Poster 1
ATTACHED HERE IS ONE OF TWO POSTERS ILLUSTRATING THE REGULATORY HISTORY OF THREE DIFFERENT CALGARY NEIGHBOURHOODS.
BOTH POSTERS, THE PROJECT MAGAZINE, AND AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE CAPTURING CALGARY’S DEVELOPMENT POLICY HISTORY ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WWW.NEXTCALGARY.CA/SDL OR BY USING THE CODE BELOW
The ‘Spatial Dimension of Law’ is a collaboration between the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. This project places two disciplines, Law and Urban Design, within the same intellectual space to explore the relationship between Law, as a written expression, and Built Form, as a physical expression, of societal expectations and priorities. And while these two disciplines overlap recognizably through building codes or zoning regulations, they operate within and across different socio-temporal realities. Laws, which are stable in the moment, evolve over time to reflect societal shifts, and though built form also reflect contemporary preferences. Once built, it remains, especially in terms of publicly owned spaces.
This publication presents the second phase of the Spatial Dimension of Law (SDL) project. The first phase takes a focused approach by examining Century Gardens, a 7000 m2 park located on the northeast corner of the intersection of 8th Street and 8th Avenue SW in Calgary’s downtown. Developed as a park in 1975 to celebrate Calgary’s centennial, Century Gardens’ access to direct sunlight is protected via the City of Calgary Land Use By-Law No. 2P80.1 A nearby apartment building, built prior to the development of the park and its sunlight regulation, does cast a shadow on the space, while other adjacent structures built after the 1980 by-law are prohibited from casting shadows. That buildings around this single plot both violate and adhere to the park’s regulations provides an example of how the law and built form are temporally independent because of on-going city evolution. Exploring this temporality forms the basis of the second phase of this project, Mapping Controversy.
1 Land Use Section - Development and Land Use Division, The City of Calgary Land Use By-Law 2P80.
Taking a much broader view, this second phase examines the interaction between Law and Built Form in Calgary through the lens of development policy and regulations. This phase, part documentation exercise and part outcome exploration, includes a wider spectrum of regulations, and so interactions between elements are integrated into the project’s framework. This expanded scope provides insight into shifting societal values and expectations embedded into built form across local, regional, and provincial jurisdictions and highlights the role that time and legacy play in citybuilding processes over decades.
This publication explores local development laws and their impact on the built environment using six neighbourhoods as case studies. At the bottom of each page, a timeline marks significant events impacting Calgary’s development history referenced in this publication and the implementation dates of the bylaws, acts, regulations, and standards impacting urban development. The timeline begins in 1871, the year the Dominion Land Survey’s first marker was placed in Manitoba (see below) even though Fort Brisebois, subsequently renamed Fort Calgary, was not founded by the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) until 1875.
Regulations impacting built form are found globally and reflect societal priorities not only by impacting construction, but over the course of a structure’s lifespan. For example, in London, England, St. Paul’s Cathedral maintains protected viewsheds from both Westminster Pier and King Henry VIII’s Mound in Richmond2. These view protections were not implemented until centuries after the cathedral’s construction, demonstrating St. Paul’s’ evolving relationship with and to residents, local government, institutions, and even national identity. Structurally, because viewshed protection is embedded into City planning documents, it impacts the height and design of structures along the viewshed corridor and those ‘behind’ the cathedral. And because St. Paul’s Cathedral is one of several locations with a protected view (see Figure 1), intersecting regulations impact multiple blocks in terms of design and architecture, but also other factors such as residential density or economic activity. On a smaller scale, the 1916 New York City Building Zone Resolutions demonstrates how regulations tied to massing influenced an architectural design outcome based on preserving street-level sunlight penetration, seen in Figure 2.
As new regulations emerge, past decisions and policies reach into the present as form remains and reflects a specific past relationship. As changes are overlayed on spaces embedded with legacy regulations, past relationships between law and built form are revealed along with information relating to value shifts between the past and present, if any.
