The Township of Langley and Building Age-Friendly Communities

In 2007, Township of Langley council endorsed the idea of becoming an age-friendly community. The idea of an age-friendly community according to the Township is “a community for all ages and where policies, services and structures of the physical and social environment are designed to support older community residents in making choices that will enhance their health and well-being and reduce reliance on more costly alternatives.” At the last Council Priorities meeting, the Seniors Advisory Committee was endorsed to also become the “Age-Friendly Advisory Steering Committee”. Also, Council recommended that age-friendly planning and design be incorporated into the Carvolth and Brookswood Neighbourhood Plans.

What I find interesting in the discussion about building an age-friendly community is that it there isn’t much talk about the very young or those with disabilities. An age-friendly community should be a community that is accessible to all. And a community that is accessible to all really has to be a walkable community.

Anyway back in 2010, the Township of Langley’s commissioned a report on age-friendly communities titled “The Voice of Older Citizens” which was a fact finding report about what concerns seniors had about their communities. The board themes of the report where around:

Increased awareness, knowledge, and communication about services and activities for seniors was a strong desire in all communities

Transportation and accessibility came up in each dialogue although the community’s specific needs differed.

The loss of the Langley Seniors Centre funding for Volunteer Outreach drivers has been noticed and felt by each of the four communities engaged in these dialogues.

Health services and overall well-being was discussed in all dialogues but has been uniquely named by each community.

As I read the report, the thing that stood out to me as the overall theme was that seniors wanted an accessible community. The Township of Langley is designed around vehicular mobility and unless you are a perfectly healthy young to middle-aged adult, the Township is not an accessible place. Because most of the built-form in the Township is single-use and auto-oriented due to zoning, most seniors live far away from shops, services (including medical), and social activities. They need to rely on other people to drive them around which means a loss of independence and a loss of dignity. In fact, the whole built form of the Township is designed to create a community of shut-in seniors and forced “soccer moms”.

One of the recommendations in the report is to create an action plan on making the Township more age-friend which also includes developing a framework and recommendations for age-friendly land-use policies. From what I can gather, no board framework was ever developed by the Township.

I’ve talked a lot about building walkable community, but the reality is that an accessible community has to be walkable. It’s no surprise that there is a large number of seniors who choose to live in Downtown Langley were they can walk or scooter independently to shops, services, and social activities. Right now, I can only think of three places in the Township that are age-friendly: Fort Langley, Downtown Aldergrove, and Murrayville around 222nd Street. Walnut Grove, Willoughby, and Willowbrook (which have the largest populations and are the highest-growth areas) are currently not accessible and are certainly not walkable.

While there are other important things to look at when building an age-friend community like building adaptable housing, creating an accessible public realm, and providing community services that are accessible to the very young, people with disabilities, and seniors, if Township Council is serious about building age-friendly communities, they need to get serious about building walkable communities. Walkable communities lay the groundwork for a transit-friendly city.

A Performing Arts & Cultural Centre for Langley?

Both the City and Township of Langley have been talking about building a Performing Arts & Cultural Centre for as long as I can remember. From what I’ve been told, many projects have come forward, but all have died even before hitting the planning stage. It seems that building a space for artists has not been a priority for either municipality.

The latest attempts to start the process of getting a performance arts and cultural space started in 2007 when the City of Langley adopted its Cultural Master Plan. In 2011, the Township of Langley Council received an Arts & Cultural Services Plan. Both plans pointed towards building a space for artists in the greater community. Of course nothing happened at the time, and it seemed that once again an arts space was put on the back burner.

According to both the agenda from the latest City and Township of Langley council meeting, earlier this year “Mayor Froese, Mayor Fassbender, School Board Chair Johnson, and senior staff from the Township of Langley, City of Langley, School District #35, Trinity Western University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University have held three informal meetings” to get the process started again on building a performance arts and cultural space.

It appears that the City of Langley, Township of Langley, Langley School Board, TWU, and Kwantlen will be jointly funding a task force which will report back on the following objectives by the end of this year:

a) Identify the need for the development of a Performing Arts & Cultural Centre in the Langleys.
b) Research and develop recommendations concerning the space needs for the Performing Arts & Cultural Centre.
c) Research and develop the pro-forma for the Performing Arts & Cultural Centre.
d) Research and recommend the preferred form of governance for the new Performing Arts & Cultural Centre.
e) Research and recommend to participating partners and their respective Council/Board the best location for a Performing Arts & Cultural Centre.
f) Research and recommend a proposed timeline for completion of the Performing Arts & Cultural Centre building.

