Is Calgary creating inner-city sacrifice zones with its new housing policy?

Calgary Herald

30-07-2025

With its rapid new housing policy, Calgary may be creating inner-city sacrifice zones.
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Mostly associated with environmental destruction, 'sacrifice zones' are areas permanently changed by heavy alterations (usually to a negative degree) or economic disinvestment, often through locally unwanted land use.
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A prime example of a sacrifice zone is Appalachia in the United States, where the tops of mountains have been blown off to mine a resource deemed important. What is rarely discussed is how the path of destruction upends the lives of the people living around the zone. Usually, they don't have the resources to fight the destruction, as moneyed interests are too powerful to defeat. And the citizenry turns a blind eye because the need for the resource is more important than the inconvenience of the destruction.
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Sacrifice zones also occur in real estate. When Hurricane Katrina breached the New Orleans levees, a large part of the city was under water. Rather than helping residents recover their homes, the U.S. government turned the downtown into a sacrifice zone, making way for the development of high-end hotels and eateries.
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Calgary's approach to creating sacrifice zones is more subtle and is a response to Canada's urgent affordable housing crisis. In procuring $228 million through the Housing Accelerator Fund, the City committed to fast-tracking construction of over 6,800 housing units within three years. In Calgary, one in five households cannot afford where they live, and one in 10 households are at risk of homelessness. This significant need for affordable housing feeds into Calgary's determination to create sacrifice zones in the inner city, but I suggest these zones will not alleviate the housing or the affordability crises because they will be too expensive to buy (more than $700,000) or rent monthly (over $3,500) unless there is a reckoning like we are seeing in the Toronto condo market.
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Calgary's approach to this problem is to build 'middle housing', represented by multi-unit or clustered housing types. To stop urban sprawl, this type of new development is focused on the inner city and, in particular, neighbourhoods with proximity to LRT and BRT routes. This third driver also primes Calgary's housing plan.
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The development push is being driven by developers facilitated by the city. Whereas inner-city developments were previously not attractive to developers, the city has sweetened the pot by allowing compounds (four up/four down eight-plexes) on lots previously having a single house. To further appeal, the amount of on-site parking has been reduced by a lot, meaning that more cars line the streets. Then there's the garbage cans. Take a walk around redeveloped inner-city neighbourhoods and see the garbage cans lined up along laneways, blocking access to garages, which means, you guessed it, more cars on the street. Instead of fitting in, these developments are forced in, and I submit that they will destroy the neighbourhood that once was, resulting in a sacrifice zone.
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These units will help address Calgary's housing crisis, but at what cost? After all, that is what sacrifice zones are all about, providing a need (coal, housing) and ignoring the destruction (mountains, inner-city neighbourhoods). The cost is in inner-city neighbourhoods, beautiful areas that are treed, green, spacious and peaceful. Developers will continue to develop until every tree is gone, and until every last inch of land is covered by a building, garage or cement sidewalk.
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While no bulldozers are knocking down entire communities, Calgary's inner-city neighbourhoods are facing a slow erosion – one lot at a time – divide and conquer, the oldest play in the playbook. Long-standing communities have been rezoned for high-density development, disrupting all that is good about them. Like Appalachia, Calgary's inner core may soon serve the needs of others at the cost of its residents. There is a better way to densify inner city neighbourhoods and protect what is beautiful about them, so that they continue to be places that people want to live in. I hope the city figures that out before it is too late.