Alberta Communities Pursue Sustainable Planning

"My sense is that the vast majority of development in Alberta is still business as usual," says Bob Hawkesworth, president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA). "There are examples of new approaches to more sustainable development, but they tend to be one-offs or demonstration projects.

"I think there is a general awareness among urban governments, but it's not yet a general trend where they are amending municipal bylaws to address climate change and other sustainability issues. It is coming, but how far down the road that is, I can't say."

Until now, the trend in Alberta municipalities has been to build continually out­ward, usually on good agricultural lands. That perpetuates automobile-centered communities that consume huge amounts of resources, require sprawling net­works of roads and have no neighbourhood hubs.

But a growing number of Alberta cities, towns and villages are now seeking a more sustainable approach. The Town of Okotoks, for example, has adopted a comprehensive strategy to reduce its ecological footprint through such measures as slashing the energy use of its sewage treatment and developing a solar housing community. The City of Calgary has amended its municipal development plan to remove density caps in new suburbs.

"We are seeing development in new communities proposing at least a 30 per-cent increase in housing densities compared to traditional suburban development," says Hawkesworth.

Meanwhile, communities such as Canmore, Three Hills and Slave Lake have begun developing sustainable municipal plans for their towns. And five Alberta munici­palities - Olds, Claresholm, Pincher Creek, Chauvin and Thorhild - are involved in an AUMA pilot project to use sustainability tools in shaping their communities.

"The AUMA has built a toolkit to guide communities to think differently about their futures and to engage their citizens in relevant issues like thinking about climate change and energy and water use," says Hawkesworth.