Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Public Consultation

I was thinking about what makes a successful community plan and came to the conclusion that it takes the community, duh! For example, the Aldergrove Community Plan started with asking people what they liked about their community and what they would like to see changed. It also educated the community members involved on tools to get the community that they want. Not surprising, they ended up with a mix of housing types and a mixed-used downtown core. Of course you will always have people who object to change when you start implementing a plan, but you can feel confident because you have the support of the majority of the community.

I contrast this to the infill option that the City of Langley was exploring for the single family residential area south of the Nicomekl River. Instead of asking people what they liked and want to improve in the neighbourhood, they said “we want to increase density in your neighbourhood.” Of course this got killed before it even started. I’m sure if the City started with the basic questions and involved the community from day one, everyone would have arrived at the same point. When a local government goes out and says, “we are building high-rises on 200th Street”, you end up with emotional, irrational knee-jerk reaction. When a local government goes out and says, “how can we make a great community?”, you get a great community that might even include high-rises.

1 comment:

David said...

The problem with high density is that the law of averages is applied to the population and with it the negative including more organized and more sophisticated crime - and policing can't keep up to massive increase in the growth.