Issues: Smart Growth

We need to create communities and neighbourhoods in Surrey that are compact and that promote healthy and inexpensive modes of transportation. People in Surrey want to know that they can easily walk, bike, or take transit to go to the places they need to go on a daily basis- their neighbourhood school, the grocery store, or even the park. City Council can make it easier for people in Surrey to get around without having to use a car and pay for gas by focusing development around town centres and local services and amenities. Council should also ensure that service provision by the city keeps up with the pace of development and that services and amenities don't lag behind.

I believe strongly that City Council can, and should, make smart growth in its City Centre neighbourhood a priority. I would like to see City Centre become a downtown core that provides many high-quality, local jobs and that can be a vibrant economic centre for everyone in Surrey and the entire Fraser Valley. Surrey can do a couple of things to encourage mixed-use space and commercial space development in our City Centre. I would like to see more public-sector investment in City Centre, especially in the form of sports stadiums, theatres and performing arts centres, concert halls, and other lively mixed-use spaces. I also believe that we should be working with all levels of government to bring public-sector jobs into City Centre, jump-starting development in this area and providing a 'critical mass' of people to encourage private-sector investment in Surrey.

City Council can also make the redevelopment of its City Centre a priority by reducing unnecessary barriers to new projects in that neighbourhood and by fast-tracking projects in Whalley where appropriate. Finally, I believe that Surrey needs to continue to take an active role in caring for all of Surrey's citizens and in finding meaningful solutions to the social issues (such as homelessness, crime, and drug use) everywhere in Surrey that tend to reflect poorly upon the city, hindering investment here.