Current examples of building scale architectural impacts can be seen in energy efficiency legislation or net-zero building standards requiring electricity production
2 Greater London Authority, ‘London View Management Framework: Supplementary Planning Guidance’. Fort Brisebois (Fort Calgary) established 1875
through photovoltaics. While roof pitch and orientation optimizing solar access are obvious at the building scale, the height and shadow-casting of nearby structures are also relevant.
Figure 2: Illustration of 1916 Setback Regulations in New York City (image taken from page 7, New York City Building Zone Resolutions, 1916. Courtesy of Cornell University Library, Internet Archive. www.archive.org)
This project identifies potential points of regulatory tension within the urban environment by tracing interjurisdictional regulations, historical forces, and material outcomes. The objective is to highlight how these topics coalesce in manufacturing or perpetuating consent for legal processes by examining the production and re-production of urban built form. Because findings can only be reviewed through a contemporary lens, the embedded bias contributes contextual information for three present-day stressors impacting development and real estate in Alberta: 1) Climate change and its influence on economics, health, and livability, 2) Socio-legal contexts and constraints influencing the
relationship between Law and Planning, and 3) Housing affordability or availability. Part of our objective is creating a baseline understanding of Alberta’s urban real estate trajectory and contextualizing its past, present, and future. Here, the city of Calgary is deployed as a representation of urban development across Alberta, focusing on residential neighbourhoods.
It is important to underscore that this perspective includes only a colonial exploration of this region and topic. An indigenous understanding of the relationship between land and people is largely incompatible with Anglo-European ideas of ownership and control.
Like most urban municipalities across the prairies, Calgary’s growth and expansion accelerated significantly after the Second World War, amplified in part by the discovery of oil in Leduc in 1947. Prior to this post-War boom, Calgary’s development paralleled other Canadian municipalities’ primarily grid-based street pattern. This pattern, established by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the late 19th century,3 was used because of its simplicity and expandability. Figure 3, a detail of a 1891 map, shows Calgary’s original CPR-initiated street network and subdivision of land.
Visible is the misalignment between the DLS and CPR surveys. Because DLS surveyors arrived not long after the CPR tracks were laid, Calgary’s original street network shows evidence of both alignments. The DLS alignment was only problematic where road allowances were required within the already established CPR subdivision; as such, DLS road allowances were inserted into the
3 Gilpin, J. (1992) International perspectives on railway townsite development in Western Canada, 1877-1914. Planning Perspectives (7) 3
Figure 3: Plan of the Town of Calgary being parts of Sec’s 14, 15, & 16 Tp.24 Rge 1 West of 5th Mer South of Bow River, 1891 (detail)
Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
a) green arrows indicate DLS road allowances askew from the CPR alignment; b) circled in solid red, the original street numbering beginning with 1st Street on Calgary’s former western edge.
Calgary incorporated as a city
CPR grid. This legacy is seen in the narrowing blocks in Calgary’s downtown and just north of 17th Avenue SW. Annotations in Figure 3, page 7 highlight these annomalies, and the map also shows Calgary’s original street numbering, beginning on the western (left) edge with 1st Street (now 14th Street SW) and proceeding eastward until 10th Street (currently 3rd Street SW).
After incorporation in 1884, the Town of Calgary followed the established CPR pattern, but used the DLS alignment. When the Province of Alberta was created in 1905;4 rights-of-way (ROW) and roadways were regulated provincially, first through the 1906 Public Works Act, and then by an array of legislative documents in their various iterations, including The Planning Act, Subdivision and Transfer Regulations, and the Municipal Government Act. Through these provincial policy and regulatory documents, the basic components of urban development were dictated, specifically, road types (arterial, residential, etc.), the ROW requirements for each road type, the amount of land set aside for municipal use (school grounds, parks, playing fields, etc.), residential lot dimensions, and alley/lane widths. For clarity, Figure 4 provides an illustrated breakdown of the basic components of a street cross-section, and Figure 5 illustrates how the widths of these components have changed since 1911.
