july2017

128 129 Today, Antigonish is still a small, but bustling rural town of approximately 5,000 - a number that almost doubles when the university is in session. St.F.X is still one of the town’s largest employers, along with St. Martha’s Regional Hospital. Pre- serving Antigonish’s small-town feel coupled with the necessity of providing services and amenities to its local businesses and residents, is partly the responsibility of Mayor, Laurie Boucher, and Town Planner and Development Officer, Brynn Nheiley. “Over the past year and a half, we’ve been work- ing on amending our municipal planning strategy and land use bylaw with a focus on addressing housing needs in town, as well as to provide more flexibility to our commercial property owners,” says Nheiley. To achieve that, the town has been mak- ing use of what is known as form-based code as a means of regulating land development to achieve a specific urban form. Form-based codes are a new response to the modern challenges of urban sprawl, deterioration of historic neighbourhoods, and pedestrian safety in new developments; they use physical form, rather than separation of uses, as the organizing principle for built structures. Nheiley explains: “Last year, for example, we created the ‘flag lot’ (so-called because of their limited street frontage) development opportunity, particularly in commercial zones, where residential flag lots are permitted to be built behind tradi- tional commercial property. That policy allows up to a seven-story building with a floor area ratio of 2.0, considered high density for the Town of Antigonish. The intention there is to establish a more walkable community and to provide as much support to our business community as possible. “Most recently, the Mayor spearheaded updating an initiative called the ‘Commercial Periphery Zone Overlay.’ At the edges of our commercial district, we are allowing for form-based code to create a building that looks like, and can potentially oper- ate as, a commercial building with retail or service at ground level street front, but in particular areas we would allow for entirely residential use, while preserving that commercial look to the building. “On the flip side of that, residential areas which abut against our commercial houses can now operate entirely as a business. Again, we are using form-based code to preserve our historic residen- ANTIGONISH, NOVA SCOTIA