Fort McMurray Urban Design Guidelines

In the last decade, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) has experienced unprecedented growth. The Region, and the Fort McMurray Urban Area in particular, is facing intense development pressures. It is requiring more housing, more commercial, office and retail space, more infrastructure and more municipal services. In order to help ensure that new development will contribute to the creation of a vital, healthy, urban environment the Region retained our firm to assist them in the development of a set of building design guidelines for the urban area.

The firm prepared an initial set of eight Building Design Guidelines to address the most predominant forms of development in the Urban Service Area. These included: Low-Rise Residential; Residential Infill; Mid-Rise Buildings; High-Rise Buildings; Large Format Retail; Business Industrial; and Highway Commercial, as well as a set of Common Guidelines.

Each of the guidelines address the subjects of site context, streetscape and public realm, as well as individual development issues such as: site planning, building volumes for associated building types, massing, frontage types, access and parking, and landscaping. The Guidelines are brief and extensively illustrated, providing a useful reference tool for developers, designers and development officers on how to achieve quality urban designs that contribute to liveable, thriving and sustainable communities.