In 2020, Edmonton adopted The City Plan, Edmonton’s combined Municipal Development and Transportation Master Plan, which sets the vision for how we will become a healthy, urban, climate-resilient city of two million people. One of the key goals of The City Plan, known as Community of Communities, is about ensuring everyone has access to a variety of housing options and making amenities and services more accessible so people can more easily meet their daily needs close to home.
To help achieve this, The City Plan introduced a new planning geography called the District Network so we could start planning for the future in a new way. Since a plan for every neighbourhood isn’t feasible — Edmonton has over 300 neighbourhoods — the District Network groups collections of neighbourhoods into 15 districts.
District Planning brought The City Plan’s District Network to life by creating a comprehensive District Policy and plans for all of Edmonton’s districts. Together the District Policy and plans use a mix of long and short-term horizons to identify the specific places where density and development will be supported and encouraged as Edmonton grows.
District Planning is rooted in The City Plan direction and doesn’t introduce any new direction or create any new opportunities for growth and development not already broadly identified in The City Plan. It moves us towards better governance of the planning system, creating a solid foundation for local planning and future policy development to build on.
District plans aren't about restricting movement, monitoring people or tracking an individual’s carbon emissions, and nothing will be put in place to do so. While ideally Edmontonians will be able to meet most of their daily needs close to home, districts are not self-contained.
People can continue to travel however they choose, to wherever they want in the city. In fact, district plans enable better access and movement throughout the city by supporting more transportation options within and between districts.