Regional Solutions to Urban Sprawl in Calgary
Calgary is synonymous with urban sprawl. The city holds one of the lowest population densities among Canada’s biggest cities, and it is continuing to build sprawling neighbourhoods of single-family homes on its periphery.
City councils have tried to implement policies to combat urban sprawl. In 2016, Mayor Naheed Nenshi changed the city policy on new developments requiring the developers to pay for utility access into the community to control growth.
Despite the City of Calgary’s efforts, urban sprawl is not just a city issue. It is a regional issue.
Many bedroom communities are popping up in the vast prairie landscape around Calgary, contributing to sprawl. In the past, the City of Calgary has annexed the land — asserting a “unicity model,” but the trend is fading with communities like Okotoks and Airdrie growing in population.
Rapha Fischler has found that sprawl has many negative externalities. One example is that sprawling suburbs increase the reliance on cars, increasing congestion in roadways leading into the city’s downtown core, where most people work. With greater vehicle congestion, there is more pollution, leading to an increase in raspatory diseases in humans and negative impacts on the environment.
Utility costs are also expensive to service new communities outside of the city. The City of Calgary supplies the surrounding area with water. The addition of new communities stretches the supply further and increases infrastructure costs by running service lines and pipes out to new communities in the suburbs.
To curb this problem, the Government of Alberta created the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB), a compulsory organization that plans the growth of the Calgary region. Since its inception, it has developed a growth plan in coordination with the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan to manage growth in the face of climate change.
This body acts as a level of government between the province and the local level to ensure equitable planning, modelling the quasi-federal systems that have been used in Edmonton for decades and is similar to the two-tiered municipalities in Ontario.
For land to be developed, it must coincide with the growth plan implemented by the CMRB and passed with 2/3 support from the members and 2/3 of the population base represented. Given the voting structure, Calgary, with 89% of the population living within its borders, can dictate CMRB policy with a de facto veto. This allows Calgary to manage sprawl through a regional means to ensure that the city does not further fall victim to the externalities of the sprawl.
Calgary faces a new challenge now that the province of Alberta is less inclined to annex the surrounding land. The CMRB is an example of a lesser-known level of regional governance in Canada, but it holds a vital role in Alberta’s overall planning policy. The regional structure is urban policy in action and moves Calgary into becoming a more sophisticated city-region.
