A local area plan identifies and guides where and how future growth and (re)development should happen within a specific area. A local area plan aims to integrate and enhance the existing fabric of the area and ensure the area is vibrant and thriving in the future.

A local area plan includes the following sections, aiming to answer the accompanying question and includes the associated key components:

1. Visualizing growth – What is the vision for the area? (vision and core values)
2. Enabling growth – What type of growth makes sense where and what local/custom direction is needed to realize great development in this area? (future growth concept and development policies)
3. Supporting growth – If growth occurs, what physical and social investments are needed? (future investment goals and priorities.

Local area plans provide guidance and direction as new communities are being built and when they reach their natural redevelopment life cycle stage.

When a neighbourhood reaches an age and stage when revitalization and redevelopment naturally starts to happen, a local area plan is a helpful tool to have in place. A local area plan encapsulates a future vision for the area and provides development direction that residents, landowners, builders/developers, City Planners and Councillors can commonly refer to as new development ideas are proposed by property owners and landowners within the area.

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Looking more broadly, across the whole city, we need to consider where and how growth and (re)development should happen.

We need to consider:

• Changing housing needs and preferences
• Sustainability and urban footprint of our city
• The need to balance the cost of new and maintaining existing infrastructure, amenities and facilities to support both new and established communities
• The need to balance our population across both new and established communities to ensure local schools, facilities and businesses are supported and can be sustained within our established communities.

The City is responsible for managing growth and development across Calgary and looks at how and where growth should happen. There are key areas where growth and development is encouraged and a city-wide plan for growth to be distributed between developed and new communities. Learn more about Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan.

Why is this happening?

Communities change and evolve over the years. Buildings gain character, community demographics change, trees mature, local amenities and businesses change ownership and offerings. A big part of a community’s life cycle is redevelopment, which often begins when communities reach a certain age and homes, buildings and amenities need to be refreshed and revitalized or renewed and replaced.

Looking more broadly, across the whole city, we need to consider where and how growth and development should happen. We need to consider the sustainability and our city’s urban footprint, we need to ensure existing infrastructure can be maintained and amenities and facilities in established neighbourhoods have the population needed to support them to ensure they continue to thrive. We also need to balance the need to grow and develop with the need to retain and enhance the unique character of our neighbourhoods, historical resources and the natural environment.

Anyone who is interested in the project can get involved. This includes anyone who lives, works or visits in the area, anyone who owns property or land, anyone who is considering opening a business in the area or proposing a new building or development in the area.

Having a broad range of participants and input will help ensure a variety of perspectives are considered in the development of the local area plan.

How will input be used?

Your input, and the input of other citizens and interested or impacted groups, help City decision makers understand people’s perspectives, opinions, and concerns. Input collected in each phase of the project will be compiled and share through a What We Heard report.

Decision makers will consider public input and aim to demonstrate how input has influenced decisions or if decisions were not influenced by public input, explain why.

Although it would be a great outcome, the goal of public engagement is not to reach consensus or make everyone happy. Public engagement is also not about voting or collecting representative information. Public engagement is about considering the input, ideas and perspectives of people who are interested or impacted by decisions, before decisions are made.

Public input is an important part of local area planning, but is one of many areas of consideration in the decision-making process.

Who makes the final decision?

Council is the ultimate decision maker on the local area plan. City Administration will make a recommendation to Council and the local area plan will be adopted by Council through a Public Hearing of Council. Members of the public are invited to address Council and speak at the Public Hearing. When a Public hearing is scheduled details will be made available on this site.

The engagement program created for multi-community local area plans will provide the opportunity for citizens to participate in meaningful engagement and have input into the decisions that determine what the future of their community looks and functions like. As we developed our program the following considerations were made to help influence the overall process.

1. Phased Program

The engagement process for the multi-community plans has been designed as a multi-phased approach where we will collect input at key intervals throughout the planning process.

In phase one we will look to gain a high-level understanding of the strengths, challenges, opportunities and threats about future redevelopment in the area from the broader public. This high-level input collected will be used to inform conversations with the project working group where we will do a deeper dive into technical planning matters to develop draft concepts and ideas.

In phase two we will share the draft concepts that have been created and informed by the public feedback in phase one. The public will be asked to provide feedback that helps evaluate the proposed concepts to inform the final plan.

In phase three we will share the final proposed plan and demonstrate how what we heard throughout the engagement process has been considered in the final plan.

2. Inclusive Process

Throughout our engagement we will ensure an inclusive engagement process that considers the needs of all stakeholders and seeks to remove barriers for participation. We will do our best to make public engagement accessible to all, despite their resource levels or demographics that might prevent them from being included in the process. We will ensure that, at the very least, they are aware of the opportunity to participate and know we are interested in hearing from them. Accessibility accommodations will be made available for engagement events by request. Participants can request accommodations in advance through 311.

