Only in a country taken in by a blue sweater! Surrey is red neck country and TownShift finalists are true to form.

I took a look at the comp. I love urbanism and I love competing in thingy-mi-jiggle competitions: sometimes I do okay . . .

So I took a long hard look at TownShift and . . . errrr . . . with FormShift still in my mind . . . I thought oh no not again!

. . . and the five finalists confirm my errant expectations.

Now I admit to being pretty good with pens and colours and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator . . . and I believe I have a pretty well-rounded concept of what makes a town tick . . . but Ninendo and Flash Pacman . . . well . . . they ain’t my thing.

Sooooo, the Wednesday winner . . .

Well picture a bunch of old-farts and wannabe-youngsters bored, (do they still call themselves architects or maybe urban designers or even planners: I dunno titles have become so hackneyed) grasping at an opportunity, any opportunity, for a few minutes away from those crappy developers and city hall bureaucrats, to play after class . . .

Oh well, I could get all creepy and start bemoaning the semiotics of a failed society but aw . . .

. . . who cares? Whatever! The winner will never see the light of day: mercifully forgotten, shelved, like its nemesis FormShift.

No, No, “What would you do if I sang out of tune . . .?” Yo No Ma!

I think I concur with Urbanismo:

The finalists seems to show more skill at graphic design than urbanism understanding or architecture talent…

Saw some “futuristic” proposal coming straight from 60s comic books but I have taken a closer look at the “newton new town” supposed to integrate a Transit center: The least we can say is that
the transit center could have been a dump field that the contestant could not have designed their project otherwise (may be at the exception of one).
Some years ago the Surrey planning department come with a concept which seems still far superior of what the contestant proposes (not to say there is not nice detail idea, but that is)

…
at the presentation, Bing Thom has said that he can’t “think of a model to follow for Surrey”. May be he is right and Surrey can instead think of model to avoid: This competition finalists provide some samples.

So it is not that bad

Surrey? Surely, you mean “North White Rock”.

I’m not going to bother to open the link. Like Urbanismo, and others, I opened the Call for Entries and was demoralized even by the examples of built stuff from that community. I think the worst has to be that round-like Surrey Museum, 17710 56A Avenue, in Cloverdale.

FormShift was a kind of Litmus Test, and the result—from leading figures in the city design professions in our region—was unequivocal: “We Don’t Get the Urbanism Here.”

I was at Trevor Boddy’s “Vancouverism” exhibit last night—the Water Street Cafe reports that business has been hopping since the opening ceremonies. Good to see Gastown was ignored by VANOC, but not side lined by the people.

The work Boddy has done in assembling together models at same scale, adding photography, plans and his nimble descriptions, is terrific. But, all of it together will not prove to be enough “opium” for the masses. One comes away liking the small stuff much better than the towers. It’s omen and dark portent of the decades ahead.

There is enough Surreyerism in the show, that I can limit my Surrey comments to the projects in the exhibition. Surrey Central City is prominently displayed. A mega project with a four or five level parkade that will have all of the same problems of the Bentall Centre parkade. Once, only once, I was stupid enough to be caught in the exit cue for 45 minutes. Add that wasted time, and all the tones of hydro-carbons from idling engines, to this shinning city-to-be.

The feature at Surrey Central City is the up-ended Noah’s Arc Galleria, a space that screams at you “It’s Great Architecture”, while all the while you’re inner self is repeating, “whatever, whatever, just keep moving.” Stepping outside to the semi-circular open space facing a parking lot, and a bus marshalling area, is a cruel reminder of just exactly where this “there” is.

The model for Surrey Central City shows the hulking, sprawling mass of shopping-centre-old, plus shopping-centre-new, plus Surrey Central City to perfection. Huge; formless; turned into itself; surrounded by parking lots. The quality of the decisions being made at Surrey City Hall scream for themselves.

The model also gives an impression of what will be built immediately south of the LRT Station all the way to the King George Highway.

A forest of towers. That’s not a contest, anymore. It’s a foregone conclusion.

Bosa was involved in a plan for the development of a Tower Centre at 16th Avenue and 152nd Street, the boundary with White Rock.

