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Looks like sprawling Edmonton will finally put on a belt.

For the first time, politicians for Edmonton, its bedroom communities and surrounding counties have pitched a formal growth boundary that would set an official limit for one of the most rapidly spreading city regions in the Canadian prairies.

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Rather than build suburb after suburb, Edmonton and the smaller cities would have to conserve land within the new boundary. They would be forced to build at higher densities and in the vacant lands of the core. In return, the counties would promise not to permit quality agricultural lands in their care to be cut up by industry and country acreages.

The payoff for both parties is economic.

If done well, the new climate of certainty should stem the tide of farmers currently relocating out of the Edmonton region en mass and attract venture capital. Those are the dollars needed to increase value-added agricultural production in the region — the biofuel, fibres, and food products that could maintain the sector as one of the most important to Edmonton’s future economy.