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Sustainable Development

In 2008, created and adopted the Surrey Sustainability Charter: a comprehensive document spanning 72 pages that takes a comprehensive look at all facets of society and creates an overarching document to guide the urban development of the city for the next 50 years. In 2011, the city council released the second update to the 2008 document indicating the progress made in the three years since the inception of the report.

Origins

Since 1960s, Metro Vancouver has been involved in green advocacy, most prominently by the founding of Greenpeace and advocate David Suzuki. When the Brundtland Report was published in 1987, it laid the groundwork for the convening of the 1992 Earth Summit and the adoption of Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration and to the establishment of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Metro Vancouver has taken steps to introduce initiatives to help reduce the ecological impact with a 1996 report "Liveable Region Plan" and also a 2001 update titled "Sustainable Region Initiative" (SRI for short). While the SRI was not met without criticism, it provided a useful baseline and foundation for Surrey to construct an encompassing plan that includes not only environmental issues, but economic and social issues as well.

Components

The Charter is broken down into multiple layers, with high level conceptual goals, a framework for action and low level details such as the implementation strategy. The charter follows the basic structure inspired by the Brundland Commission.

The report heavily incorporates the Triple Bottom Line Accounting methodology and breaks down the facets of Sustainable development onto the three sides of a cube. On one face of the cube, there are the three pillars to sustainability–Socio-Cultural, Economic and Environmental. On the second facet, is the political domain, and lastly, three time frames: short, medium and long term goals.

• Socio-Cultural Pillar:

“To promote a safe, caring, engaged, and liveable community, with a sense of place, that is inclusive of all aspects of diversity and provides a range of educational, recreational, cultural and employment opportunities, affordable and appropriate housing, transportation options and personal, health and social services that are accessible to all.”

• The Socio-Cultural Pillar contains 13 goals inclusive of safety, multiculturalism, family-oriented and population growth

• Economic Pillar:

”To create a local economy that builds on Surrey’s natural advantages, and uses the land base and human resources efficiently to create a broad range of well located, transit accessible and environmentally friendly businesses that provide attractive local employment opportunities and a sustainable revenue base for the City. “

• The Economic Pillar contains 14 goals describing how to protect and expand tax base, protect Agricultural Reserve Lands and fostering community economic development

• Environmental Pillar:

“To demonstrate good stewardship of the land, water, air and built environment, protecting, preserving and enhancing Surrey’s natural areas and ecosystems for current and future generations while making nature accessible for all to enjoy.”

• The Environmental Pillar contains 22 goals inclusive of habitat, water quality, air quality and built environment

Hurdles

Being an all inclusive plan requires a interplay of many complex and sometimes wicked problems. Trying to account for all problems is ambitious, and as the report admits, being at the municipal level reduces the funding, power and resources to implement the vision. Some hurdles that have arisen since the inception of the charter include the following:

Suburban Sprawl and the Gateway Program

See also: Urban sprawl and Gateway Program

Surrey currently faces the problem of Urban Sprawl, the phenomenon that is characterized by the low density residential, with almost no commericial or industrial zoning. This results in an heavy outflow of traffic in the morning, and inflow in the evening.

The announcement of the Gateway Program in 2005 by the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation meant a large expenditure in transportation infrastructure. Despite the oppositions by the Metro Vancouver and several mayoral councils, the project went ahead to create the South Fraser Perimeter Road and the Port Mann Bridge, both which pass through major portions of Surrey. It has been criticized to be contradictory to not only Metro Vancouver's Sustainable Region Initiative, but also Surrey's Sustainability Charter. Studies have shown that with an increase in road capacity, generated traffic increases, that is traffic that is diverted (shifted in time and route) and induced travel (increased total motor vehicle travel). . With the construction of the 10 lane Port Mann Bridge, the problem of suburban sprawl is exacerbated not only with the additional capacity, but RapidBus service was also cancelled despite expectations of a stop in Surrey.

Transportation and Land Use

The Sustainability Charter hinges on a large reduction on automobile dependancy requiring a well established transit infrastructure to the multiple districts of Surrey. In 2008, Gordon Campbell announced the extension of the Expo Line beyond the current terminus to as far as Langley. However, financial shortfall came upon Translink shortly after, and many of the announced plans came to a halt. Plans to expand northward via the Evergreen Line came to fruition prior the vision of extending light rail out to Guildford, Newton and Langley. Trying to make ends meet, Mayor Watts attempts to impose equal tolling across the region to assist with funding transit to reduce car reliance.

Protecting agricultural land reserves also play an important part in the sustainability charter. The idea behind the agricultural land reserves is to encourage and increase the role of urban agriculture thus reducing the reliance of food transport and increasing the quality and availability of food to local people. The Charter takes the idea one step further by bringing in value adding food processing agribusiness to complete the supply chain circle.

In a case study of Toronto completed by Pierre Filion, he claims that while transit and natural area conservation are successful at achieving their respective immediate objectives, they "do not modify metropolitan-wide relations between transportation and land use...in a fashion that is consistent with smart growth". Filion identifies that the largest obstacles are NIMBY reactions from the public and the limited finances from the public sector .