For some Calgary’s housing isn’t evolving fast enough to curb the city’s ever-growing footprint. And I expect it will never be enough for them.

Jane Jacobs said city building should be evolutionary not revolutionary i.e., slow and steady, rather than huge rapid changes. I think Calgary’s growth over the past 25+ years has been one of steady diversification and densification of both the inner city and how we build new communities.

Calgary’s new home starts are trending in the right direction for several years, with less single-family homes being built and more small, medium and large apartments buildings under construction in new, old and city centre neighbourhoods.

Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation published two very interesting Housing Supply Reports in 2022, that show how Calgary’s housing starts have evolved over the past 5 years. I have also been able to obtain some data from the City of Calgary about housing starts that clearly show Calgary’s housing is both diversifying and densifying across the city.

CMHC report states “The proportion of apartments started that were destined for the rental market was 43% in Vancouver and nearly 50% in Calgary in the first half of 2022; these were historic levels.”

Calgary’s downtown population increased by 21% from 2016 to 2021 (Statistics Canada), while Vancouver’s increased by only 7.4%. In fact, in Canada only Montreal’s downtown population, at 24% grew faster than Calgary’s over that period, a healthy sign for Calgary’s urban villages.

Let’s have a look at the diversity of housing happening in Calgary’s inner-city neighbourhoods - from missing middle to highrises, from affordable housing to secondary suites. I think it will surprise many how much is happening and how many or our older neighbourhoods are growing again.

Calgarians are adopting apartment living

For decades Calgary has been a mecca for people wanting to live in single family homes, however that is changing. In the first half of 2022, construction commenced on 3,540 new homes in apartment buildings vs only 2,884 single family starts and 764 duplexes. In 2021, apartment housing was 42% of all construction starts and from 2016 to 2020 it was 40%. If we go back to the ‘90s, apartment construction was less than 10% of the city’s housing starts.

The trend to increase rental housing continued in the first half of 2022, with 51% of new apartments being condos and 49% rentals. (Source CMHC)

Transit Oriented Living is becoming more and more common in Calgary.

Living next to inner-city main streets is becoming more popular.

Missing middle isn’t missing

The term "missing middle" is meant to describe housing types that were common in the pre-WWII United States such as duplexes, row homes, and courtyard apartments but are now less common and, therefore, "missing". A common characteristic of missing middle housing is a scale comparable to a single-family house, but with more than one housing unit. Missing Middle Housing include duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes, courtyard apartments, bungalow courts, townhouses, multiplexes, and live/work units.

Using this definition, from 2019 to 2021, 8,005 “missing middle” homes were built in Calgary:

743 in established neighbourhoods
1,086 inner-city
6,176 new communities

(Source City of Calgary).

FYI: This doesn’t include the secondary suites.

In 2021, 15% of Calgary’s apartment building starts had just 3 to 5 units and another 37% were 6 to 20 units. Another way to look at it is - 48% of all Calgary apartment buildings (condos and rentals) were 3 or fewer stories in 2021. (Source CMHC)

I am thinking the “missing middle” has been found in Calgary.

Corner conversion are popular with hundred’s of one or two older homes being replace with 3 to 6 new homes in every inner-city community for the past several years.

Along Kensington Road entire blocks of single-family homes have been converted to duplexes and triplexes.

Every inner-city neighbourhood has a few small apartment infill developments like this one, where there was once two to four mid-century bungalows now there are 30+ homes.

New Housing Starts Myth

While many Calgarians have the perception most of our city’s new housing is happening in new communities at the edge of the city - that is a myth.

Calgary has a healthy number of new homes starts in its established, inner-city and City Centre neighbourhoods, and it is slowly increasing its share of the city’s total new home starts.

In fact, in 2021 new homes in the city centre, inner city and established neighbourhoods was 5,765 homes, or 38% of the city’s total housing starts. This increased from 19% in 2020 and on par with 42% in 2019. (Source City of Calgary)

Secondary suites are on the rise everywhere

Since 2019, when the city embraced the idea of secondary suites, 7,176 suites have been added to the city’s housing inventory – 3,651 in established communities, 2,313 in new communities and 1,212 in the inner-city.

While most of these were existing suites that were legalized, 392 were new. It is interesting to note 32% of secondary suites (legalized and new) were in new communities – not what you might expect. (Source City of Calgary)

New communities on the edge of the city are no longer a sea of single family homes.

Calgary is also home to several new mixed-use master planned communities like West District with their own main street and urban park.

Inner City communities are growing again

From the early ‘70s to the ‘10s, Calgary’s inner-city communities saw their populations decreased as they evolved from family communities to empty nesters and widower communities. However, since 2010 there has been an increase of almost 20,000 people living in our inner-city communities due to infill development and young families moving into the older homes.

Calgary’s Edge Cities Are on Fire

Cochrane was the 11th fastest growing municipality in Canada from 2016 to 2021 with 24% increase, with Airdrie not far behind at 20% for 25th spot. Calgary’s growth was 5.5% over the same period (source CMHC).

It is critical the City of Calgary manage the approval of new homes and communities, in a manner which is competitive and synergistic with its edge cities, from an economic, transportation and climate change perspective.

New community development in Cochrane on the northwest edge of Calgary.

Last Word

As I like to say, “it will always be too little for some, and too much for others; or too fast for some, and too slow for others when it comes to how Calgary manages its growth.” Personally, I think these numbers are impressive and have been trending in the right direction for several years.

Given the number and diversity of large inner-city infill projects in the works, with new ones announced almost weekly, Calgary’s housing diversification and densification will continue across the entire City for many years to come.