Though the province maintained a prominent role in urban development, the width of elements, such as sidewalks, boulevards, and roadways, was municipally regulated, though the ROW itself remained under provincial control, as a standard minimum until the late 1970s. Concurrent to that shift, the Province began regulating the maximum amount of road surface area permitted in each subdivision and stipulated an allotted minimum size for parks and open space.
4 Government of Canada. 1905. The North-West Territories Act. Canada: Revised Statutes of Canada, 1886.
Public Works Act Land Titles Act
An ‘Actor Network’ is a framework for describing relationships in the social/natural world. Each actor within a network – human, non-human, and conceptual –interacts with other actors and with the network itself. The actor-network diagrams presented on the following pages illustrate the shifting jurisdictional responsibilities for urban form in Alberta.
Within these diagrams, urban form is grouped according to scale (building, lot/parcel, block, neighbourhood, city or region), with the four actors influencing outcomes at each scale in the centre. Important here is that these diagrams only describe actors’ agency, not enforcement, and missing are other actors participating in urban development decision-making such as politics, economics, future residents, the environment, municipal objectives, etc. The timespan captured here reveals the degree to which decision-making power dictating urban form outcomes has changed from 1901-2021. Manifesting primarily as an escalating number of regulations across all scales, particularly from 1961 onwards, Federal influence has remained minimal over time.
Worth noting is the disappearance of Private control of urban form as subdivision became increasingly regulated and administrative responsibility downloaded onto municipalities. Ironically, it was the introduction of privately-funded suburban development in the mid-1950s that likely instigated the removal of Private influence and spurred increased levels of regulation. By 1991, Provincial influence had shifted almost entirely away from micro-managing residential urban form to focus on issues of safety, public space, and environmental protection.
Beyond controlling the spatial organization and allocation of neighbourhood elements, urban form in Alberta and Calgary is influenced by geo-topography, contemporary societal priorities manifesting at different scales, and evolving technology. To explore how these factors also impact urban form, six key natural and/or built elements in Calgary, the Calgary Airport (both municipal and international iterations); the Dominion Land Survey (DLS); the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) tracks; Deerfoot Trail; and the Bow River, are examined for their impact using archival, legal, and academic sources and references. Though these elements do not include projects built within the last three decades, such as Calgary’s Ring Road (Stoney Trail), contemporary regulations and policies are included in this project’s analysis. In addition to providing a chronology of the chosen elements, the map on the following page locates these elements within the city. Of these six elements, the DLS continues to exert an influence on urban form, particularly in terms of annexation and in the design of new residential subdivisions. DLS influence can be seen in the map on the facing page in the highlighted Section and its northwest Quarter Section located on Calgary’s east side.
Map of Calgary showing key elements (CPR Tracks, 1880s; Dominion Land Survey, 1890s; Municipal Airport 1930s; International Airport 1960s; Deerfoot Trail 1970s; Bow River 1980s)
LEGEND
International Airport
Municipal Airport
CPR tracks
Deerfoot Trail
Bow River
DLS Section and Quarter-Section
City of Calgary
Zoning By-Law 2835
What is good and desirable in one era is not always appreciated or even appropriate in another. To contend with the material past and the values embodied by built form, laws and regulations are imposed onto existing built form, and in this way, laws bridge the urban past and present, attempting to reconcile differing values and expectations under a single understanding. The unifying vision offered by contemporary laws, though they may operate a few steps behind new built form, still maintains incompatibilities between short-term decision-making and any long-term constraints. And so, while the past and present live side-by-side, both in harmony and in tension, the future also plays a role.