Of course the next step after this would be to sort out how much a Performing Arts & Cultural Centre would cost, and how and when it would be paid for. In a best case scenario, it might be at least 4 years before ground was broken on this proposed Centre if all parties can agree on funding and location, and that might be big “ifs”.

A Primer on Regional Districts in British Columbia

BC is unique in Canada when it comes to regional governance because we have regional districts. Because regional districts are a BC invention, sometimes there is confusion about what services regional districts provide and how they fit into the local governance framework. I think this confusion gets some people upset about Metro Vancouver and its role our region.

I came across a great document from the Local Government Department at the Province called “A Primer on Regional Districts in British Columbia”. This 13-page gem is worth the read if you want to know the context behind the creation of regional district in the 1960’s, what they do, and how they operate today. Briefly, the primer explains that:

Regional districts have three basic roles. First, regional districts provide regional governance and services for the region as a whole.

Second, regional districts provide a political and administrative framework for inter-municipal or sub-regional service partnerships through the creation of "benefiting areas".

Third, regional districts are, in the absence of municipalities, the "local" government for rural areas.

Anyway, I highly recommend reading this document if you care about regional issues in Metro Vancouver.

Metro Vancouver's Regional Growth Strategy, Langley City, and Sprawl

In the summer of 2011, Metro Vancouver adopted a new Regional Growth Strategy for the region. As part of the process, all communities in Metro Vancouver have two years to make sure that their Official Community Plan lines up with the Regional Growth Strategy, and the Official Community Plans must be accepted by Metro Vancouver. This means that all municipalities in Metro Vancouver have until July to get their Official Community Plan aligned with the Regional Growth Strategy.

Each Municipalities’ Official Community Plan must contain a regional context statement which explains the relationship between the Regional Growth Strategy and the Official Community Plan, how the Official Community Plan aligns with the objectives of the Regional Growth Strategy, and how any inconsistency in the Official Community Plan will conform to the Regional Growth Strategy over time.

In Metro Vancouver, the Regional Growth Strategy contains the following goals which all municipalities must conform to:
Goal 1: Create a Compact Urban Area
Goal 2: Support a Sustainable Economy
Goal 3: Protect the Environment and respond to Climate Change Impacts
Goal 4: Develop Complete Communities
Goal 5: Support Sustainable Transportation Choices

The Regional Growth Strategy also contains high-level regional zoning and includes a parcel based map of the regional zoning which all municipalities must conform to.

The City of Langley is currently in the process of updating its Official Community Plan to bring it in line with Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy. One of the minor difference between Metro Vancouver’s zoning map and the City’s is an adjustment of the regional agricultural zone which is a result of the Clemas property (21024 Old Yale Road) being removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve in 2011. The City is requesting that Metro Vancouver update its Regional Growth Strategy to reflect this change which will require a regional public hearing and a 2/3rds weighted vote approval by Metro Vancouver’s board which is made up of politicians from each municipality in the region elected by their peers in their respective councils.

Regional zoning map as approved by Metro Vancouver. Grey: General Urban, Purple: Industrial, Salmon: Mixed Employment, Light Green: Agricultural, Dark Green: Conservation.

Regional zoning map as proposed by the City of Langley. Grey: General Urban, Purple: Industrial, Salmon: Mixed Employment, Light Green: Agricultural, Dark Green: Conservation.

Another major change for the City of Langley is the replacement of some Industrial zoned land in the City with “Mixed Employment” zoned land. The “Mixed Employment” zone is “industrial, commercial and other employment related uses to help meet the needs of the regional economy” according to the Regional Growth Strategy. Basically this zone bans residential housing, but it also appears to codify office parks and other unsustainable forms of development as it puts places where people work away from where they live. The City of Langley proposes to allow anything in this new zone except for residential, and explicitly allows big-box retail. What really disturbs me is that the built-form along the Langley Bypass which does not support sustainable, compact communities, and is a hostile pedestrian environment, will be allowed in other parts of the City.

The irony of Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy is that it is actually promoting more sprawl in the City of Langley and other municipalities because of the “Mixed Employment” zone. I talked with some people at Metro Vancouver and was told that the Mixed Employment zone was something that was requested by member municipalities to get the Regional Growth Strategy approved. As Metro Vancouver is a federation of municipalities, it needs buy-ins from all municipalities to get the Regional Growth Strategy adopted. I guess the feeling was, all the good from the Strategy more than makes up for the bad “Mixed Employment” zone, or as I’ll call it, the sprawl zone.