Calgary’s city councillors are asking tough questions about suburban sprawl that previous councils avoided for decades.
The bill is coming due. And it’s massive.
On March 11, council’s infrastructure committee reviewed four applications for new communities on the city’s edges. Five more are coming soon. The largest application, Providence in the southwest, would add roughly 9,600 homes outside the ring road.
The price tag? About $582 million for infrastructure. Not all at once, but still substantial.
Only 42% of that cost is eligible for developer levies. The rest falls on taxpayers.
This is happening while city hall scrambles to catch up on failing infrastructure across Calgary. Administration told council that addressing the city’s infrastructure needs will cost roughly $49 billion over the next decade.
That’s billion with a B.
I’ve covered municipal politics in Calgary for years. I’ve watched councils approve suburban developments with minimal scrutiny. This council is different. They’re asking hard questions about costs, sustainability, and whether endless sprawl makes financial sense.
About $18 billion worth of city assets are in poor to very poor condition. That includes $1.7 billion of critical assets at risk of catastrophic failure.
Water mains. Bridges. Wastewater river crossings.
Steve Wyton manages asset management for the city. He painted a grim picture for councillors in February. One river crossing drains sewage from all of north Calgary. It has no redundancy and no way to shut off the flow.
If it fails, it could take out Aylith Yard. That’s one of Western Canada’s biggest freight train yards. The economic impact would be massive.
This is the context for the growth debate happening right now at city hall.
Back in 2009, council approved a plan to shift growth patterns. The goal was to direct 50% of population growth into established neighbourhoods over 60 years. The other 50% would go to new suburban areas.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
By 2021, only 12% of population growth was happening in established areas. A full 88% continued flowing to the suburbs.
Former Mayor Naheed Nenshi called it out in 2018. He said the city would never reach its targets on the current path.
Former Councillor Druh Farrell was blunt about the climate implications. She said greenhouse gas emissions were going in the wrong direction. The city would never meet its targets.
Now some councillors want to abandon the 50/50 goal entirely. Councillor Andre Chabot told council the target is unrealistic. The longer Calgary falls short, the harder it becomes to catch up.
He thinks city hall should revise the target downward. Bring it back into reality, as he put it.
Then came the housing crisis.
Calgary’s population exploded after 2021. The city saw 80,000 to 90,000 new residents in a single year. Nobody predicted that kind of growth.
Housing became a crisis issue. In 2023, council initially voted down recommendations from a housing task force. The backlash was intense.
One recommendation was blanket rezoning. It allows townhouses and rowhouses alongside single-family homes across the city. No public hearing required.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner called out council from the House of Commons. She said pandering to NIMBY votes wasn’t a housing policy.
She was blunt about what rent increases mean for Calgarians. A 30% increase in rent means you’re homeless, she said.
Council eventually approved blanket rezoning in 2024 after a 15-day public hearing. Then the 2025 election happened. The new council voted 13-2 to revisit the decision.
Then in December, the Bearspaw South Feeder Main exploded. Again.
An independent panel found that Calgary’s water infrastructure has been stretched to breaking point by growth. The panel noted that Calgary has more kilometres of pipe per resident than any large Canadian peer city.
Panel chair Siegfried Kiefer told council that accommodating growth has meant robbing money from infrastructure maintenance.
Now councillors are connecting the dots between past growth decisions and current infrastructure problems.
The Providence application illustrates the tension.
It would require $236 million in the upcoming budget cycle. More costs would come later. Operating costs would run nearly $12 million annually at full buildout.
But the neighbourhood would also generate $28 million yearly in property taxes once complete. Construction wouldn’t start until 2029.
Developers made their pitch to council. Seven representatives from Dream, Qualico, Hopewell, Ronmor and Jayman gathered at the podium.
They emphasized the southwest ring road’s completion. It strengthened the area as a growth corridor. Market momentum is strong.
Councillor John Pantazopoulos asked what would happen if council rejected the application. What would absolute rejection mean for investor confidence?
Ben Mercer from Qualico said his company has already invested over $100 million in the Providence area. That includes land acquisition and development costs since 2021.
Rejecting the application would send a strong message, Mercer said. It would signal that city hall isn’t as committed to the community as it was several years ago.
Councillor Nathaniel Schmidt pushed back.
He noted that council rejects established area applications all the time. Those are smaller projects from smaller companies. They’re much further along in the approval process.
What makes this different, he asked?
Schmidt pointed out that the $236 million request locks council into future commitments totaling over $500 million. Once levies are paid, lifecycle operating and maintenance costs stay on the city’s books forever.
