Definition:

The enhancement of existing communities throughout urban design and development initiatives, and provision of improved social services with wide accessibility to a variety of people.

Background:

Surrey is no longer just a suburb of Metro Vancouver - it’s the new hub of the Fraser Valley. With all our growth comes the requirement to develop, support and maintain communities. It’s difficult sometimes in such a booming city with a diverse population and suburban culture to find welcoming and accepting places to belong and participate.

At the moment, there are a number of societies and organizations that aid in fostering that sense of community in our city. However, I have personally found a number of various barriers to access these groups, and the wonderful programs they provide. These barriers must be removed to ensure that more people discover these opportunities for both personal, and community wide, growth.

Furthermore, the urban environment can dramatically shape the sense of community of a population. When we design our homes, stores, and roads to encourage various levels of social interaction with our neighbours and strangers, we improve our own self-worth, understanding, tolerance, and identity. I believe Surrey needs to take a strong hand in providing walkable, mixed-use, dense Town Centres as another lifestyle option for residents to live, work, and play in. Doing so will ultimately designate our Town Centres as the beacons and gathering place for our many communities in the city.

It’s through a combination of improved coordination, expanded funding and programming, a different approach to our urban design, and a culture of openness, support, and sharing, that I believe an improved sense of community can be fostered in Surrey.

It’s a very complex thing, community, but I have many ideas on ways to improve and develop a Vibrant Surrey! Check them out below.

1. Vitalized Town Centres Plan

Surrey adopted a long term plan decades ago to focus denser development and the centre of communities in our six Town Centres: Whalley, Guildford, Newton, Fleetwood, Cloverdale, and South Surrey. The success of this plan has been mixed, and while the Town Centres have provided a urban environment alternative to the typical suburban sprawl design, we could do a lot of things to improve them.

Having vitalized, bustling town centres is important for the City in many ways. For example, as Surrey continues to grow, less and less land will be available to build on - adopting a renewed vision for our Town Centres will ensure that as we densify, development will be focused on specific areas designated for this growth. Dense Town Centres also factor into expanded rapid transit - we need specific populations and destinations surrounding rapid transit stations to maximize the return on the investment of such infrastructure.

Here’s my suggestions for a way forward with renewed interest and investment into our six municipal Town Centres:

  • A major public consultation process should be undertaken to decide what we envision for our Town Centres in the future. I think it would be very important to develop a charette for each Town Centre - an intense, multi-day process filled with many creative visioning activities engaging city staff, architects, urban planners, citizens, business people, and more. Charettes have been done for other major projects in the region, such as the initial design activity for the Evergreen Line, or for Surrey’s first NCP, East Clayton. I personally think there are a number of things we should be looking at in the process:
       

    • A calculation of the densities required to support the provision of specific services within a walkable distance (i.e. how many people do we need to get a library, movie theatre, or indoor swimming pool?),
    • A reviewed look at the current size of our Town Centres and the typical size of a well developed walkable community such as downtown Portland or various European cities,
    • A long term look at our future population growth estimates and the ramifications of various housing and transportations scenarios including growth begin directed into the Town Centres,
    • Bylaws be developed to require street frontage of buildings in the Town Centres,
    • A intense look at the long term development of new, short distance, walkable street grids for the Town Centres,
    • The coordination of the Vitalized Town Centre plan with the Surrey Rapid Transit Plan to understand the connection between urban design and transportation,
    • How the Vitalized Town Centres Plan will encourage and sustain the Transit Oriented Development that will come with future rapid transit access to the Town Centres,
    • Develop targets and guidelines on which to annually understand our success of the Vitalized Town Centres Plan (i.e. we want 30% of housing to be affordable as a target in Newton - track our success based on that target), 

    Based on the vision presented in the charette process, each Town Centre should then get a detailed land use plan developed, and an overarching Vitalized Town Centres Plan be made in conjunction with the individual land use plans.

  • As mentioned in the Sustainable Development pillar, I would like SCDC, the Surrey City Development Corporation, to engage its resources to create key developments in coordination with the completed Vitalized Town Centres Plan. Once densities, locations, zoning, and an overall long term plan is developed for each of the Town Centres in the plan, SCDC should strategically invest in each Town Centre - doing so will jumpstart the private markets interest in the Town Centres, will reinforce the “centre of the community” identity of the Town Centre will the location of specific City provided services, and will also provide other needed services for Surrey residents such as affordable housing and the densities required for successful rapid transit.What I am suggesting is that the SCDC utilize its capital to build key non-profit developments that incorporate the best of what we want in our city. For example, let’s say we have decided we want 15 storey towers in Guildford along 152nd St with street fronted businesses. In such as SCDC key development, we could build a 15 storey tower - but rather than a private developer taking the profits of said development for themselves, the City can use these profits to offset the incorporation of needed social services into the development. So, perhaps 1/4 of the units are affordable rental housing for students, and another 1/4 are affordable owned units for all citizens. The other half of the units in the development are private market with the typical frills of a private market condo - and the profits of these units offset the cost of designating the other half of the units as some form of affordable housing.

    Another example could incorporate part of a development for private corporate businesses, while some sections are reserved for small businesses with subsidized leases thanks to the profits of the corporate business lease.

