December 15, 2025
RED FM News Desk
Calgary city council is debating whether to begin the formal process of repealing the city’s blanket rezoning policy, a move that could significantly affect how new housing is developed across the city.
Councillors are considering a notice of motion that would initiate the legal steps needed to repeal Bylaw 21P2024. The bylaw permits multi-unit housing — including duplexes, townhomes and fourplexes — on most residential lots without requiring site-specific rezoning applications.
A vote in favour of the motion would not immediately change zoning rules. Instead, it would trigger a formal repeal process that would include a public hearing, currently expected to take place in 2026.
The debate follows last year’s record-breaking public hearing on rezoning, as well as the October municipal election that resulted in a new council majority at City Hall. Several councillors ran on platforms promising to revisit or repeal the policy.
Scott “Rusty” Miller of the community group Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth says the push to repeal reflects public opposition expressed both during the rezoning hearings and at the ballot box.
“By the city’s own count, a majority of speakers opposed it, and the vast majority of people who wrote in opposed it,” Miller said. “Then we saw the same message in the 2025 municipal election, when voters returned a council majority on the explicit promise to repeal that bylaw and start again with real, community-specific planning. That’s what democratic legitimacy looks like.”
Supporters of repealing the bylaw argue the blanket rezoning approach overrides local area plans and moves ahead without adequate neighbourhood-level analysis of infrastructure capacity, traffic impacts and parking availability.
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