Your Neighbourhood, Your Say, Our Calgary
Find out how you can participate in our City’s planning policies that shape the future by staying up-to-date on blanket upzoning (plus associated legal challenges), Restrictive Covenants, the use of Direct Control zoning, and the upcoming municipal election.
Public Hearing
JULY 21st
Dear friends and neighbours,
Calgary City Council will be considering several important planning changes on July 21, 2026 affecting basement suites, backyard suites, and R-CG zoning, including parcels still being impacted by Blanket Upzoning.
We encourage you to attend the hearing to speak or to write to your Councillor. You can write your Councillor and sign up to speak leading up to the date of the public hearing.
Calgary needs more homes. But housing policy must be fair, evidence-based, and respectful of established neighbourhoods.
Deadline to submit a comment for the agenda package is Monday, July 13th at 12:00 pm
Please consider raising four points:
1. Basement suites and backyard suites should not be treated the same.
There is a reasonable case for streamlining basement suite approvals, especially where the goal is to improve safety and legalize existing suites. Backyard suites are different. They create a second building on the parcel and can affect privacy, trees, parking, lane use, garbage storage, drainage, and neighbouring properties. Council should preserve stronger review for backyard suites and maintain the rule that a parcel may have only one suite.
The following is one example submission on this issue. You might consider expressing a similar message in your own words and based on your own experience.
Basement suites may justify a streamlined approval process, particularly where safety and legalization are the goal. Backyard suites are different. They create a second residential building on the parcel and can have significant impacts on privacy, trees, lane function, parking, waste storage, drainage, and neighbouring properties. Council should not remove discretionary review for backyard suites unless strong replacement safeguards are adopted.
2. R-CG density should be reduced from 75 units/hectare to 60 units/hectare.
A 60-unit-per-hectare standard would still allow additional housing while giving Calgary a better opportunity to assess how R-CG integrates into established neighbourhoods. There is no compelling reason to begin at 75 units per hectare without stronger evidence on parking, infrastructure, massing, tree canopy, privacy, drainage, and neighbourhood fit.
The following is one example submission on this issue. You might consider expressing a similar message in your own words and based on your own experience.
I support reducing R-CG density from 75 units per hectare to 60 units per hectare. Calgary can still add housing at 60 units per hectare while monitoring how R-CG integrates into established communities. There is no compelling reason to start at 75 units per hectare without stronger evidence that the impacts on parking, infrastructure, trees, drainage, privacy, and neighbourhood fit have been properly assessed.
3. RC-G grandfathering should only apply to developments that have completed the entire planning and appeal process by Aug. 4th, 2026.
The August 4 deadline should apply to the entire planning process. Development permit approvals should not be grandfathered under the previous R-CG rules unless the entire planning process, including any appeal process, has been completed by August 4, 2026. Any development that has not reached a final outcome by that date should be required to comply with the bylaws adopted following the July 21 hearing. Outdated R-CG rules should not continue to apply to developments that remain unresolved after the new rules take effect.
4. Public engagement still needs to be fixed.
Improving Calgary’s public engagement process remains unfinished business. The independent KPMG review found a significant gap between the City’s engagement policies and how they are applied in practice, resulting in a serious erosion of public trust. Yet residents are receiving notices from City Administration of “inform only” engagement for Local Area Plans and other planning decisions that can significantly affect their homes and neighbourhoods. This falls short of the independent KPMG recommendations. Council should require Administration to implement KPMG’s recommendations, ensure that major planning decisions involve meaningful public participation rather than one-way communication, and demonstrate clearly how community input influenced the final decisions.
The following is one example of what you might include in your submission. You might consider expressing a similar message in your own words and based on your own experience.
The City’s engagement problem has not been fixed. Residents continue to be informed after major planning directions have already been set. That is not meaningful engagement. Council should require Administration to implement the KPMG recommendations, stop relying on “inform only” engagement for Local Area Plans, and demonstrate how public input changes planning outcomes.
Please write to your Councillor before the July 21 hearing.
You are selecting “council” for meeting type. Select “in opposition” and put “RC-G Zoning Changes” in the agenda item of the form.
It’s the same form for speaking and for submitting a comment for the agenda package.
Everyone gets 5 mins. to speak. City Admin will provide you a panel number.
