Municipal-Wide Land Use Planning

The Municipality has been actively working on municipal-wide land use planning to help shape vibrant, sustainable communities for the future. Launched in 2020, this multi-year project focuses on updating key planning documents, including the Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Land Use By-law (LUB), to guide development, support community needs, and meet the province’s mandate for land use planning across Nova Scotia. This project is in response to provincial legislation requiring that all municipalities in Nova Scotia introduce land use planning. A key part of this project is introducing zoning for all areas of the municipality, affecting every property. Zoning helps manage growth, protect important resources, and ensure our communities are thoughtfully planned for the years ahead.

What has happened?

In March 2025, the first draft documents (a draft Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-law) were posted as part of the Planning Advisory Committee agenda on the Engage site and distributed to Council and the public. The documents were intended as drafts, to be reviewed and discussed by both the Planning Advisory Committee, Council, and the public over a series of months through extensive public engagement. At the March 25, 2025 Council meeting, Council passed a motion “that Municipal Council direct staff to prepare a second draft of the Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-law that is less restrictive and closer in line to the mandatory minimum planning requirements outlined in the Municipal Government Act.” You can watch Council's discussion at the meeting here.

Over the spring and summer of 2025, we held dozens of formal and informal events throughout every district. We synthesized what we heard from these events into a What We Heard Report, which you can find here. The findings of the What We Heard Report were presented to Council on October 27, 2025. You can watch this discussion here. During November and December of 2025, staff presented Council with three Direction Reports over four meetings. After several months of continued work, on February 17, 2026, the second draft of the Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Land Use By-law (LUB) were released to the public. A series of public engagement events followed the release of Draft #2.

Based on input from the public, Council, and the Planning Advisory Committee, planning staff compiled a list of proposed revisions to the second draft. At its May 5, 2026, meeting, the Planning Advisory Committee provided a positive recommendation to Council to approve staff’s proposed revisions to the draft planning documents. The Committee also recommended two additional amendments: prohibiting cluster developments in the Rural Agricultural Potential (RU-2) Zone and removing the two-per-year subdivision limit in the Agricultural Potential Zone to allow the total number of permitted subdivisions to occur at any time.

At a Special Council meeting on May 12, 2026, Council considered the Planning Advisory Committee’s recommendations regarding the direction of the third draft of the Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-law. Following discussion, Council passed a motion approving the recommendations of the Planning Advisory Committee, including the proposed amendments to the Rural Agricultural Potential (RU-2) Zone.

At its regular meeting on June 9, 2026, Council approved First Reading of Draft #3, a proposed new Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Municipal-Wide Land Use By-law (LUB). After a public information and a public hearing, Council directed staff to revisit and revise Draft 3 of the Land Use Planning framework in response to public submissions and discussion, particularly regarding the proposed Agriculture Potential Zone. Revisions were presented to Council on July 14, 2026. On July 14, 2026, Municipal Council conducted First Reading of the proposed replacement Municipal Planning Strategy and new Municipal-Wide Land Use By-Law (Draft #4). On July 29, 2026, Council conducted Second Reading of the planning documents.