HIGH RIVER, AB: The Town has initiated a re-write of the Land Use Bylaw (LUB) in order to bring it in line with the Town Plan and Council’s Strategic Direction. There is now a video available on YouTube that will help explain the project to the public.
“On Council, we find that there are not many people that attend public engagement sessions where we present some of these concepts to the community,” says High River Councillor Cathy Couey. “The hope is that folks will watch the video and be able to understand what we’re trying to accomplish and then get in touch to provide feedback.”
The video is an interview segment featuring Councillor Couey and Melissa Ayers, community planner with McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. In addition to this video, the team from McElhanney collaborated with Town Planning and Development Division staff to host a public open house on June 1 and have since published a series of articles about this project.
“There is a real opportunity for people to be engaged and learn about this process,” adds Couey. “The last thing we want is to have done this review and then have people say that they don’t like what we are planning or weren’t aware of what we were doing.”
Residents, property owners, developers and other stakeholders are invited to view the video and the other items that have been presented and then share their ideas for flexible, high quality and long term design solutions.
“The goal of a new Land Use Bylaw is to be more user-friendly, to allow for more flexibility, to encourage growth and development rather than hinder it,” says Ayers. “This new Bylaw will build on the sustainability and smart growth goals of the Town Plan by providing opportunities for development that will enhance community spaces and destinations. Creativity and context are the key elements.”
The two guiding principles of the new Land Use Bylaw are to put people first and to allow for sustainability stewardship of the land for the long term. This will include emphasizing walkability, removing any unnecessary rules and using ‘100 year eyes’ to plan for long term goals over short term gain.
The video is available now and more information on the Land Use Bylaw review project can be found on the Town’s website. There are two articles in the ‘Community Design Series,’ Part 1: Principles of Community Design and Part 2: The Public Realm that are also available on the Town’s website. More information will be added as the project progresses.
The re-write of the Land Use Bylaw has an expected completion date of December 2016. Contact information for the project leads can be found at the links above and feedback from the community is welcome.