This temporal tension impacts municipal objectives because progress on issues, such as climate change or densification, can only be addressed through (re) development – a process prioritizing short-term private interests rather than long-term collective interests. And it is the relationship between private and collective interests in city-building processes that underscores many of the tensions identified in this project. Because a city operates largely as an agglomeration of private properties connected by public spaces (roads, etc.), the municipal capacity to address emerging issues becomes inexorably tied to the real estate market and land value, not governance (processes and laws) specifically. For example, in older neighbourhoods the success of municipal densification targets is predicated on individual property owners’ appetite to sell, subdivide, renovate, or redevelop – a decision also impacted by any existing restrictive covenants that may or may not be enforced by the owner or their neighbours.
Meanwhile in new residential neighbourhoods, private interests, usually tied to the development industry, create
spaces adhering to municipal policy constraints, filtered through a lens of profitability. In both these examples, development, that is, built form, exists only as a potential outcome regardless of existing laws and regulations.
Future-focused regulations exist where building height maximums reflect anticipated density, and so do not match existing structures. The Sunalta cross section5 points to another time-based phenomenon: the on-going accumulation of laws applied to the built environment, particularly with regulations relating to human safety, quality-of-life, and environmental protection. These types of value-based policies are seen in Rockland Park (not all visible in its cross section5) and affect what is planned and where development is permitted. The difference, then, is that in Sunalta regulations are added, but in Rockland Park, they are foundational. Policy accumulation as a phenomenon therefore, is location-dependent and its manifestation is time-dependent. In this way, laws can be both ahead and behind societal expectations for the city they regulate.
The above discussion demonstrates the fluid relationship existing between law and built form. While legal frameworks regulating city building seemingly result in predictable outcomes, the reality is more nuanced. So while this project explores the relationship between Law and Built Form through materiality, history, and interjurisdictional responsibility, what is revealed is the role played by time and timing. This second phase of the SDL project, much like the first, reinforces the need for an important conversation about the temporal nature of laws as key aspects impacting, dictating, or influencing built form and longterm city building.
5Please refer to the insert posters available with this publication
The regulatory history of six Calgary neighbourhoods is visualized in the two posters included with this publication. An interactive timeline contextualizes how each neighbourhood fits into Calgary’s socio-legal story and can be viewed at www.nextcalgary.ca/SDL. These residential neighbourhoods span the entirety of Calgary’s colonial history from its beginnings as an NWMP outpost to the present day and have been selected because of their proximity to the key elements shown in the map on page 15. Collectively the posters’ cross sections highlight four realities:
1. Policies accumulate.
The longer a built form exists, the more likely it is to have multiple policies, regulations, or laws impacting its evolution.
2. Public assets are stable.
3. Regulations are not reality.
Roads and parks maintain high levels of continuity over time compared to private assets like structures and property boundaries. What is permitted to exist and what does exist are not always the same.
4. Priorities change.
Laws and regulations ensuring environmental protection, human safety, quality-of-life, and access equity are increasingly common.
An Act Respecting the Survey, Expropriation & Use of Lands Required for Public Purposes
Interim Development By-Law 4271
An Act Providing a Means of Obtaining Orderly Development of Municipalities in the Province by Planning the Development & Use of Land Town & Rural Planning (Transfer) Regulation (Alta.Reg. 87/57)
The Subdivision Regulations Under the Surveys & Expropriation Act (Alta.Reg. 88/57) Town & Rural Planning (Zoning Caveats) (Alta.Reg. 89/57)
The Town & Rural Planning (Subdivision & Transfer Amendment) Alta.Reg. (OC 71/55)
City Act
LEGEND
Sunalta Montgomery Renfrew
Rockland Park East Village
Saddleridge
Zoning By-Law 4916
Town of Montgomery Building By-Law 15
Standard Specifications, Roads, Lanes, & Sidewalks
Standard Specifications, Roads, Lanes, & Sidewalks
The Planning Act
The Surveys & Expropriation Act Subdivision & Transfer Regulations (Alta.Reg. 185/60)
National Building Code City of Calgary land annexation
Purchased in 1906 by James Shouldice, and originally named Shouldice Terrace, Montgomery was a small independent hamlet outside Calgary. In 1910, Shouldice donated 100 acres of land along the Bow River to the City of Calgary in exchange for Calgary Municipal Railway (CMR) service with an extension into the then Town of Bowness. The CMR route is visible in Figure 6 on the following page. Though Figure 6 shows the area already subdivided in 1912, most residential development occurred in the 1940s,6 under the Federal Government Soldier Settlement Fund.
