How Catalogue Alignment Could Set Off An Infill Boom

For over a century, catalogues like Aladdin's mail-order kits and the postwar Victory Homes delivered fast, affordable and replicable homes that built entire neighbourhoods. Today's Federal Housing Catalogue revives this dream with no-cost “pre-approved” or “near permit-ready” designs to spur low-rise infill redevelopment.

The appeal of catalogue housing lies in repetition. Once a design is approved, it can be built again and again, reducing costs, shortening timelines, and multiplying supply. That’s the theory. But in reality, it’s nearly impossible to reproduce a design at scale within Canada’s fractured regulatory landscape, and especially difficult in existing neighbourhoods.

A History of Housing Catalogues in Canada.

The Ground-Level Challenges of Pre-Approval

Building permits typically involve three layers: civil engineering, building code, and zoning. Pre-approval (or “near approval”) certifies standardized designs for building code compliance—architectural, mechanical and structural. Many Canadian municipalities are working toward the establishment of this kind of streamlined approval. This is great for repetition in theory. However, without zoning and civil engineering pre-approval, builders still need to verify compliance lot by lot, making “pre-approval” something of a misnomer. 

Consider the developer’s perspective on the ground. They identify a promising lot in Toronto. The city has a pre-approval process, and let’s imagine they have already reviewed and approved the Federal Catalogue designs. But the building isn’t zoning compliant, and civil design work may take months of uncertainty to be resolved.  Next, this developer pivots to Kelowna, where stricter setbacks or parking requirements stall the same plan. They redraw layouts, rehire engineers to address local servicing nuances, and chase variances from city to city. The added time, cost and uncertainty that they experience on each site, and from municipality to municipality, or from province to province, is what prevents housing catalogues from being useful or scaling in any meaningful way.

A Patch Regulatory Approach 

The real opportunity lies not in better catalogues or more generous zoning, but in consistent rules that finally enable repetition and scale. Municipalities can achieve this through targeted regulatory patches—simple, templated zoning reforms like BuildingIN's approach, added to existing bylaws. These infill-friendly standards would serve as an optional overlay, activated only in mapped infill areas ideal for low-rise housing. This approach accelerates delivery without upending broader planning initiatives, letting municipalities retain full control. 

What Canada needs isn’t a top-down federal override, but a coordinated baseline: a national regulatory framework just for low-rise, multi-unit housing that municipalities can adopt and adapt. That’s where BuildingIN’s Regulatory Toolkit comes in — a consistent, replicable zoning and reforms framework designed to make catalogue and infill housing predictable.

With consistent rules, Canada could unlock a new generation of housing catalogues — not just the Federal Catalogue, but designs from architects, manufacturers, and builders across the country. 

Visualizing the Infill Boom: BuildingIN’s Housing Catalogue Search Tool 

Imagine a future like this: Builders gain predictable approvals nationwide, basing business models on scalable pipelines, not one-off pilots, but repeatable designs flowing city-to-city, province-to-province. Suddenly, housing catalogues spark the housing surge that they were designed to spark.

To demonstrate this attainable alternate reality, we built BuildingIN's Catalogue Search Tool. It shows which low-rise, multi-unit designs would be buildable on a given lot if municipalities adopted BuildingIN's template zoning and reforms. Under that framework, zoning becomes predictable and consistent rather than fragmented and uncertain. The search tool references a variety of catalogues, and in future there would be hundreds or thousands of available designs. Builders would see new opportunities fast. Modular components could be ordered easily, and projects could be ready for move-in in less than 6 months. 

Try the BuildingIN Housing Catalogue Search Tool

See the future of housing if our BuildingIN Toolkit were implemented. Enter your lot information (or take a nearby lot in an existing neighbourhood) and instantly see which designs are buildable.

Try the tool

A National Baseline for Local Action

Catalogues and pre-approvals are great ideas because they make a complex housing system simpler and allow for repetition. But they are being layered on top of decades of reactive, fractured rules that frustrate even the most efficient builders. Until we fix that foundation, the promise of repeatable, affordable housing will remain out of reach.

If Canada harmonizes its rules, more catalogue designs will spring up—practical, buildable ones actually usable at scale. The designs are already here; the imagination is here. What’s missing is the consistency to flood the market with great new homes Canadians so urgently need. 

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Rosaline Hill is a principal architect, planner, and development consultant with over 25 years dedicated to designing homes and communities that work. She founded RJH Architecture + Planning, Walkable Ottawa, Ottawa Cohousing, and BuildingIN, each building on her passion for smarter, more sustainable housing solutions.

With support from her CMHC Housing Supply Challenge winnings, Rosaline launched BuildingIN, an infill consulting practice advancing a data-driven approach that unifies Canada’s fragmented housing market for low-rise, multi-unit infill. Her proven methodology has guided municipalities, large and small, through transformative change. Today, she partners with governments across the country, empowering changemakers to unlock scalable, affordable housing solutions where they are needed most.

If you’re looking for fresh ways to forecast infill, update infill policies, or want to chat about your municipality’s growth goals, we’d love to chat. 

Contact Rosaline at info@buildingin.ca or call 613-262-5480 to begin the conversation.