3. Participation Interests & Intensity

Our engagement program has been designed to cater to the different participation interests and intensity that interested or impacted groups are willing to commit to a project. This includes having a variety of communications and engagement tactics available for involvement so that people are able to get involved at the level that best suits their needs. Every project and its corresponding interested or impacted groups require a different mix of online and in-person techniques. The techniques selected for a project will be informed by the local context of an area, where we will look to balance the needs of all of the communities in the multi-community plan area.

4. Grassroots Conversations

Throughout our engagement we will look to take a grassroots approach and create a sense of community, positive advocacy and grassroots community participation. We will look to achieve this by empowering interested or impacted groups to have conversations and ignite interest about growth and redevelopment with their fellow community members. We will support this through the development of a conversation kindler tool. In addition, through our planners in public spaces program, we will look to engage with citizens while they are out at various destinations or events through the community and ignite interest in the planning process.

5. One City/ One Voice

During our engagement we will look to better serve citizens, communities and customers through our program approach in a way that is cohesive, collaborative and integrated and works together as “One” for “Calgary.” Where timelines and resources allow we will ensure coordination and collaboration with other City departments and projects to ensure a One City/ One Voice approach.

6. Clear Reporting for Interested or Impacted Groups

We will achieve transparency through clear reporting with interested or impacted groups and ensure that we connect the dots between the input being sought and how this is used to inform decisions through the entire process.

When looking at the best way to create and update local area plans on an ongoing basis, it is clear that creating local area plans based solely on community boundaries is not sustainable – there are simply too many communities.

Alternatively, when looking across our city, there are shared connections and catchments (such as local businesses, transit stations and schools) that naturally join people and communities together as well as physical boundaries (such as major roads, rivers and large natural areas) that naturally separate us. Our daily experiences are not confined to our immediate community. For example, perhaps you live in a community without a grocery store, so you visit a neighbouring community to buy groceries, travel along a main road through multiple communities to get to and from work, or go to a neighbouring community to take yoga, eat at a restaurant or walk your dog.

By grouping communities based on physical boundaries and shared connections and amenities, multiple communities can be grouped, discussed and planned together. This is the basis behind the concept of multi-community local area planning.

Multi-community local area planning has the following benefits:

• Creates stronger linkages between communities and to key amenities and infrastructure.
• Allows for better identification of common issues, opportunities and solutions.
• Enables a more holistic discussion about where and how new growth should happen across a larger geographic area.
• Includes a broader citizen and stakeholder perspective in each plan.
• Allows for more effective engagement and plan development, which is essential toward replacing obsolete and ineffective plans with modern planning tools.
• Results in fewer plans across the city, enabling plans to be updated more frequently and consistently to ensure they continue to address current conditions.

Local plan areas are primarily established by using large roads (such as Crowchild Trail, Deerfoot Trail, Anderson Trail, McKnight Boulevard, Shaganappi Trail) or geographic features (rivers, major parks such as Nose Hill, Confederation or Fish Creek parks) as they create more physical boundaries between geographic areas of the city. These features are not only easily identifiable on a map, they really shape the way we go about our daily lives. If you see someone at the park, library or grocery store, you probably use similar amenities, face similar challenges and love the same things about the area you live. It only makes sense to plan communities with these shared experiences in mind.

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While some boundaries are obvious (Deerfoot Trail for example), others are not, and some communities or parts of communities may fit equally well into one neighbouring plan area or another. Establishing the boundaries of a local area plan is the first step in the process and this is generally a discussion that happens with a core group of interested or impacted groups that know and can represent the area well, such as local community association representatives and business improvement area representatives. Ultimately, every community will be included within a local area plan with neighbouring communities.

No. Just as being part of the same city does not mean that all communities are treated the same, being part of the same local area plan does not mean all communities are treated the same. Geographic features, infrastructure requirements, mobility networks, community layout, history and market forces will continue to shape the unique trajectories of each community, and local area planning processes will take those factors into account. Just like each community will have different areas that have unique characteristics, communities within each local plan also have unique characteristics that help shape the role they play.

Landowners determine if and when to propose to rezone their land. If a land use rezoning (redesignation) were brought forward for a parcel it would be reviewed for alignment with the local area plan, if/when adopted by Council. If no local area plan or local policy guidance is in place, development proposals would be reviewed against other Council-approved City policies such as the Municipal Development Plan.

In some cases, The City (rather than a specific landowner) will propose to rezone land; however, City-initiated land use rezonings would be clearly identified as such, prior to being brought forward to Council for decision. City Council is the decision maker on all land use redesignations and these decisions are made inclusive of a public hearing process.

