Regional Partnerships & Planning

Intermunicipal Development Plan

The Town of High River recognizes that cooperation between urban and rural municipalities promote growth and innovation in every sub-region.

Intermunicipal Development Plans (IDPs) are statutory plans containing broad-based policy that are prepared by two or more neighbouring municipalities. Their main purpose is to ensure that future growth reflects the mutual and individual interests of the municipalities involved. Typically the focus is on the boundary area between rural and urban municipalities.

The Town of High River has created an IDP with the MD of Foothills (Adopted in 2000). The IDP covers a transitional area that contains a range of development types. Within the MD of Foothills the land is used primarily for agriculture, but also supports other rural uses such as development of country residential, rural industrial, and recreational amenities. Within the Town of High River agriculture land is gradually being converted to urban use.

The current Town of High River and MD of Foothills IDP is under review. The preparation of a new IDP will provide a long term vision to guide future land use and development while examining options that may exist for future joint initiatives.

The Calgary Regional Partnership

The Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) is a strong coalition of municipalities seeking to solve regional issues through inter-municipal cooperation that was incorporated in 2004.

“We are working together to live in balance with a healthy environment, in enriched communities, with sustainable infrastructure and a prosperous economy”

The CRP is currently involved in many initiatives including:

A Regional Economic Development Program which markets and develops the region through coordinated and strategic projects.
A Regional Transit Program which will develop convenient and reliable regional transit to reduce the region's vehicle dependency and create more compact, complete and connected communities.
A Regional Water and Wastewater Servicing Program which will create a sustainable regional water and wastewater system based on water conservation, watershed protection and sustainable settlement patterns.
A Regional Ecological Infrastructure systems plan including corridors, large patches, major stepping stones, watershed/riparian areas, publicly acceptable recreation areas and regional scale parks.
A GIS Mapping program which is creating new web-based mapping tools to help municipal decision makers better plan at the local and regional level.
A Regional Composting project will ultimately turn 50% of the region's waste stream going into our landfill into a valued resource - compost and/or energy.

Current members include: