Full disclosure: While I follow infill housing developments and policies in cities across Canada, I live in Calgary and so I’m more familiar with its infill housing developments than other cities. I know Edmonton is considered a leader in Canadian infill housing by many urbanists, as its City Council was an early adopter of removing minimum parking requirements for new residential developments city wide in 2020 and several progressive zoning bylaws since then to allow for increase housing densities and streamline approvals. I also understand infill housing is VERY controversial in both Edmonton and Calgary. I have lived in an infill house for 30+ years in a community with a very active infill market.

This column is based on a four-day visit to Edmonton where I explored several established residential neighbourhoods and spent time with two Edmontonian couples who live in communities with significant infill activity. I even stayed in a lane home above a garage in Ritchie, an inner-city Edmonton neighbourhood with lots of existing and potential infill development.

In both Calgary and Edmonton small bungalow homes in older neighbourhoods are been replaced by row housing in some cases four on the street and four on the alley each with purpose built secondary suites, which means one home can become 12+ homes depending on the size of the lot. For many inner city residents, blanket rezoning to allow for more density in single family neighbourhoods is too much density and significantly changes the character of the street.

What is infill housing?

Essentially, it is any new residential project that replaces older structures or vacant land within older neighbourhoods. It can be the replacement of a smaller house with a bigger house, or 2+ houses each with secondary suites depending on the lot’s size and city policies. It gets more controversial when it is 4+ homes.

Infill housing can also be the conversion of an old outdoor mall, school site, or even an old office building to housing.

What are the benefits / hassles of infill housing?

I have watched new infill homes the past 30+ years evolve from “skinnies” (two houses on 50 foot lot) to mini-mansion single family homes, fourplexes, corner conversions, row homes and small apartment blocks along on or near main streets and bus routes. Yes, there is more traffic, sometimes street parking is an issue, and I too hate all the bins in our back alley.

On the positive side, I love the increased use of the park across our street by people of all ages and backgrounds. And the best thing is how families have returned to our community due to larger infill homes that have all the modern amenities a young family wants. As a result, local playgrounds have been upgraded, and the schools are full again. We are also getting more amenities like coffee shops, urban grocery stores and restaurants within walking distance.

In my opinion, the benefits far outweigh the hassles.

Infill housing results in more young families moving into older neighbourhoods, which in turn means more use of the playgrounds which then get upgraded.

And infill housing can also result in an urban grocery store in your community.

Infill housing gone wild

Drive around Calgary or Edmonton’s inner-city communities and you will find residential construction everywhere. Look a little closer though and you will see big differences. Most of Edmonton’s infill activity is small scale i.e. replacing older bungalows with two-storey single-family homes or maybe a two-story duplex in Laurier Heights or Pleasantville or replacing smaller cottage homes with duplexes and four-plexes in Ritchie.

What I didn’t see in Edmonton were “corner conversions”, i.e. where one or two houses are torn down and replaced by 6 to 10 homes, often with purpose-built secondary suites. I know they exist in Edmonton, but in Calgary you can’t miss them.

All of these row housing projects are located with a few blocks of each other in Calgary’s Banff Trail neighbourhood.

A drive along Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue or walk along Jasper Avenue resulted in seeing some new infill housing but nothing of the magnitude that is currently happening in Calgary. While there are a few new high-rise (20+ storeys) and mid-rise (8 to 20 storey) developments in Edmonton’s Ice District and near 124th Street, there is nothing compared to Calgary’s East Village, Downtown West and Beltline/Sunalta high-rise communities, where dozens of new highrise residential towers have been either recently completed or are under construction.

Calgary is considered the leader in North America for “office to residential conversion” with 21 office buildings having been recently converted - or are in the process of being converted. Yet, Edmonton’s Downtown Business Association says 30 former office buildings in its downtown have already been converted into residential with another six to eight old towers currently ripe for conversion. So, who is the leader?

Calgary’s East Village was once dominated by ugly surface parking lots, today it is dominated by high-rise (20+ storeys) residential towers.

Calgary’s downtown skyline is now dominated by residential buildings not office towers.

Urban Village Infilling

An urban village is a walkable, dense, community (no single-family homes) where most of the residents’ everyday needs are within a 15 minute walking distance of most residents.

