Let’s see if this gets a rise:
“Surrey should rightfully bypass Vancouver. It can learn from Vancouver and do things we couldn’t.”
That’s me – in this article by Mary Frances Hill in today’s Sun – and I stand by it.
“If it is a competition, go for it. Be better. Learn from what we in Vancouver did, and surpass it …
“Surrey can learn from Vancouver on how to do really good ‘urbanism’ – in fact, better than Vancouver – and there are examples of that already,” he says, citing architect Bing Thom’s Central City project, which incorporates the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University….
Price says the promise of Surrey’s new urbanism lies in its landscape. Surrey has more intact natural and agricultural landscape — streams, for example — “that create corridors and vast spaces of green,” says Price. “In pursuing sustainability, these natural systems give it so much more to work with.”
More here. And here – the results of the TownShift competition.
I think it’s the second commenter in that story that really hit the mark in saying it’s the physical size of Surrey that gives it an advantage over Vancouver, which is a much smaller area, but far more dense. In order to truly “surpass” Vancouver, Surrey has to look towards intensifying its already built up areas, rather than building out as it’s done in the past. I like the direction this competition has taken and I like the direction mayor Watts has taken, but there’s still a lot of momentum there towards single family suburban housing that needs to be redirected. That is still shown in the housing starts statistics, too.
Either way, I see the two centres as very complimentary, with Surrey becoming a south-of-the-Fraser centre while Vancouver will anchor the north of the Fraser communities.
Surrey needs to be careful about how it’s developing the city centre in my opinion. If you look at the buildings going in right now – Infinity is a great example – they outstrip the human scale and in doing so make the city inhuman. Infinity is a great grey mass of concrete at street level, bordered only by four lanes of traffic. If Surrey wants to surpass Vancouver in quality urbanism, they have to realize that many of Vancouver’s strengths came about before the modern era, and great streets like Granville, Robson and Commercial Drive in Vancouver are great not because of the glorious size of the buildings, but because they provide a human environment that’s not plastic or concrete and that people can feel good about being in.
Nothing Surrey has done so far leads me to believe that they understand this, and it worries me thinking about what kind of city it will develop into.
“Surrey should rightfully bypass Vancouver. It can learn from Vancouver and do things we couldn’t”
it has been the credo of lot of master planned cities, “to learn of existing cities”, “doing thing better” and invent a new utopia…
The problem so far, is that there is not a single successful example to show, thought that example of master planned cities are far to be lacking…
that said, still good to see Surrey shifting thinking, it is a step in the right direction…
Rather than an advantage, Surrey’s size could be its undoing. The clear limits of the downtown peninsula aid concentration in Vancouver – you can see the edge. Lacking geographic definition, Surrey Centre makes do with administrative boundaries in plan and regulation, which are hard to detect on the landscape. The tendency then is to spread to wide and too thin. I recall an analysis of Central Surrey done by Ray Spaxman I believe, that noted that the area defined within Surrey’s centre city as the office core was in the order of four times greater than Vancouver’s central business district. Even in a region of 3 million, does anyone really believe that there will be sufficient headquarters office demand to fill that space?
Surrey may have missed its opportunity about a decade ago when they chose to promote automotive-oriented residential development — sprawl, not walkable neighbourhoods. Now the city will be cursed by these expanses of relatively-net, low density residential and massive parking-lot-oriented shopping centres for decades until redevelopment can happen.
Frankly i’m getting tired of all the kudos Surrey tends to get without actually accomplishing much. Surrey boasts that it will have more population than Vancouver by 2041, but most of its growth so far has been away from rapid transit and is car-dependent. This is not the right kind of growth!