Category Archives: Surrey Langley White Rock

The seafront at White Rock

September 30, 2012 By in Days Out, Surrey Langley White Rock Tags: , Leave a comment

The promenade and the White Rock at White Rock, B.C. Vicki and I recently drove the 40 minutes from Maple Ridge to White Rock for a Saturday outing.  White Rock’s Marine Drive is the closest thing in Western Canada to a British-style seafront resort, complete with an overabundance of fish and chips.  It’s a full-blown tourist strip, but I would say most of the tourists were from the region, like us; people of all colours and backgrounds, with lots of kids.  We ran into Maple Ridge realtor Anil Bharwani and his wife; after years of driving to Stanley Park for their weekend walks, they’ve switched to White Rock, which they find more pleasant.

Vintage housing off Marine Drive, White RockThe City of White Rock, with a population of 20,000, is a bit like the B.C.communities of Comox or Oak Bay, a genteel, land-bound townlet where local government has no space to sprawl.  White Rock has densified, and developed a nice urban village a few blocks above the ocean; I’ll write about that some other time.  Marine Drive has its own scene, which obviously goes back as a kind of bohemian retreat to something like the 1920s.  It’s cool, but short on services other than bars, restaurants and touristy clothing outlets; if you want groceries, you hike, or more likely drive, up the hill. Continue reading →

Aldergrove: Salvaging a village in the deep ‘burbs

April 23, 2012 By in Surrey Langley White Rock, Urban Villages Project Tags: , 2 Comments

In a Langley Township Council discussion about Aldergrove’s urban village, Councillor Charlie Fox expressed hope that the village might rise again to become the “heartbeat” of the area.  “Right now, it’s probably the deadbeat of Aldergrove,” he said.

Mr. Fox might have been referring uncharitably to the social agency shops and kitchens that indicate the presence of a low-income population; or he might have been talking about the village’s air of fatigue, of having seen repeated setbacks.  The village plan admits that nearby highway commercial development has drawn customers away, “as evidenced by a number of vacant store fronts and the existence of some marginal businesses.” Continue reading →

You could win a trip to fabulous Cloverdale

March 27, 2012 By in Surrey Langley White Rock, Urban Villages Project Tags: , Leave a comment

On a cloudy but dry Saturday afternoon, the sidewalks of old Cloverdale were almost deserted.  This village in the city of Surrey, B.C. makes a good starting point for the Fraseropolis.com Urban Villages project: it has potential as a residential and commercial centre, but its future prospects are unclear.

Cloverdale village sits at the junction of provincial highways 10 and 15, providing easy access from much of Surrey and Langley.  Its identity dates from the days of the Interurban commuter railway line, which ceased operation in the 1950s.  Settlement began in the 1870s, but the vintage architecture appears to date from about 1930.  Its “Anytown USA” look attracted the makers of Smallville, a now-defunct television series about the boyhood of the comic-book hero Superman.  At the time of this post, the Cloverdale Business Improvement Association still promoted the village as “The Home of Smallville”, although the cameras for the Superman-as-teenager TV series had been gone for some years. Continue reading →

Gloucester Estates: industry at the margins

November 24, 2011 By in Planning and Development, Surrey Langley White Rock, Transit, Skytrain, LRT Tags: , , , 4 Comments

For a society that consumes so much stuff, it’s remarkable how we like to push  industrial production and distribution out of sight.

In Fraseropolis, most industrial zones are screened from the view of people sitting in their living rooms or standing on their lawns, and the number of vehicle access points to industrial zone is kept to a minimum.  The biggest issue is trucks.  We don’t want them near residential streets.  They rattle the teacups.  They are feared as a threat to pedestrians and property values.

A couple of decades ago, decision-makers in the Township of Langley went the extra mile in banishing industry to the margins, creating Gloucester Industrial Estates in a rural area near the municipality’s eastern boundary.  (We’re talking fabrication, assembly, food processing and warehousing here, not black smoke.)  Gloucester has good access to the Trans-Canada Highway, but it is far from any residential area and most services.  Continue reading →