Emails for Councillors and the Mayor:
ward1@calgary.ca; kim.tyers@calgary.ca;
ward2@calgary.ca; jennifer.wyness@calgary.ca;
ward3@calgary.ca; andrew.yule@calgary.ca;
ward4@calgary.ca; dj.kelly@calgary.ca;
ward5@calgary.ca; raj.dhaliwal@calgary.ca;
ward6@calgary.ca; john.pantazopoulos@calgary.ca;
ward7@calgary.ca; myke.atkinson@calgary.ca;
ward8@calgary.ca; nathaniel.schmidt@calgary.ca;
ward9@calgary.ca; harrison.clark@calgary.ca;
ward10@calgary.ca; andre.chabot@calgary.ca;
ward11@calgary.ca; rob.ward@calgary.ca;
ward12@calgary.ca; mike.jamieson@calgary.ca;
ward13@calgary.ca; dan.mcLean@calgary.ca;
ward14@calgary.ca; landon.johnston@calgary.ca;
Council Voted to Repeal Blanket Upzoning
We’re Not Done Just Yet!
We were successful at repealing blanket upzoning thanks to you! The battle isn’t done yet as we have more details to come on what this repeal means and what else is coming down the pipe from City Hall. We will update everyone with more in the near future.
Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth, is the grassroots coalition formed in response to the City of Calgary’s May 2024 blanket upzoning bylaw (the “Bylaw”). Our group began as the principal applicants in the legal challenge to the upzoning Bylaw and quickly grew to include over 600 individuals including named applicants, many others who wished to become named applicants and hundreds more financial contributors from across the city.
We sought a court review of the Bylaw because we believe it exceeds the City’s legal authority, was adopted through a process lacking fairness and impartiality and disregarded the overwhelming majority of public input received during the hearing process. We are appealing the lower court decision because we and our counsel believe it was incorrect. Our coalition continues to grow and is supported by legal professionals, community leaders, and engaged residents committed to ensuring that growth in Calgary reflects democratic values and community input.
Our work goes beyond the appeal of the blanket rezoning bylaw. We are actively engaging in Calgary’s municipal discourse in several ways:
Voter Education in the 2025 Election:
We are circulating a detailed candidate questionnaire on land use and planning reform to all candidates in the upcoming municipal election. We will publish the responses so that Calgarians can make informed decisions based on candidates’ positions on blanket upzoning, community consultation, and procedural fairness.
Defending Property Rights Against Misuse of DC Zoning:
We are raising public awareness of the City’s recent use of Direct Control (DC) zoning to manufacture a conflict between zoning and private restrictive covenants. The City uses this practice to challenge and remove covenants— without adequate public consultation, legal transparency, or clear articulation of the public interest. These moves appear designed to bypass safeguards and should concern all Calgarians who value private contractual interests, property rights and neighbourhood planning stability.
Through all of our efforts, we aim to uphold the principle that city-building must be inclusive, lawful, and grounded in community trust. We are ordinary residents, working to ensure that planning decisions reflect public values, not just ideological or political agendas. Under the banner of Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth, we are working to ensure housing is built with communities, not in spite of them.
About Us
Vision and Principles
For established neighbourhoods, the MDP already requires the City to respect the existing character of low density residential areas; encourage only modest redevelopment; ensure infill development complements the established character of the area; ensure community engagement that identifies and addresses local character, community needs and appropriate development transitions with existing neighbourhoods; reinforce the stability of Calgary’s neighbourhoods; make redevelopment more predictable for existing communities by lessening the impact on stable, low-density areas; and promote infilling that is sensitive, compatible and complementary to the existing physical patterns and character of neighbourhoods.
We agree with the above principles. But Calgary’s City Council and Civic Administration are, and have been for some years,ignoring them and we call on them to follow these guiding principles:
Proper Community Consultation - Give communities and their residents a guaranteed, meaningful say in how development occurs in their neighborhoods, ensuring growth respects local character and context. Community consultation doesn’t mean “no,” it means better. Inclusive planning leads to smarter development, healthier neighbourhoods, and fewer legal battles down the road.
MDP Compliance - Ensure that each development permit application meets the MDP requirements described above
No Clone 15 Minute Communities - Reject the “complete communities” concept, so as to preserve the unique character of each existing community
Realistic Parking - Require reasonable off-street parking as part of every redevelopment, to reflect actual vehicle ownership rates in Calgary
Contextual Sensitivity -Bring back contextual setback and height requirements
Smart, Targeted Density - Limit multiplex development to main streets, activity centres and major transportation nodes
Better Local Area Plans (“LAPs”) - Re-do the existing LAPs and require all new LAPs to have meaningful community engagement and to be reflective of community input
No Cheating - Restrict ability of the Civic Administration to grant relaxations as part of redevelopment
Continued Engagement - Require notice to community and all affected residents for each requested amendment to a development permit application
Respect Restrictive Covenants - Include review and compliance with restrictive covenants as part of the planning process
Don’t Abuse Direct Control - Prohibit use of Direct Control zoning to defeat restrictive covenants or to permit development not otherwise aligned with the LAP, Area Structure Plan or other governing community-level statutory planning policy