Drumheller Municipal Development Plan and Land Use Bylaw

Client Town of Drumheller
Location Drumheller | Alberta | Canada

Drumheller is a flood community with a dramatic history that has been carved through weather and environmental changes. The defining moments of the past 100 years have all centered around the river, with no less than eight major flooding events since 1915. These events have made it abundantly clear that the way the river flows impacts everything and everyone in the Drumheller Valley and that putting the river at the heart of planning is fundamental to ensuring the future health and prosperity of the region.

O2 Planning + Design was retained by the Drumheller Resiliency and Flood Mitigation Office (DRFMO) to prepare flood-conscious, easy-to-use, and cutting-edge Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and Land Use Bylaw (LUB) documents to shape the future of the Drumheller Valley. By placing the river at the heart of planning, the new MDP and LUB protect people and property from the river when it misbehaves and celebrates it as an amenity when it is not flooding.

With its modernized Land Use Bylaw, Drumheller will be leading the way for land use planning in Alberta. Rather than a traditional land use bylaw, which leads to the separation of uses, O2 prepared a bylaw that strives to mix uses together and instead focuses on regulating the form that development can take. The result is an LUB that contains just eight land use districts that are clear, simple, and flexible enough to adapt to changing needs over time. Additional regulations are provided where needed through overlays. For instance, a Flood Hazard Overlay provides guidance in areas where the river needs extra room to flow in high-water events as well as in areas where structural mitigation measures are required to keep people safe.

The new LUB also strives to regulate everything that it needs to, while knowing when to step aside and let residents and the development industry determine what’s best. As an example, minimum parking requirements are removed from the bylaw, instead allowing parking supply to be dictated by individual project needs.