Essentially - Someone123 is correct. It would be HRM by design, for the regional centre. The only exception to that would be in the low density neighbourhoods, it would be geared towards that type of development and keeping them pretty stable (mostly renovations, some tear down and rebuilds of new houses). My only thought on that would be that we need to rethink the idea of appropriately scaled multi-residential in some low density areas. There is nothing wrong with 3 or 4 storey walk up apartments in some low density areas where you can convert houses to up to 3 units (which is pretty much most of the peninsula).
Change the definition of multi to be a building of 9 or more units and then set out rules to allow certain scales of walk up apartments. So if the homes next to you are 2 stories, you can do 3. If they are 3, you can do the max of 4 stories and start approving something like
this or like
this with say up to 8 units. These are perfectly acceptable, but we don't encourage building them anymore (when I was in Chicago, I fell in love with these)!
But the HRMbyDesign stuff would mainly be focused in the proposed corridors (Agricola, Quinpool, Wyse Road, etc.) but as I understand the amendment for affordable housing - that would apply to the entire regional centre. So if someone were to get a policy amendment and rezoning of a site not typically in a corridor, the City could still require the affordable housing element as part of the proposal.