Land Use Bylaw

The Issue

The LUB acts in partnership with the OCP as Bowen Island’s second most important planning document. While the OCP contains the ruling policies that govern current and future development, the LUB contains the actual regulations that have legally binding force to implement those policies. (See Growth Management: How it Works).

Commentary

Updating the OCP will require important changes to the LUB. In order to address the pressing concerns for local affordable housing, and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG), potential residential build-out that is envisioned in the current OCP for lands outside of Snug Cove and Seymour Bay should be redirected to occur within certain designated village or “hamlet” areas. This change will imply that in the rural lands outside of these village areas, the building density will be held to the level that is currently permitted in the LUB.

Redirecting future potential development into village areas while constraining building outside those areas would therefore not add any additional density to that already envisioned in the current OCP.

Clustering of dwellings under the Land Use Bylaw (LUB), in concert with a redirection into village areas of the potential building density envisioned in the OCP, would enhance Bowen Island’s rural character and ensure large contiguous areas of un-fragmented forest lands.

Recommendations

• To ensure effective land use in the rural residential areas of the island outside of designated villages, the LUB must be amended to require clustering of homes in such a way that as a condition of subdivision, environmentally sensitive areas are avoided, and at least half of any developed land parcel is preserved in its natural state.
• In addition, subdivisions in rural residential areas should contribute to an affordable housing fund, to support non-market housing to be built within designated village boundaries. (See Affordable Housing).