Quote:
Originally Posted by Makarov
I disagree. Land uses are far more regulated and restricted in a city. Indeed, every single piece of land has significant zoning land use restrictions on it. Also, urban property is far more likely to be expropriated by a municipality than rural property is to be expropriated by the province. In my view, people who live in cities are just used to and accept these sorts of justifiable infringements of our property rights. It comes from living with a lot of neighbours.
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One of the big differences though is that for most of us the zoning was in place when we purchased our property so it won't impact our property values. As for expropriation, the Expropriation Act outlines the process of expropriating land in the province of Alberta. It is the same inside and outside of the cities and it does allow for an appeal process. The Land Use Framework gives the province additional powers to change the way we use the land. In the current system changing the zoning is a pretty drawn out process.
We accept zoning in the city because we enjoy the benefits of it, but there is potential for abuse. As an example, the city could rezone an inner city block of residential houses and declare it high density residential. Every house would then become non-conforming and the owners would be prevented from doing anything to improve their value of the property outside of required maintenance. In order for the city to do this though there is a fairly involved process that involves advertising intentions and holding public forums and the whole process still allows an affected landowner to appeal to the courts.
The land use framework originally provided a means for the province to skip a lot of these steps and block any appeal. The intention was never to enter city zoning issues, but it was to change current rural land use practices.