    Or, imagine the need for a new rec centre, such as in Cloverdale. Instead of spending millions of taxpayers dollars and run the rec centre at a loss, why not take a different approach? You could, for example, build a two-storey rec centre at the base of a 10-storied office building. The private market lease of the office units could offset a large portion of the rec centre. Or maybe this Town Centre needs more residential units - just make the building a bit taller and instead of office units make them residential.

    Other developments might provide needed office space for a Town Centre, incorporate a new library, or provide subsidized space for a community organization.

    The possibilities are endless.

    The SCDC in turn takes a large hand in encouraging the best development practices, providing much needed social services as determined by various plans such as the Affordable Housing Initiative or the Vitalized Town Centres Plan, not to mention this is not a net-loss for the City and it’s taxpayers - while the overall intent is to remain profit neutral in the developments, they are ultimately a net gain for the whole community. Finally, the City will have a lot more control in shaping the type of Vitalized Town Centres and Vibrant Communities Surrey residents want.

2. A Communications Revolution

External communications between City Hall and its residents are reasonable, but could be vastly improved for minimal investments. Here’s three initiatives I think would greatly improve civic awareness and transparency in Surrey:

     

  • A new website. When Surrey launched it’s website several years ago, it was very well done. However, as everyone knows, technology moves fast, and there are many new innovations in the web space that could dramatically improve the efficiency and approachability of the website, such as RSS feeds, improved graphics incorporation, updated web standards compliance, departmental blogs, integrated Google Maps, and more. I propose the City launch a public consultation process to find out what City residents want from the website, then engage a world-class web design firm based in the area to redesign and relaunch a new website for the next decade in online communications.
  • A series of community guides. Vancouver has a wonderful section of their website, called communitypages, which presents the history and services available in each community. I propose Surrey replicate Vancouver’s model, and build a similar website, with specific content for each of the City’s six Town Centres. Furthermore, have this information translated into several different languages such as Punjabi and Mandarin. The resource will be a boon to people moving into each community - especially new immigrants to the country. You could also design a paper based guide that could be shared with real estate agents and apartment landlords to hand out each time a new resident moves into the community.With this model as a baseline, I’d also like to see online, and paper-based, guides for all the services in the City designed for specific groups, such as youth, seniors, children, adults, and cultures. Bringing together all the social services, activities, and groups available in one resource would be extremely valuable to all city residents as they seek opportunities to engage in their communities.
  • I would also be keen on studying the viability of installing municipal wireless internet in each of the Town Centres. The City already has a plan to eventually roll out wifi to the libraries. I think this network should be expanded. Wifi would be a major attraction to tech companies and business men starting their enterprises in Surrey - they rely on the internet as their main form of communication everyday. Furthermore, wireless access is a great incentive to attract youth to the Town Centres and encourage them to explore the vast wonders and resources online. Municipal wireless internet has many ways to be deployed and paid for (subscription service, ad-based, etc.), and I’d like to see the details on the feasibility of it.

3. A renewed investment in Surrey’s youth

Surrey is typically known as a place to raise a family - translation: Surrey is made up of kids and adults. People tend to forget the importance, and hardship, of adolescence. Just a quick look at the City’s quarterly Recreation Guides shows more than a dozen programs for children, with maybe one or two pages for youth services.

When youth are engaged in activities that are productive to themselves and a wider audience, you will reduce the amount of time they spend in destructive activities such as vandalism or gang violence. You need to provide viable alternatives.

A lot of engaging youth ties into the Vitalized Town Centres plan. Youth want things to do - and when you develop our Town Centres as centres of the community with a plentiful mix of businesses, services, and other activities, you give places for youth to spend their time and have fun - restaurants, coffee shops, cinemas, clothing stores, rec centres, bowling alleys, karaoke, etc.

Beyond this though, we must expand City youth programming, and support new youth initiatives wherever they may sprout from. For example, I would like to see a program similar to YouthPolitik in Vancouver, where a number of youth are chosen to be mentored at City Hall by staff and councillors all about the civics and politics of running the City.

It is imperative to fill the current gap for youth in support services. It is one of the most critical parts of a human being’s life, and their experiences in adolescence shape the adults they will become. Once we listen to their wants and needs in life, we can begin to provide them with far better opportunities and services along the way to adulthood.

4. A renewed investment in Surrey’s seniors

On that same note, seniors are also a critical part of the community that deserve a much larger recognition. Our population is getting older and as people retire, the City needs to provide them with more opportunities to enjoy their time. 

I think the Vitalized Town Centres Plan will be a huge boon to seniors, as some may choose to leave behind the family home in the suburbs and want a place that requires less maintenance. They will have options to move to apartments in the Town Centres - with close walkable access to many different amenities such as restaurants, shops, libraries, rec centres, and more. 

As well, a lot of seniors are looking to stay healthy later in their lives. The Vitalized Town Centres Plan will aid in fasttracking the development of more rec centres across the city. In addition, through the Nature Network Strategy, the City will develop a series of greenways - perfect for recreational use by anyone, including our seniors. 

Seniors have contributed lots to the community. As they shift into the next stage of life, whether they choose to retire or not, we need to respect their wisdom and knowledge, while also providing them with places and spaces to enjoy the everyday spices of life.