Re-New Bern is a project undertaken by the City of New Bern to re-make its development regulations – the set of rules the City uses to guide land use and development – like zoning, subdivision, flood damage prevention, the rules for parking, signs, landscaping, building appearance, and similar matters.  Every lot in the City is subject to the development regulations, and the City uses these regulations to protect public safety, promote economic development, provide housing choices, maintain community character, and safeguard the environment.  These regulations are called the Land Use Ordinance (or “LUO”) and are maintained by the City’s Development Services Department.

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The Land Use Ordinance (LUO) controls where different land uses in the City may be located, the process for approval of new development, and the rules for how existing land uses may be operated.  The LUO consolidates the City’s zoning ordinance, subdivision regulations, and flood damage prevention standards into a single document.  Each of these three different ordinances were initially adopted over 40 years ago, and while each has been amended many times over the years, the LUO has not been comprehensively reviewed and revised for decades.  

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It is important to regularly review and update the LUO to make sure that landowners and business owners are properly protected by modern best practices in land use regulation.  State and federal laws affecting land use are not static and change frequently.  All local governments are required to maintain consistency with State and federal laws.  Court precedent also evolves over time and it’s important for the City’s rules to maintain consistency with the court rulings to help avoid expensive litigation against the City. There are also benefits from updating the development regulations, like: adding modern technology, incorporating more illustrations, and making language improvements for better clarity and predictability.

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Perhaps the most important reason to update the development regulations is to ensure that rules are fair, predictable, clear, and easy to administer.  The Re-New Bern project will result in a new LUO that is:

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• User-friendly;

• Concise;

• Easy to navigate;

• Internally consistent;

• Highly-illustrated; and

• Innovative.

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RE-NEW BERN PROJECT GOALS

The Re-New Bern LUO project includes the following six main goals:

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1. Streamline development rules and the review process for land in the City’s core

2. Adopt an innovative approach to stormwater management, open space, and community connectivity

3. Foster more use-mixing throughout the City

4. Raise the bar for development quality along primary roadway corridors

5. Broaden the array of housing options

6. Use more graphic communication strategies to convey regulatory concepts to code users

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