Wouldn’t the high road, Joe, consist of suggesting that there is an opportunity to develop a local vernacular? There are plenty of mid-level developers located within city limits carrying out a lot of work. Burnaby, New West, and Coquitlam have already showed us that when you do more of the same, what you get is more of the same.

Surrey has the ability to re-use the B.C. Electric Right-of-way. Run a streetcar on existing infrastructure—there is local interest for that. And, reach city high-densities by developing Transit Oriented Townsites along the route. If you follow the line today, the properties adjacent have mostly fallow. Thus, the regeneration potential is very high, and the mandate to make it a street oriented urbanism, like we have not seen in the other TC’s, would put Surrey on the map.

But, let’s repeat your question: what’s wrong with this picture? No, I don’t think it is a lack of developers, and, yes, “vision” (or design) is definitely one of the needed ingredients. Can our architects help?

Not so sure there. What Surrey is lacking is good urban design.

@Michael Gordon:
Re your second suggestion: Presumably as a tiny step toward what you wisely suggest, The great visionaries of Surrey have recently decreed that henceforth King George Highway shall be known as “King George Boulevard”, thereby simultaneously earning a gold medal for pretentiousness and erasing one of the most venerable names of any thoroughfare in that benighted city. There has been some grumbling in the community at large, but it has been ignored. This serves admirably to illustrate the Surreyan attitude toward matters of heritage and history.

To this decision one can only respond: You can put lipstick on a pig, but…
gmgw

Hi Michael Gordon!

(Oh, thanks for the lipstick back, gmgw…)

Yeah, you know, there needs to be change… but the scale is the issue. King George is just a later version of Vancouver’s Kingsway, and we really are not making progress with either of the monarchs. Small things, yes, substantial change, no.

@ JJJ . . .”Architects can design all they want, unfortunately they don’t build anything, Developers do.” . . .

Ummmmm . . . interesting point of view! Surely, would it not be correct to say ordinary steel toed hard hats build.

Developers, talking on the phone, sipping coffee in meetings, counting their losses, are relatively recent in the mix.

In contrast: healthier times owners would assess their requirements, approach an architect who would translate those requirements into design and contract documents, invite bids, then the toes and hats would set too, build the building and, hopefully, contented owners would move in and live happily ever after.

It worked very well until . . . huh!

Mc-Blo’s tower on Georgia being the last example I know of locally!

@ Voony . . . “Most master planned community are a failure” True . . .

Two very elementary truths must always be recognized in this . . . errrrr . . . urban design stuff . . .

i. New Urbanism is real estate marketing:

and

ii. Newton’s second law of thermodynamics states, entropy: nothing is sustainable . . .

¡Verdad!

As for “liking” the TownShift thingies . . . I dunno: why not have a bit of fun . . . As for the presentations, I guess I take myself way too seriously . . . but surely . . . especially the one about the traffic activated balloons . . . so, rush hour traffic sets off balloons and everyone goes on a panoramic view joy ride . . . do I get it?

I dunno! Wasn’t one purpose of the comp to ameliorate Surrey’s traffic chaos!

Anyway, none of it will be built.

Says Michael G . . . “Several times I have taken my students out there to observe the area as it evolves. The public realm is so bad with a tiny few exceptions and of course the parks are nice.”

Ummmm, “bad”, “nice”!

All purposely designed new towns from Canberra, to Milton Keynes, to Satelite, to Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to Brasilia have, mercifully, been severely transmogrified by use . . .

Interestingly Lúcio Costa’s Brasilia took on an unintentional dimension. While the toes and hats were busy putting together Oscar Niemeyer’s “marbleized tomb stones” their wives were back home, in the make-shift construction workers’ shanty-town looking after the kids and getting dinner ready “Quanta a papá veio para casa”.

That “back home” subsequent shanty-town, became much more interesting than Kubitschek’s military “tomb stones”: indeed it became the main tourist attraction . . . despite Roberto Burle Marx’s wonderful natural flora and fauna . . . among the tomb stones.

Indeed Brasilia, Milton Keynes too for that matter, is a failure for the same reason Surrey is a failure: reliance on the auto for lack of public TX critical mass, and, as evident in TownShift, the lack of political will to change . . . plus the nauseating self-congratulations that, like, Vancouver makes any change for the better impossible . . . always looking outward at the view: never looking introspectively to self!