The road network is laid out in the gridiron pattern typical at the turn of the 20th century. After repeated petitions by Montgomery’s Community Council and buoyed by the 1955 release of the ‘McNally Report’ favouring a ‘uni-city’ approach to municipal growth in Alberta, Montgomery was annexed by the City of Calgary in 1963. In anticipation of this eventual annexation, roads and streets in Montgomery were re-named in 1952 with a numbered system complementing Calgary’s adjacent numbered roads.
6Gordon, D., & Harding, M. (2023). The disappearing grid: how the Canadian government changed suburban community design, 1944-69. Journal of Urban Design, 1–29
Subdivision & Transfer Regulation (Alta.Reg. 361/63) Amended by (Alta.Reg. 433/63)
City of Calgary annexes Town of Montgomery and Town of Bowness
National Building Code
Figure 6: (detail) Plan of the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 1912, (CU14015520) by Great West Drafting Co. Ennor, J. H., Mitchell, B. F., Sherlock, F. R., Sherlock, S. J.. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
Subdivision & Transfer Regulations (Alta.Reg. 215/67) Development Control By-Law 7839
Municipal Government Act Development Control By-Law 7330
Municipal Government Act
The Planning Act
National Building Code
7: “Image 2522-221”, from 82 O 18 1959, 1959, (CU110331856) by Aero Surveys Ltd. Courtesy of Alberta Airphotos Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
Standard Right-of-Way Widths & Utility Line Assignments
Development Control By-Law 8600
Alberta Uniform Building Standards Act (Alta.Reg. 73/74)
National Building Code
The Design & Processing of Subdivision in Calgary
Sunalta, built on land annexed by the Town of Calgary in 1907, was developed as a neighbourhood of modest and working-class homes in 1909. Designed and developed by the CPR, Sunalta’s road network runs parallel and perpendicular to the railway tracks rather than aligning to the Dominion Land Survey’s (DLS) grid visible in Figure 3 on page 7. With the expansion of the CMR west of 14th Street along 12th Avenue (formerly North Morley Road7) in 1910, this neighbourhood typifies the ‘streetcar’ suburb built at the time. Though principally a residential neighbourhood, the area north of 9th Avenue was zoned for light industrial/warehouses and used for rail car servicing and storage. The Canada Creosote Company, in operation from 1924 - 1968, was also located here and left a legacy of environmental contamination not identified until the late 1980s,8 thereby inhibiting significant redevelopment of the area up to the present.
7Hammond Litho. Co., and Hatfield & McLaren. 1908. ‘City of Calgary, Alberta, 1908 [Map]’. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
8Lawton, D. and Jol, H. (1994). Ground Penetrating Radar Investigation of the Canada Creosote Site, CSEG Recorder, (19) 4.
Municipal Government Act The Planning Act Alberta Building Code, 1978 Alberta Uniform Building Standards Act (Alta. Reg. 31/77) Land Use By-Law 2P80 Subdivision Regulation Appendix (Alta.Reg. 132/78) The Planning Act, 1977 Development Control By-Law 8600
National Building Code
Standard Specifications for Street Construction National Building Code Urban Design Policy Manual
Located in the northeast quadrant of the city, this land, owned by Patrick Burns, one of the ‘Big Four’ founders of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, was annexed by the City of Calgary in 1910 (see Figure 9, opposite). Originally home to the Calgary Municipal Airport (Stanley Jones Airport) built in 1929,9 Renfrew remained largely undeveloped until the 1940s. The airport relocated to its present site in Calgary’s Northeast in the years leading up to the end of the Second World War, and residential development began under a broader Canadian Government veteran housing initiative managed through the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).10 The community of Renfrew was under development until 1950.
