in Calgary. The mixed use district is perhaps the greatest deficiency in Calgary today based on the restrictive bylaws of the past.
The biggest winner from the mass re-designation of communities along the main streets could be Rosscarrock and Shaganappi, followed by Killarney and Glenbrook (not much of change at all to Glenbrook, which is unfortunate, because some of the heart of Glenbrook is truly hideous). There could be some major redevelopment investment in these communities, just from the introduction of the new zoning classes. I believe this could be a transformative event in these communities during the next upswing in the economy. This new land use will provide massive new development options within the existing communities and attract major dollars to revitalize some pretty ugly places, using new planning ideas and concepts. Areas of decayed old bungalows that were not good redevelopment sites could see mixed use and townhouse projects, and a boom in row housing and affordable rental and retail housing can now happen. I am a huge supporter of this initiative. I am almost shocked at how quickly this is moving, and how little I knew about this project up until the last month or two. I likely misspent almost $15k re-designating a property within the new map area to be re-designated by the City anyway. It was like the City Council did not even know it was going to be re-designating areas that another department already had created detailed new land use maps for. Very bizarre, and the community fought as hard is it could against re- designating one lot in November, just to find out in January that 100's more would be changed in an identical way? Given the level of opposition to one tiny property, you'd think that 100x this amount of change would be met with an angry mob outside City Hall? Hasn't happened yet.
You could say the City kept its maps pretty quiet. Just last summer I attended a meeting on this initiative, but no real information was provided to the Killarney Development Committee. The map availability shows just how significant the modernized land use will be to these communities. If this effort works its way to a Council Vote and public hearing, I will be there to show some support. Here is a map showing some of the potential transformation that can take place along the 17 ave and 37 st corridor.
The grey areas are mostly R1 and R2 zones, and some are in really rough shape. the brown is R2, the purple is MC1 (think 4 level condo), the Tan and Blue (not shown here) is Mixed Use Commercial of varying intensity (commercial main floor, housing on upper levels), and the Yellow is a row house district. This is one of three new maps distributed by the City. If this passes, I am predicting this will transform these areas (for the better), over the coming decade.