Local area plans are meant to be living documents that may be amended and updated over time as the community changes and evolves and as conditions and circumstances in the area change.

City Council is the decision maker for all local area plan amendments.

Input provided by citizens and stakeholders helps the project team understand perspectives, opinions and concerns throughout the all phases of the project. Input collected in each phase of the project helps influence and inform the concepts and policies that are created and refined throughout the process. Throughout the project, the project team shares what was heard, highlights the key themes raised, and provides responses for how key themes will be addressed and considered.

Although it would be a great outcome, the goal of public engagement is not to reach consensus or make everyone happy. Public engagement is about considering the input, ideas and perspectives of those who are interested in or impacted by decisions, before decisions are made. Public input is an important part of local area planning, but is one of many areas of consideration. Other areas include: existing policy, economic viability, professional expertise and technical feasibility, which all factor into the ultimate decision-making process and concept development.

Planning for communities is not a finite process. As communities constantly evolve and grow, we also need to adapt to needs and trends with new policies and processes. The new multi-community local growth planning approach and the Guidebook are the first steps in the new planning system. Additional current and ongoing initiatives that relate to local growth planning can be found at Calgary.ca/Planning.

On May 14, 2024, City Council voted to approve citywide rezoning with amendments. Additional information will be shared on Calgary.ca/RezoningforHousing as it becomes available.

The draft Riley Communities Local Area Plan will be updated to ensure alignment with the citywide rezoning decisions. Specifically:

• Updates to the limited-scale policies are required. Local area plans must align with the rezoning decision and can no longer include policy that limits development to only single-detached or semi-detached homes.

• As a result of this Council direction, policy 2.2.1.6.b, 2.2.1.6.c, and 2.2.1.d will be removed within the proposed version of the Plan that is shared with Committee and Council.

• No local area plan map changes are required. No changes to urban form or building scale maps are required as they already align. The lowest urban form category (Neighbourhood Local) combined with the lowest building scale category (Limited) already supports all homes 3 storeys or under.

When a local area plan is created, existing area redevelopment plans (ARPs) are reviewed and analyzed. Ideas from ARPs that may still be relevant are considered as the local area plan is drafted. In some cases, policies in older ARPs no longer align with more modern higher-order policies (such as the Municipal Development Plan, etc.) so they cannot be carried over into the local area plan as policy direction must align.

If a local area plan (also adopted by as an ARP) is approved by Council, existing ARPs within the area are repealed as multiple ARPs cannot be in place for the same area at the same time.

A windshield survey was conducted and reviewed to assist in creating an accurate record of heritage assets in the Riley Communities LAP Plan Area, and concentrations of heritage assets have been identified in the communities of Sunnyside and Hillhurst.

The criteria for defining Heritage Guideline Areas:

• 25% or more of block face comprised of heritage assets
• At least three heritage assets per block
• Contiguous groupings of Heritage Guideline Areas
• Considers planning policy direction
• Context and compatibility with surrounding built form

Heritage assets are privately owned structures, typically constructed before 1945, that significantly retain their original form, scale, massing, window/door pattern and architectural details or materials.

Calgary’s Land Use Bylaw can make certain uses discretionary in specific areas of the city. New development in the identified Heritage Guideline Areas will be made discretionary to allow the Heritage Guidelines to be applied to planning applications proposing new development and significant exterior renovations. The Heritage Guidelines for Riley Communities will only apply within the defined Heritage Guideline Areas.

What is the difference between discretionary and permitted uses?

Calgary's Land Use Bylaw lists what types of use and developments are allowed for new developments in a location.

Some uses and development types are automatically allowed for a property, and these are called permitted uses. If the proposal meets all of the Land Use Bylaw rules, development permits for permitted uses have guaranteed approval by The City.

The Land Use Bylaw also lists discretionary uses for a property. Even though there are restrictions on the type of use and development allowed, development permits for things in the discretionary uses list might be approved by The City at its discretion. The discretion is often based on guidelines or other special conditions.

Any plans to build or renovate homes within the Heritage Guideline Area boundaries must meet the Heritage Guidelines. Development plans will be approved at the discretion of The City to ensure the Heritage Guidelines have been adhered to. The current development permit approvals process doesn't require the same level of scrutiny and approval.

Alongside existing heritage tools and incentives, a set of three new related tools are being developed to maintain the character of heritage-rich areas in Calgary. The Heritage Incentives Area, Heritage Guideline Areas and Direct Control Heritage Area tools are intended to build upon each other to make it more desirable to keep identified heritage assets and character homes in areas where these buildings are more concentrated.