9‘Rutledge Hangar’ Alberta Register of Historic Places https://hermis.alberta. ca/ARHP
10Gordon, D., & Harding, M. (2023). The disappearing grid: how the Canadian government changed suburban community design, 1944-69. Journal of Urban Design, 1–29
National Building Code
Alberta Building Code
Standard
Specifications for Street Construction
Saddleridge development begins
Figure 9: (detail) Plan of the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 1912, (CU14015520) by Great West Drafting Co. Ennor, J. H., Mitchell, B. F., Sherlock, F. R., Sherlock, S. J.. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
Standard Specifications for Street Construction Sustainable Suburbs Study Calgary Transportation Plan
Subdivision + Development Regulation (Alta.Reg. 212/95)
Municipal Government Act (repeal Planning Act)
National Building Code
Used as both agricultural land and for gravel extraction, this site was annexed by the City of Calgary from Rocky View County in 2007. Currently under active development in Calgary’s Northwest, the site required significant environmental reclamation efforts because of its gravel pit past. Like many of Calgary’s more recent residential developments, Rockland Park is designed with an adaptive road network, featuring a variety of road types intended to enhance its functionality and aesthetic appeal. Because this development is almost entirely encircled by a bend in the Bow River, its west and south edges include significant environmental restrictions for development that are meant to preserve the riparian ecosystem’s integrity. Though development adjacent to the river bank has been curtailed since the 1960s by provincial legislation. Figure 10, an excerpt from the approved Area Structure Plan, illustrates the variety of constraints at play in the redevelopment of the area. Outside of topography and history, because Rockland Park is located on a ‘peninsula’, emergency access is limited, thereby influencing the rate of residential development until an additional access route is added.
Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park
Haskayne Legacy Park Railway Railway 30 m ROW Plan Area
Figure 10: Haskayne Area Structure Plan, Local Area Planning and Implementation – North Planning, Development & Assessment (excerpt, p.9). By-Law 27P2015
The neighbourhood now called the ‘East Village’ predates the 1884 incorporation of the Town of Calgary and was originally subdivided by the CPR to be close to the NWMP’s Fort Calgary outpost. And while the Fort’s origins are commemorated currently, the original fort had been demolished by the turn of the 20th century and the site used as a railyard and depot, visible in Figure 11, opposite. The Fort was eventually rebuilt as a historic interpretive centre in the late 1970s. Despite the railyard, this neighbourhood, maintained a significant amount of low-density residential housing up until the mid-1960s.11 The road network established by the CPR remains, though the 1970s development of the CTrain followed by the mid-1980s construction of the Municipal Building eliminated through access along 8th Avenue between Macleod Trail (formerly 2nd Street, formerly Drinkwater Street) and 3rd Street SE (formerly Hardisty Street). The Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) began redeveloping the area in 2007, and its conversion into new high density residential and commercial spaces continues.12
11 Calgary (Alta.) Planning Department. 1952. ‘City of Calgary, Interim Zoning Guide, 1952 [Map]’. Calgary: Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. https://doi.org/CU14015524.
12 www.calgarymlc.ca/districts/east-village
Figure 11: (detail) Plan of the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 1912, (CU14015520) by Great West Drafting Co. Ennor, J. H., Mitchell, B. F., Sherlock, F. R., Sherlock, S. J.. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
Design Guidelines for Subdivision Servicing Residential Street Design Policy
Design Guidelines for Subdivision Servicing 2014 Municipal Development Plan (2014-2020)
Modernized Municipal Government Act Roads Construction 2015 Standard Specifications Complete Streets Guide
Once located on the far north-east edge of Calgary in a landscape dotted with small wetlands typical of the Prairie Pothole Region, the land for Saddleridge was annexed from the Municipal District of Rocky View by the City of Calgary in 1961. Despite the annexation, the land remained largely undeveloped for three decades, remaining zoned as ‘Country Residential’ or ‘Urban Reserve’ until two local sour gas wells and their pipelines were decommissioned, one in 1985, the other in 2012. Residential development, particularly on the area’s west side, remains sparse because of limitations established in 1979 where portions of Saddleridge were captured within the Airport Vicinity Protection Area (AVPA). Not only does this limit land uses because of noise levels, it also limits building height.13 Regardless of these restrictions, Saddleridge’s development in the 1990s was based on ‘Transit Oriented Development’ principles because of the anticipated extension of the north-east CTrain line.