IMO it is impossible for me to arrive at a conclusion re TownShift: the presentations manifest as incomprehensible colour compositions reminiscent of video game packages.

Anyway, Surrey is beyond redemption: for self-congratulatory self satisfaction, if nothing else.

Surrey is, unbeknownst to us happy polemicists, the manifestation of centuries old bad habits that sculpt our urban and natural environment: good intentions, clever designs notwithstanding.

We will not change anything. Unintended circumstance will!

Yup,

Kubitschek, Costa, Niemeyer, Marx . . . WOW! What talent? What a team?

. . . but that was a long time ago and in another country! Go Canada . . .

“Based on Watts’ performance so far, I can imagine her vision for the economic development of BC: No tree left standing wherever a shopping mall, highrise, subdivision or a four-or-six–lane boulevard can be built. Call it “redneck urbanism”.

Interesting discussion, but this statement is most unfair and demonstrates considerable ignorance of the recent politics in the city. As Frances’ story notes, Watts ran against the incumbent mayor and political regime because she saw a need for change.

I serve on the Mayor’s economic development advisory committee, (Yes, she created one) and the Surrey City Development Corporation Board of Directors, and am witnessing a genuine desire to change the look and feel of Surrey. It’s going to happen.

“What Surrey needs to do is instead of chasing the architects is chase the developers and find out why they have been hesitant on investing there.”

In fact, many major developers have invested in Surrey over the years…including Intrawest and Bosa, Grosvenor and others (Macdonald Development Corporation is currently in the planning stages of a project)….but most developers do not want to be pioneers-they prefer to follow. As someone once said, they are so dictated by the herd instinct, they make sheep look like free thinkers!

As JJJ noted, Terry Hui is now finishing off a major project and many others are in the wings…watching, or slowly assembling sites.

I was in Surrey last night at their Olympic Live Site, (amongst other things, watching young South Asian children curling on a miniature rink). As I drove to and from (and yes, a major problem is the dominance of the car), I could not help but think that much of what is there can and will be repaired and redeveloped.

A good start might be to initiate a program of street tree planting along both sides of many of the streets, (each tree could be a dedication opportunity in memory, honour, etc.) to help offset the cost. Over time, the scale of the roads could be further reduced with landscaped central medians…sort of what Vancouver is finally starting to do now that the engineers are not always in charge of street design.

It will all take time. But for those of you who haven’t been out there, take the SkyTrain…yes you can….and see just how different Surrey Central City is today compared to what it was ten years ago. And ten years from now it will even more different.

For me, one of the real challenges is to create major new private office space. As we have all learned in Vancouver, the cost of creating new office buildings is greater than the market rent that can be charged. But Surrey has now been designated as the Metro Region’s second ‘downtown’ and efforts are underway to make this happen over the coming decades.

My prediction. Mayor Watts will not likely become Premier Watts. But all the planning efforts over the years by Ray Spaxman and Norm Hotson and others will eventually bear fruit. Let’s not forget that many of the attractive streets lined with fake townhouses and apartment towers in Downtown South were where some of us took our cars to be serviced not so long ago.

Urban well being and unregulated Monster homes don’t mix. Watts has no credibility. Sorry to say but Surrey has no future at being a well-designed Suburban/Urban mix. Her pedigree is sown in her genes: What ye sow, ye shall reap

Not THE Frank Murphy? My Nanaimo friend?

. . . of our Jamie Lerner attempts to wake this little town up, late of Barcelona, indeed I thought you were still in Europe . . .

Wanna talk Sandstone? Cable Bay? Nanaimo’s world class sprawl . . . .

Hey let’s get together . . . excuse us folks we have a bit of catching up to do . . .

Michael Geller:
“…this statement is most unfair and demonstrates considerable ignorance of the recent politics in the city…”
Hate to disappoint you, but as I’ve said several times in these fora, I spend a day or two in Surrey at least every two weeks and sometimes more often, thanks to the fact that my elderly mother-in-law lives in Ocean Park. While there, media junkie that I am, I usually go through her recycling box and catch up with the local rags, the “Surrey Now” and the “Peace Arch News”. I look especially for news on development and planning trends, as even in the wake of Ms. Watts’ elevation to power, the same pave-over-the-pastures-and-let’s-slap-up-another-Canadian-Tire-outlet approach to planning that has characterized Surrey since I started those regular visits more than 25 years ago is much in evidence.