That’s exactly the problem the Bearspaw feeder main identified, Schmidt said.
The debate revealed councillors grappling with long-term consequences.
Schmidt asked city staff directly: If council keeps approving applications like this, will Calgary ever reach its 50/50 growth target?
Dale Calkins coordinates growth strategy for the city. His answer was clear.
Based on current projections and growth patterns, Calgary will not hit the 50/50 target. Continuing to approve suburban growth makes reaching that target more difficult.
But Calkins also noted that council’s decisions about established areas matter just as much.
Councillor Mike Jamieson defended new communities. He said councillors might not realize the density in modern master-planned developments.
He represents Seton, one of Calgary’s newest and densest communities. It has thousands of residents and medium to high-density housing.
Ward 13 Councillor Dan McLean called developers city builders. Calgary needs homes, he said. It doesn’t matter if they’re in greenfield areas or the inner city.
McLean said administration are the experts on planning. Council could debate endlessly, but city staff make informed recommendations.
Schmidt responded that council treats established area development completely differently. There seems to be fear around scrutinizing growth applications, he said.
Council doesn’t treat established area development as certain. But growth applications often get rubber-stamped.
Councillor Myke Atkinson said council needs to look at the full picture. Voting on applications one by one makes it easy to justify each individually.
But when you consider all the growth applications together, plus capital investments across the city, the math changes.
Atkinson said Calgary is building better than it used to. The Municipal Development Plan helped end truly unsustainable communities.
But the city isn’t there yet. Council shouldn’t feel good about passing these applications through when competing capital needs exist.
Committee voted 10-3 to include Providence in the upcoming budget. Councillors Atkinson, Schmidt and Clark voted against.
The smallest application was for 225 homes in Moraine. It required no immediate capital from city hall. But the broader Glacier Ridge area will need $373 million in future budgets.
Ward 2 Councillor Jennifer Wyness said the application has been years in the making. Recommendations provide direction and continuity through council turnover.
Every council decision has costs, she said. Administration rarely recommends approval without extensive work.
Atkinson said he was going to support it. Then he changed his mind.
He explained it was a protest vote. Every time council approves something, new assets get built. The city goes on the hook for something else.
There has to be some cutoff, Atkinson said.
Pantazopoulos said he and Atkinson rarely vote the same way. But Atkinson raised a valid point.
Every decision on a new neighbourhood has unintended consequences. Council needs to think long-term. Just because a previous council started something doesn’t mean current council must continue it.
Pantazopoulos said he’d vote for this application because it fills in existing development. But he’d keep Atkinson’s warning in mind.
Committee approved it 8-1, with only Atkinson voting against.
All of council will decide in November whether these growth applications get final approval. That’s when the four-year budget gets set.
Joel Armitage from BILD Calgary emphasized certainty. The development industry needs clear sight lines on infrastructure projects and timelines.
He warned against any pauses in land supply. Calgary wouldn’t feel the impact this year. But the city would feel it three to five years from now.
Those gaps can’t be accelerated to catch up.
Currently, Calgary has 40 new communities in progress at various stages. There’s serviced land for 84,000 new homes. That’s seven to 10 years of supply.
Population growth has slowed. But city hall still expects more than 20,000 new residents annually.
The fundamental question remains unanswered. Where should Calgary’s growth go?
For decades, the answer was simple. Build on the edges where land is cheap and plentiful.
Now councillors are questioning whether that approach makes sense. The infrastructure deficit is undeniable. The financial burden on taxpayers is clear.
Calkins told council that building a city without reaching 50/50 between established and new areas will be more expensive.
That cost falls on all Calgarians.
This council is having a conversation previous councils avoided. They’re asking whether endless sprawl is financially sustainable.
The developers say certainty matters. Stop the pipeline and Calgary will face housing shortages years from now.
Some councillors say the city can’t afford to keep building outward while infrastructure crumbles.
Others say Calgary needs housing everywhere. Greenfield and established areas both matter.
The November budget decision will reveal which argument wins.
One thing is certain. The days of rubber-stamping suburban growth applications are over.
This council is scrutinizing costs, questioning assumptions, and demanding answers about long-term sustainability.
Calgary built itself into a corner through decades of sprawl. The bill is coming due.
How council handles these growth applications will shape Calgary for generations.
The infrastructure crisis isn’t going away. Neither is the need for housing.
Council has to balance competing priorities with limited resources. There are no easy answers.
But at least they’re asking the hard questions.