13Calgary International Airport Vicinity Protection Area Regulation, Alta Reg 318/1979, s 4
Figure 12: (detail) October 1967 (CU14087916) by Calgary: City Planning Department. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. Municipal
Federal/Dominion/Northwest Territories Private
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Associate Committee on the National Building Code. 1970. Canadian Structural Design Manual, Supplement No.4, National Building Code of Canada. NRC No.11530
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Alberta. 1951. The City Act. SA 1951 ch.9
Alberta. 1953. An Act Providing a Means of Obtaining Orderly Development of Municipalities in the Province by Planning the Development and the Use of Land. RSA 1953 ch.113
Alberta. 1954. The Town and Rural Planning (Transfer) Regulations. Alta.Reg. 87/57. O.C.167/54
Alberta. 1954. The Subdivision Regulations Under the Surveys and Expropriation Act and the Town and Rural Planning Act, 1953. Alta. Reg. 88/57. O.C.969/53
Alberta. 1954. The Town and Rural Planning (Zoning Caveats) Regulations. Alta.Reg. 89/57. O.C.166/54
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Principle Investigator:
Dr. Fabian Neuhaus, Associate Professor School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Project Lead:
Natalie Robertson, PhD Candidate School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Collaborators:
Niki Nikolaou, Professor, Faculty of Law
Rudiger Tscherning, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law
Research Assistants:
Timi Bankole, MArch (2025)
Rachel Denbina, MArch (2026)
Stacy Florendo, MPlan (2025)
Kevin Kremer, MArch (2025)
Felicia Opaku, MEDes (2024)
Sukhi Sandhu, JD (2024)
Kylie Wilson, MArch (2024)
Alexandra Zabarka, MArch (2024)
ISBN (Print) 978-0-88953-519-0
ISBN (Digital) 978-0-88953-520-6
Suggested citation:
Robertson, N. and Neuhaus, F., 2024. Spatial Dimension of Law: Mapping Controversy. NXC #23.
Poster 2
ATTACHED HERE IS ONE OF TWO POSTERS ILLUSTRATING THE REGULATORY HISTORY OF THREE DIFFERENT CALGARY NEIGHBOURHOODS.
BOTH POSTERS, THE PROJECT MAGAZINE, AND AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE CAPTURING CALGARY’S DEVELOPMENT POLICY HISTORY ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WWW.NEXTCALGARY.CA/SDL OR BY USING THE CODE BELOW
Inside Front and Back Cover background image: Calgary, N.W.T. 1884, subdivision of a part of section 13, township 24, range 1, W5M, 1960, (CU 4015442) by Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Land Department Calgary Herald (Firm), McVittie, Archibald Westmacott, 1858-1926. Courtesy of Historical Maps Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
The regulations dictating urban form outcomes create morphological time capsules across a city. Each incremental shift contributes to a city’s history, and tells a story outside of headlines, events, and people. This project explores urban development regulatory history using Calgary as a case study. We highlight the im/permanence of the city’s urban morphology and explore the intersecting governing forces impacting material outcomes. This project captures the array of legislation impacting the city’s urban development since its inception as Fort Brisebois, an NWMP outpost, in 1875.
Want to engage with us or this content?
Please visit us online at: nextcalgary.ca/SDL