Calgary is a leader when it comes to fostering new urban villages in existing neighbourhoods outside of its city centre. The Bridges comprises of 16 new residential projects on land that once occupied by the Calgary General Hospital. The University of Calgary’s “University District” is a huge master-planned urban village with its own main street, mix of housing for 10,000+ people on the western edge of the campus.

Another unique Calgary urban village is the conversion of an old quarry into a residential community. This project, by Remington Developments, includes not only 2,200 new homes but Imperial Oil and several major engineering firms’ head offices, a major library/recreation centre, parks and shopping centre.

West District, located on the western edge of the city is yet another private sector urban village being developed by Truman. Like University District, it has its own main street with commercial including a major grocery store, with residential above. While most of the housing is row-housing and 6 to 8-storey apartment blocks there are plans for a couple of 20+ storey residential buildings.

Marda Loop, 20+ blocks south of Calgary’s city center has undergone a massive redevelopment with numerous apartment buildings along 33rd and 34th Avenues many with ground floor retail. The Calgary Co-op and Truman have recently announced plans for a 2-acre development that will include 440 new homes including two 19-storey buildings, new grocery store with additional ground floor commercial and a 660-stall underground parkade.

Recently, Vesta Properties announced plans for mega infill development on 17th Avenue (Calgary’s equivalent to Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue) and 4th Street that will have three towers (tallest 47-storeys), creating 697 new infill homes. And next to Stampede Park (Calgary’s equivalent to Edmonton’s Ice District), Truman has proposed two towers (69 and 62-storeys) that will add 720 new homes and 405 new hotel rooms.

The transformation of Edmonton’s old municipal airport into the new Blatchford community is perhaps Edmonton’s signature new urban village. This huge 536-acre site is ideally located next to NAIT and Royal Alexandra Hospital and has LRT connections to downtown. Currently, the infill housing has been townhomes, but there are plans for higher density, multi-family development next to the LRT station.

Another Edmonton master-planned infill community is the Village at Griesbach by Canada Lands. This conversion of a former Canada Forces Base into a village consists largely of single-family homes (40%) with row housing and duplexes about 30% each. Calgary’s equivalent would be Canada Lands’ conversion of Currie Barracks into three residential communities - Garrison Woods, Garrison Green and Currie. The latter’s master plan includes 30+ storey residential towers surrounding its future main street.

Edmonton’s redevelopment of the old municipal airport site looks more suburban than urban, which reflects the different housing marketing in that city versus Calgary.

Calgary’s University District has no single family or duplex homes. It includes a five block long traditional main street, with residential above, a hotel, office spaces, cinema, park and a diversity of residential buildings (including a large seniors age-in-place facility), located on the west side of the University of Calgary campus and next to the Alberta Children’s Hospital as its employment nodes.

School Site Infills

Both Calgary and Edmonton have been slow at converting surplus school sites into new infill residential communities. In 2009, 20 surplus Edmonton school sites were returned to the city’s municipal reserve lands and earmarked for affordable housing. To date, most have remained undeveloped. Fast forward to today and Edmonton’s City Council has approved to sell or lease 11 sites for affordable housing.

Calgary has also been selling surplus sites to affordable housing developers. Recently, the City announced the 3.5 acre David D. Oughton School site will become a 230-home community offering one to five-bedroom affordable homes along a large green space.

The Calgary Board of Education recently sold the former Viscount Bennett High School site to Minto Group who have since begun construction of a new “1,200+ homes in eight buildings” community called Parkline.

Last Word

Both Calgary and Edmonton had record home building starts in 2024 - 24,369 in Calgary and 18,384 in Edmonton. On a per capita basis, Calgary and Edmonton were #1 and #2 respectively in home building starts of all major cities in Canada.

Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan passed in 2009 established a target of 50% of Calgary’s population growth from 2009 to 2069 would be in established communities, which means at least a 50% of new housing starts must be infill homes in established communities. It has been hovering around 35% since 2022, up from around 10% when the plan was first approved.

Edmonton’s goal is to have 50% of all housing starts be in established communities by 2030. In 2024, an impressive 40% of housing starts were infills, Calgary’s was about 30%.

Don’t expect the invasion of the infills in established neighbourhoods in both Calgary and Edmonton to stop soon. In fact, it will have to increase significantly if the cities are to reach their target of a 50/50 split between established and new community housing starts as the norm.

Calgary vs Edmonton: Infill Housing Gone Wild