TDC Policy and Legislation

Municipal Planning

Beyond the requirements of the Alberta Land Stewardship Act, and making the necessary amendments to the Inter-Municipal Development Plan, Municipal Development Plan, Land Use Bylaw and associated Area Structure Plans, the planning approach behind a TDC program is up to each municipality to design.

In cases where TDC programs are multi-jurisdictional (established between two or more autonomous municipalities), the Alberta Land Stewardship Act requires that there is a written agreement between the jurisdictions. Ideally an Inter-municipal Development Plan would outline that relationship, including such considerations as making bylaws compatible, any necessary cost sharing, amendment process, notification, and coordinating registration and other administrative processes required by the individual municipalities, as well as by ALSA and the TDC Regulation.

The Municipal Development Plan should outline the overall TDC Program, articulating the municipality’s intent to create a program, identifying the TDC Program purpose and the municipal goals the program would address, and identifying the statutory and non-statutory devices that would be used to lay out the parameters of the program.

The Land Use Bylaw (LUB) connects the TDC Bylaw to the existing land use districts. Most likely, it establishes the broad parameters of the TDC Program through an “overlay”. Such an overlay would describe the relationship between the existing land use districts described in the LUB, and the associated TDC Conservation and Development Areas. It identifies the potential for development bonusing and conservation restrictions to be overlain on those districts in a voluntary manner.

Depending on the scale and stage of the proposed development, a municipality may ultimately require an approved Area Structure Plan (ASP) for each TDC Development Area identified in a TDC program before development activity could commence. TDC programs in the U.S. are often very modest, involving only a handful of development parcels in the ‘receiving’ area. In these cases, they rarely require an ASP equivalent, as this might be unnecessary overkill for a modest program. The ASP could make reference to a Subdivision Plan which would contain the detailed parcel locations.

Municipalities often articulate broad land use strategies within their MDP, LUB or other mechanisms to frame goals for larger landscapes with similar character or land use intent. These may be appropriate places to explicitly recognize the potential for TDC Programs to be developed, and/or to identify TDC Conservation Area opportunities. Examples include Land Use Strategies or Policy Areas included in the MDP or LUB which attach specific goals to particular landscapes, or Development Concept Plans or Growth Management Strategies.