Southlands in Transition

There is an argument made by the Southlands think tank team that our community of South Delta has to increase by 3,000 to 4,000 more inhabitants and that there has to be additional construction of at least 2,000 new housing units to shelter them.

For a moment, let us not dwell on the infrastructure challenges such a plan will generate, such as dealing with the couple of thousand new vehicles that will be added to our traffic, the need for more community facilities such as policing, schools, hospitals, etc.

Right now there is a large PR push to build these new units on top of agriculturally zoned farmland. This is a throwback to the bad old days, when speculators bought cheap farmland and made small fortunes by the mere process of rezoning it to residential and industrial status. Our neighbour city to the north, Richmond, has seen a huge percentage of their farmlands disappear to such Wild West development. Glaring examples are the industrial park along Horseshoe Way and the Ironwood Shopping center, both built adjacent to the South Arm of the Fraser River on top of some of the world’s best productive farmlands. The rich soils carried downstream by the Fraser over the millenniums were deposited here, forming a delta, such as the area we are named after. Alas, this land is now buried under concrete.

There was an interesting article with comments from Gordon Price in the March 28 edition of the Delta Optimist

The text of the article is by Sandor Gyarmati is here....

One size of housing no longer fits all

By Sandor Gyarmati

Introducing new forms of denser housing into existing neighbourhoods can be acceptable to residents as long as the consultation is meaningful, says a former Vancouver councillor who's seen first-hand how communities can evolve.

Gordon Price is the director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. He's also an adjunct professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC, where he developed and teaches a course called Vancouver and Its Times.