An Institutional Ethnography Exploring Developers’ Perspectives of the Municipal Development Approvals Process

Abstract

Contemporary planning literature describes what should be in municipal plans, but does not describe implementation as fully. Municipal planning authorities create plans to guide development, and also operate approvals processes to regulate it, but a question remained: What might explain any drift between what the plans call for and the final built outcome? In this institutional ethnography, the municipal planning and development processes are explored through the experiences of developers in Calgary, Canada. This research highlights the ways in which 10 key informant developers and/or planning consultants interact with municipal texts, as well as with the public, and workers at City Hall, in order to develop land in the context of the Municipal Development Plan. What is ostensibly a process dominated by technical review is actually heavily influenced by political and financial risks and influences. Developers described struggling with: (1), municipal policy proliferation; (2), policy vagueness and inter-policy misalignment; (3), unwritten-yet-enforced expectations coupled with municipal obsession with minutiae at the cost of the big picture; (4), a lack of municipal leadership to proactively amend plans; (5), the ways in which individual members of the public, and community associations, are engaged, both in policy and in specific development applications; and (6), redundant, expensive, and lengthy processes including (a), paying for plan creation, (b), having to fund infrastructure, (c), going through Growth Management Overlay removal, (d), amending area plans, (e), enduring various pre-applications, and then (f), finally getting to the start of the multi-stage formal approvals processes. Several factors contribute to a drift between the Municipal Development Plan, related policies, and built form outcomes. Ten problems and solutions resulting from the ethnographic analysis of the key informant interviews are presented in the conclusion. Planners, developers, elected officials, and/or members of the public, may find this research helpful in better understanding how the municipal land development approvals process functions from insiders’ experiences.