Where is this?

Answer below the fold.

You might have been able to make out the sign on the lower right : “Welcome to Downtown Langley.”

The City of Langley, that is – not the Township.  There’s a big difference.  Once located on the interurban railway, and still reflecting an industrial past, the City of Langley is only four square miles in area, surrounded by the retail belt of Willoughby – some of the worst auto-dominant sprawl in the Lower Mainland – and bordered by Surrey. 

Because it is so bounded, it’s been prepared to embrace densification.  The image above is an indication of the direction it wants to go: an appropriate urbanism. 

These street-related townhouses, and the larger condo behind, are a design reflection of the new city plan that will signficantly transform its core.  Earlier this summer, the City won the “Excellence in Planning Award” by the Planning Institute of British Columbia, in the category of comprehensive plans and policy.

The plan was developed in three phases over a two year period from 2007 to 2009 by the City of Langley and its consultant team led by Michael von Hausen, President of MVH Urban Planning & Design Inc. (who, for the record, is also the course co-ordinator for the SFU City Program’s Urban Design Certificate).

Mayor Peter Fassbender, who has skilfully led the City through this transition, is also the chair of the TransLink Mayor’s Council – and sees the City of Langley’s future in the context of a regional frequent transit network.  He’s also confident that TransLink and the Province will be able to work out a realistic way to fund such a network.

So we’ll see whether Langley and the Fraser Valley is doomed to be shaped by the Motordom assumptions of the Gateway Project, or whether the future will look more like the corner of 201A Street and the Fraser Highway.