Nate Berg of Atlantic Cities does an overview piece on Surrey – not anything new for most readers here, but always interesting to get an outsider’s perspective:
“Vancouver can only support or sustain so much population growth. And so we need to look at some of the communities outside of Vancouver to share in accommodating that population growth,” says Malleau. “It makes a lot of sense for people to look at Surrey.”
To handle these shifts in population, much emphasis has been placed on concentrating higher density housing in jobs-rich areas like Surrey’s emerging downtown. As a result, the housing stock in the city has undergone a dramatic change.
“Something like 75 percent of the units are attached, either townhouses or apartments, and 25 percent are single detached,” says DeMarco. “That’s very different from 20, 25 years ago when those two numbers would have been flipped for sure.”
As Surrey continues to grow, it’s likely to become denser and home to more of the region’s jobs. And even though many predict that it will overtake Vancouver to become the biggest city in B.C., few expect Surrey to replace Vancouver as the urban center of the region.
“The metropolitan core will remain the downtown for the province,” says DeMarco. “Surrey, to me, will be the sort of second downtown.”
The power of a dysfunctional status quo is firmly rooted in Vancouver. Unlike Surrey where the idea of an ‘urban renaisance’ and the notion of change has been embraced.
Other than downtown, Vancouver is very resistant to change (apparently, there was even resistance to densifying the West End in the 1960s/70s).
Since Vancouver was largely developed with single family detached houses in the baby boomer generation of the 40s and 50s, it is difficult to effect change in those areas.
Downtown South, in large part, is an exception in Vancouver, since it was built “from the ground up” since it was largely vacant lots and light industrial and office space. The same applies to light industrial areas such as Joyce where residential was brought in..
It is much easier when starting “from the ground up” as Surrey is doing.