City Market Apartments, Edmonton, AB
By Adam Mongrain and Don IvesonEarlier this month, Premier Danielle Smith ordered Edmonton to undo its much-heralded 2024 zoning bylaw, and told Calgary to freeze theirs too. Edmonton has three months to revert to the housing types, densities and height limits that applied before the recent multi-year overhaul, and to bring back the minimum parking rules it scrapped in 2020. Calgary, which repealed its own citywide rezoning in August, has not been spared this pre-emption: the province told the city to keep its low-density rules in place until a review wraps up in 2027. Alberta’s move effectively stalls some of the boldest housing supply leadership in the country.
There is really no overstating how ill-advised this action by the Alberta government is (the Globe and Mail was particularly scathing), but it is fair to sum it up as a courageous stand in support of Less and Worse Housing. As the reader can imagine, we at More and Better Housing Canada take exception to the policy.
While Don has already written about the politics and the lead-up to this moment over at Civic Good, today we want to look at the substance. What is at stake when our most sensible, most productive policies are rolled back, and what do we stand to lose?
Measured against the five game-changers
We evaluate discrete policies or regulatory initiatives by filtering them through five game-changers for More and Better Housing: does the policy help legalize density, improve building codes, scale modern methods of construction, plan for a changing world, or speed up the delivery of community and non-profit homes? It's not a hard test to apply: on all five counts, no, this overreach doesn't help. In fact, it explicitly goes against our topmost recommendation on ‘legalizing density’ to improve housing and climate outcomes, by making some desirable, efficient forms of density outright illegal! Whatever rationale is put forward to justify this regression should account for the immense benefits of gentle, family-friendly density in existing neighbourhoods: lower cost or rents per home, lower emissions, faster construction and optimized use of existing infrastructure taxpayers have already paid for.
The damage spreads in all directions. Modular builders and panelized systems need a steady pipeline of repeatable projects, and the eight-unit rowhouse on a standard lot was becoming exactly that. (In fact, the City just launched a catalogue of attractive permit-fast-lane standardized designs that may never get built.) Infill on serviced land keeps growth away from the urban edge, where every new subdivision adds roads and pipes and, too often, exposure to flood and fire. And non-profit providers depend on the same as-of-right rules to build quickly and affordably. So this top-down intrusion into planning jurisdiction offends, directly or indirectly, all of the major themes of the More and Better Housing report.
What Edmonton's bylaw delivered
We could imagine that a government might hesitate to pass a law when the merits of density are considered theoretical or aspirational. But in the case of Edmonton in particular, we don't have to guess what the results were: we have the data, and the track record is spectacular. Local data scientist Jacob Loo Dawang put together a slew of progress reports by using the city's own open data to document how recent changes in Edmonton's zoning bylaw have been delivering improved quality of life to Edmonton residents.
For instance, permitting and completion data show that the city permitted a record 17,500 homes in 2025. For the first time, more homes were permitted in five- to eight-unit rowhouses than in single-family houses:less costly to build, easier to heat and cool, more fiscally conservative when accounting for their infrastructure requirements. Thirty per cent of all new homes were within 800 metres of transit, also a record.
The result of the bylaw is also a large uplift in assessed property value. The property tax uplift from infill permitted between 2024 and mid-2026, 8,650 homes, adds up to roughly $1.8 billion in net assessed value. At current tax rates, that means about $14.9 million a year in new municipal revenue once these homes are fully assessed. The pipes, roads and transit serving those homes already exist. In all respects, the Edmonton building boom was an outstanding example of prudent, productive and sustainable governance.
We can still have More and Better Housing
Edmonton did what housing experts across the political spectrum have urged cities to do. It legalized more homes where people already live, and builders responded. Voters weighed in too: infill was a major issue in the 2025 municipal election, and pro-infill councillors were returned in large numbers, alongside an infill-resolute Mayor Andrew Knack
The Government of Alberta's orders trade off real progress on housing supply and choice for fewer homes, higher costs, more sprawl and higher property taxes. Other provinces should watch closely, and take the right lesson. While there may still be time to combat the order and continue delivering on the promise of better housing, more dignified lives and a greener future for our children, if Alberta follows through, it will be incumbent on the rest of Canada to pick up where Edmonton left off.
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Adam Mongrain is the Executive Director of More and Better Housing Canada and was a member of the Housing and Climate Task Force. Don Iveson was Mayor of Edmonton from 2013 to 2021; was Co-Chair of the Housing and Climate Task Force and works at the intersection of these two issues; these views are his own.
