The City of Lethbridge is asking residents to get involved in a revamp of its municipal land use bylaw. The document regulates development of private land in the city and shapes how areas and neighbourhoods are developed.
Senior community planner and co–project manager Ross Kilgour says the bylaw was created nearly 40 years ago and has not had a significant renewal since.
“It’s quite a dense document, a few hundred pages long, quite hard for members of the public to understand and to interpret on their own so there is a lot of staff time spent just kind of answering questions from the public,” he says. “There is an opportunity to make it a lot more user friendly and with that to cut some red tape so that people aren’t necessarily having to apply for a rezoning for a relatively small change or for development permits.”
The three-year project looks to rewrite the document and will involve community engagement. The first phase looks at social uses, such as emergency shelters and transitional housing. Members of the public can contribute by filling out an online survey.
“Most people might not have interacted with the land use bylaw before — maybe you have applied for a development permit for something small like a deck or an addition to your house but certainly it still affects your life, your experience of the city in everyday ways,” Kilgour says. “By taking this fresh look at this land use bylaw, all the different zones, we can look at things like how can we make places more walkable, how can we make housing more affordable and so on so it can really have a big effect on people over time.”
The bylaw can contribute to housing affordability by making it easier for developers to create new homes by cutting costly rezoning applications out of the equation.
“It’s getting harder here for people to afford adequate housing and so one thing the land use bylaw can do is make it easier and more affordable for developers to construct additional homes,” Kilgour says. “For example in an existing neighborhood where they are doing infill, right now you may have to apply for a rezoning for certain types of housing — there is an opportunity there where we can look at making it easier for that to happen without a costly rezoning process.”
Mayor Blaine Hyggen encourages residents to get involved in the public engagement process.
“Our Lethbridge City Council consistently hears from our residents about challenges with the existing Land Use Bylaw processes, so we are thrilled at the prospects with this renewal project,” he says.