Admittedly I spend little time in North and central Surrey; they give me the horrors. Most of my time in South Surrey, where there are still large tracts of farmland and second-growth forest. This has the unfortunate effect of making the ongoing tsunami of unchecked development even more apparent; those fields and forests are shrinking almost daily as the malls and condos grow by leaps and bounds. It’s still an overwhlemingly car-oriented city: more malls, more roads, more cul-de-sacs, more traffic. And autombile-driven densification is picking up the pace. Driving along 16th Avenue east of Highway 99, it seems like every second acreage you pass has either a “for sale” or development permit sign on it.

I know that Watts talks a good line about managed growth, Michael; for a year or so after she was elected, the Now and the News hung on her every word, and her golden mug was on their front pages in four-part colour every week. So I have a good idea of the kind of pronouncements she tends to make on Surrey’s future. What I’m saying is that actions speak louder than words, and I’ve seen little evidence of practical action in the development process in Surrey. (Perhaps I should steel myself for another visit to Whalley soon. The trauma of my last visit a decade ago has almost healed.)

I’m willing to admit that Watts may even be sincere in her stated desire for a revamped approach to development and growth. Sadly, if she is, trying to stop those long-held, typical Surrey growth patterns will be tantamount to trying to stop a runaway freight train with a butterfly net made of dental floss. I wish her luck.
gmgw

Get over yourselves. Take Surrey for what it is and unless you have something proactive to add to the conversation, leave the excessive color commentary out of your post. If you’ve grown up somewhere in Vancouver ‘proper’ your whole life, your opinion and perception of what Surrey is has lost all credibility in my mind.

Slutty doesn’t come close to describing Vancouver ‘proper’s’ forgotten sister… Take it easy on Surrey. Give it a chance to make something and in the meantime, stop making the smart, educated, people who live there feel badly about where they choose to live. There is nothing wrong with a young family, moving to the suburb of Surrey so that they can provide a happy, healthy life for their children that they wouldn’t be able to afford in Vancouver.

Shame on you all who thing your too good to step foot in Surrey.

Edward, we’re all feeling up the same elephant, and we all have in our hands bits that just don’t feel right. Let’s put some numbers to it.

I flew over Surrey on GoogleEarth looking for something that didn’t look right. I settled on a subdivision of small lots with the following characteristic:

Small homes spaced 32-feet apart on the rear side.

Shopping malls are typically 33 feet wide (store front to store front) for reasons of fire fighting equipment access. I don’t know if this is at the bottom of what I am seeing, I am just reporting on a “coincidence” in dimension.

So, for sakes of space, let’s try to understand what this means in housing. In this case, the rear yard is 16-feet deep; then, a fence; then a yard as deep as two sheets of plywood laid end to end (16 feet long); then the next house. How to explain this?

Imagine we have just pulled into a shopping center parking lot and stopped our car in front of another car parked in front of us.

If, rather than sitting in a parking lot, we were sitting in one of these houses looking out over the back yard, then the situation would be as follows. The first house would have its rear wall built tight against the back our mid-size car’s trunk; the fence would be erected between the front of our car and the front of the car facing us; and the rear side neighbour’s back wall would be built hard against the rear bumper of the car in front of us.

In the space of two cars parked front-to-front, this Surrey-approved subdivision parks two family homes.

I call the distance separating the windows of one home from the windows of the home opposite, the “Decency Index”.

I hold that any separation less than 70 feet—is “indecent”. At separations less than that, the particulars of everyday life in my home become common knowledge in my neighbour’s house hold, and vice versa.

The City of Surrey stands as the “Authority Having Jurisdiction”, or the professional overseers that, in my opinion, got this basic element of human decency wrong by 220%.

Michael Geller, I think what we’ve got here is a flock of developers that “make wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing” look like damn fools. I hope that’s made Urbanismo take notice.

Many crimes have been perpetrated in the name of affordable housing, and real estate profits. However, that doesn’t mean we have to turn a blind eye when the “second sister”—are we channelling “Cinderella here?—steps up to claim her due public recognition.