The city of Edmonton in February, 2023.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Zone it and they will come, and build. That’s the lesson of 2025 from Edmonton, where low-rise multiplex projects led a record year for building permits. And it’s a sharp rebuttal to politicians who say developers don’t want to build this type of home.
In fact, Edmonton issued enough permits for this type of building, which includes between five and eight housing units, to create about 2,350 homes. That is more than the number of permits issued for single-family homes.
This success comes after Edmonton loosened its zoning rules in 2024 and should be an example to cities nationwide. Toronto might want to pay particular attention. Mayor Olivia Chow argued there was a lack of demand to explain not strong-arming council last year to allow six-unit buildings.
Unfortunately, Edmonton appears ready to forsake its momentum, with council to debate next month whether to put new restrictions on building. Calgary council is also set to look in March at retightening loosened zoning rules.
That’s the wrong approach. Canadians need housing. Building in existing neighbourhoods allows them to live in desirable areas – Canadian cities are expensive because they are hotly in demand – and has other benefits.
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More housing within cities reduces the need for them to keep creating low-density sprawl, which is fiscally self-defeating, environmentally damaging and creates soul-crushing commutes. Adding this housing in established neighbourhoods can take advantage of existing infrastructure such as sewers and schools, particularly in areas that have lost population. It preserves the countryside, allows for shorter commutes and can also support local businesses.
With such benefits, the opposition must be challenged. In fact, the biggest concern – that new housing will destroy existing neighbourhoods – rests on a pair of shaky assumptions. The first is that looser rules will lead either to no development, or to a tsunami of it. The second is that residents have the right to control how their immediate area evolves.
On the first point, Edmonton shows that a lot of housing can be added without directly affecting very many properties. Here we are indebted to housing advocate Jacob Dawang, whose data crunching revealed how few Edmonton properties needed to become multiplexes to create many homes.
Mr. Dawang shows that of approximately 80,000 residential properties in Edmonton’s established neighbourhoods, 310 were issued multiplex permits. These developments would total about 2,300 homes. The City of Edmonton confirmed these figures.
This math means that a permit for a multiplex was issued for one out of 260 properties in established neighbourhoods. Naturally, patterns of development vary across the city. But even taking that into account, and the fact that properties near these new buildings could bear some impact, the effect would still be minimal.
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That impact may still ruffle local feathers. But the views of current residents can’t automatically trump the needs of future ones. Since growing cities must add housing, it’s worth considering the balance urged by author and urban advocate Charles Marohn. He proposes two rules in his book Escaping the Housing Trap. No neighbourhood should be made unrecognizable to someone returning after a decade. And no neighbourhood should be exempt from change.
Forcing some neighbourhoods to bear the brunt of development while allowing others to freeze themselves in amber allows the sort of perverse situation that has played out in Toronto. That city channeled almost all new building to such limited areas that four of its 25 wards absorbed 95 per cent of population growth between the 2016 and 2021 censuses.
Toronto has since moved to allow four-unit buildings on properties citywide, which is a start. But council balked last summer at expanding this to six-unit buildings everywhere. Suburban councillors resisted the looser rules, arguing that these would ruin neighbourhoods. Mayor Chow accepted that six-unit buildings should be allowed in only some areas.
The last year in Edmonton showed why this was the wrong approach. Developers are ready to build small-scale apartment buildings if tight zoning rules are sufficiently loosened. And doing so can create a lot of homes without major impact on established neighbourhoods.
Edmonton would be shooting itself in the foot if it were to roll back its zoning reforms. The city found a policy that is working – councillors should not abandon that success.