Municipal Development Plan (MDP) Volume 2: Community Guidebooks

The Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP) are The City’s long-range land use and transportation plans that look 60 years into the future. The Plans help shape how the communities we live and work in grow, develop and evolve over time.

The New Community Planning Guidebook, the Centre City Guidebook and the Developed Areas Guidebook make up Volume 2 of the MDP. They standardize and simplify the planning process, land use frameworks and common policies to guide growth and change in established areas.

Planning for the Future helps understand why the guidebooks play an important role in the overall planning for our city.

The New Community Planning Guidebook contains policy used with new community area structure plans. It provides community design elements (built form) for new development. The new community area structure plans describe how those building blocks are arranged.

The Centre City Guidebook is the foundation for local area plans in the Centre City. It provides a common framework for how the Centre City is planned and developed today and into the future. It also provides general policy to shape a more compact urban form that is well connected and supported by amenities and services to meet the daily needs of residents.

The Developed Areas Guidebook establishes policy for local area plan work on developed areas, Main Streets, and within Activity Centres, including Transit Station Areas. It outlines general policy guidance and direction for establishing more context-specific policies related to character areas, as well as defines the building blocks to support the amenities, desirable mix of uses and the built form to ensure that neighbourhoods are developed to be high quality living and working environments.

The developed areas encompass both the inner city (neighbourhoods developed prior to the 1950s) and the established areas (neighbourhoods built out between the 1950s and 1990s).

The Developed Areas Guidebook is a tool that helps to create a local area plan and provides consistent guidance for development and redevelopment in the Developed Areas that helps to achieve building great neighbourhoods.

The Guidebook is intended to be read in combination with a local area plan and only applies when a local area plan states that it applies. The Developed Areas Guidebook applies only to the following plans:

1. Anderson Station Area Redevelopment Plan
2. International Avenue Area Redevelopment Plan
3. Montgomery – Bowness Road NW Main Street Area
4. Bridgeland – 1 Avenue NE Main Street Area
5. Killarney, Glengarry, Glendale – 37 Street SW Main Street Area
6. Killarney, Glengarry, Shaganappi – 17 Avenue SW Main Street Area
7. Bowness –Bowness Road NW Main Street Area
8. Rundle Station Master Plan - suggested