Analysis: Discussion and Summary
Vancouver’s higher residential and commercial densities result largely from its earlier establishment and historical settlement and the fact that it is more built up than Surrey. Further, Vancouver has a smaller land base, meaning that Vancouver can only really grow up rather than out. Surrey, in contrast, has a much larger land base containing significant amounts of open and undeveloped, agricultural, and rural-residential land-uses: the sites for new SDD development.
Surrey, in contrast to Vancouver, seems to be accommodating their large and rapid growth rates in the form of low-density horizontal development as opposed to the higher-density vertical development seen in Vancouver. A recent article in the Vancouver Province about residential growth and development in Surrey summarizes the type of growth that has been happening there. Entitled “Housing Starts set new record as families head for the burbs” (Spencer, 17/03/03; A6), the article discusses how the Northeast Surrey enclave of Fraser Heights, which has seen the construction of 4800 new single detached dwellings in the last decade or so, “is an example of how the Lower Mainland’s biggest city is absorbing 1,000 people per month. Across Surrey, Langley Township, and Maple Ridge, single family construction records are being set every month”. Many of these new houses, the article writes, are typified by the 5,800 square-footer on a half-acre being moved into by the couple featured in the article. In the article, Surreys Mayor Doug McCallum brags: “Surreys total number of units is miles ahead of any other city,…and almost 40 per cent of single family homes built in the Lower Mainland are built in Surrey. “We’re getting a lot of compliments about how fast projects are being approved”, said McCallum. The article finishes by saying “planners charts show there’s space for 260,000 more people in the next two decades elsewhere in Surrey”. (Vancouver Province, 17/03/03; A6). The vast amount of low-density residential sprawl can be seen in the map of Surrey showing dwelling unit densities.
In Surrey, business development, largely in the form of ‘greenfield’ residential, office park, and increasingly big box retail developments, trump LRSP sustainability objectives. A policy planner with the City of Surrey interviewed for this paper told me that the LRSP is regarded as a rather obscure, and abstract document that takes a back seat to market forces in the consideration and approval of development applications. In the course of our discussion, the policy planner stated that in terms of the role the LRSP plays in local planning decisions, the LRSP sounds good but it doesn’t really fit in with the realities of the market and the role that market forces play in making local development decisions. With the massive residential growth Surrey has experienced recently, there is an increasing imbalance between residential developments and commercial developments needed to serve them. Surrey, the planner told me, is therefore actively engaged in attracting commercial, both retail and office developments, the location of which is determined largely by “market realities” such as cheap land, usually located in isolated fringes, close to highway exit ramps. And meanwhile, Surrey continues to approve low-density sprawling SDD developments at record rates. Surrey, the planner told me, must attract a tax-base to pay for the community services expected by Surrey’s residents, an objective that is often in conflict with regional sustainability objectives.
Indeed, one of the key obstacles to LRSP objectives is the current rise in office park construction as a proportion of new office space in the region discussed earlier. Much of this new office park construction is, not surprisingly, occurring in Surrey. A 2001 GVRD commissioned study on office floor space distribution in the region and factors contributing to this distribution found that the key contributing factors influencing location decisions for office space were that office parks offer lower land and building costs, flexibility in building design and layout, and ample parking compared to town centre locations. Good highway access was far more important than transit service to firms locating in business parks, the study found (Royal LePage Advisors Inc. 2001). The Surrey policy planner told me that Surrey voters appear to be more concerned with decisions that will increase their personal convenience, and are therefore more interested in road improvements and the provision of convenient one-stop shopping with automobile access than regional sustainability objectives.
In Vancouver, where the metropolitan core continues to attract new office space development (although less so than in the past), isolated, less expensive, and undeveloped land is virtually unavailable and as a result, much new office construction is occurring in existing built up areas as mixed use developments where parking is less available, more expensive and therefore less attractive, likely contributing to Vancouver’s higher transit mode split. Surrey, although replete with ‘greenfield’ sites ready for sprawl development, has one significant factor working to concentrate growth, or at least limit it to some degree, and that is the Agricultural Land Reserve, which acts as an urban growth boundary beyond which development is off-limits. However, current provincial plans to divest stewardship of the ALR to municipalities may allow municipalities to begin taking land out of the ALR for private development, an outcome that would be disastrous for the region (Northwest Environmental Watch, 2002).
Earlier in its history Vancouver also displayed a tendency for low-density, horizontal growth similar to that occurring today in Surrey. Much of Vancouver was, and to a degree, still is, made up of SDD development, the result of a consumer demand for single-family dwellings on large lots that continues to this day. However, when all of the available land was used up, Vancouver was forced to accommodate population growth by increasing densities through more vertical developments. Surrey appears to be following a similar pattern, allowing market forces and a consumer demand for low-density horizontal development to use up all available land until they are forced to build up to accommodate future population growth. However, because there is so much more of a land base available for ‘greenfield’ in Surrey, it could be decades before we see any significant infill and densification there. The profits associated with SDD developments on ‘greenfield’ sites, the tendency to allow market forces and consumer demand to design our communities, and the unwillingness to plan growth more sustainabley, suggests that all open and undeveloped land in Surrey, including perhaps even parts of the ALR, will eventually turn into low-density horizontal development before any significant higher density developments occur. Currently, unlike Vancouver, affordability appears to be the only factor influencing people to live in higher density developments in Surrey as can be seen in the high correlation between low-incomes and higher densities.
In fact, across most of the region, higher densities are associated with lower incomes, a notable exception of which is parts of Vancouver’s and its metropolitan core. Further, higher densities are associated with lower automobile use, and generally more sustainable living and travel patterns. The implication is that those areas of the region that are exhibiting more sustainable patterns are those that are lower income, or, in other words, the most significant factor currently limiting unsustainable transportation and land-use patterns in the region is income. Indeed, of the 583,738 transit trips made daily in the GVRD, 78 per cent are made by people who either have limited access to a motor vehicle and use public transit as a primary means of transportation or who do not own a vehicle and rely heavily on transit (GVTA, 1999)
In addition, there continues to be a significant spatial polarization in both Vancouver, Surrey, and indeed across the whole region based on income. The data also shows that there is significant spatial polarization of housing types ad tenures. These results show fairly clearly that regional sustainability policies, as embraced and enacted by the individual member municipalities, are flawed in some very significant ways.
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