Frances Bula
Vancouver Sun
Monday, September 24, 2007
Vancouver's fastest-growing suburbs have banded together to come up with their own plan for building green communities.
Surrey, Coquitlam, Langley Township and Abbotsford will be going to this year's Union of B.C. Municipalities conference as a new creature -- not individual cities, but as a distinct coalition of high-growth communities that will be pushing government to give them the services they need to absorb that growth in a sustainable way.
"The issues of high-growth communities are very different from communities with a declining or flat rate of growth," says Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts.
The four municipalities will be absorbing 70 per cent of the Lower Mainland's population growth over the next 10 years, but it's not just growth that's the issue. Suburbs are also dealing with all kinds of problems that used to be seen as exclusively urban -- gridlock, homelessness, crime and health care.
"We have to have the infrastructure in place to deal with that if we're going to grow," she said. "We have six kilometres of SkyTrain track for 700,000 people."
The four municipalities, working with former B.C. premier Mike Harcourt, have signed a "livability accord" that will be formally announced Oct. 2. But they will be going to the UBCM this week to lobby ministers for the special needs of their sub-region.
Coquitlam Mayor Maxine Wilson says the last regional plan was developed in the 1990s when the focus was all about how to connect the suburbs to the downtown.
"Since then, the region has shifted and the commuters are going from suburb to suburb," she said.
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