Might have been discussed before but I wonder why this project seems slower than all the others in the area to complete.
Not sure other than the developer has so far historically in my opinion been very slow on every one of their builds. Even their 5 storey buildings seem to have taken double the time of other builders to complete.
"The problem that I see with 15min. cities is that there is little competition for business.With all amenities available with in 15 min. there is only so much population to shop at grocery stores,dept. stores ect....You won't find a Safeway,Thrifty's,and Co-op offering sales to lure customers.The base is not there.Who ever is there and established basically has the population held hostage for/to whatever prices they wish to charge."
They do have a point that the poor land-use policies does typically limit retail to larger corporations and there is a lack of smaller retailers and rents are high, less competition etc - however this has zero to do with "15 minute cities"
People are nuts. Never read the comments including this one
however, this claim of being the first 15 minute city is also nuts. The City of North Vancouver would have two of them
Forsyth Road Elementary School begun turning kids away in the fetch area. Surrey Traditional School is probably next. There's just a crazy amount of newcomers entering the area, especially being crowded into substandard dwellings in the surrounding neighborhood. There's not enough childcare spaces and amenities. Children's programs are insanely busy. There's also no pools nearby. Surrey Memorial Hospital is bursting at the seams and you need to be near death to be triaged. With respect to this area, there's now fewer walk-in-clinics than there was 15 years ago.
I like the logic of 15 minute cities. We should have more nodes within the region but calling this a 15 min city development is nuts and it's clear this is a stupid marketing ploy to justify crappy mid-rise developments in the periphery with no real added infrastructure in the region.
'15 minute cities' is like 'zero emissions' or 'vision zero' and is honestly just a phrase of the week to make it sound like government has all the power to solve every issue out there. I just worry it will discourage expansion of non walking/cycling infrastructure which is likely what will happen and allow other levels of government to shirk responsibility.
The article I find does a good job of explaining the subtlety lost in the buzz words, that just because you have a grocery store within 15 minutes or a church, doesn't mean it works for you if that grocery store doesn't carry your ethnic food, or the church isn't your religion or what you belong to. So while it may tick some box, I worry that urban designers will take direction from council that "you ticked the box, the area is 15 minute walkable, therefore we aren't going to expand roads, improve transit, or pressure the Province to increase school capacities."
Works well in a news article or press release, realistically unachievable in practice. There are zero 15 minute cities on the planet to date. Even someone in New York City has need to take the subway from time to time. Do we want to make our neighborhoods more walkable with multi-use? Absolutely.
I just hope like I said it doesn't become a tick a box excuse by some city councils and urban designers and they lose sight of the practicality of achieving these policies like zero emissions (we can only reach zero emissions if all life on the Earth was gone) and vision zero (you can't eliminate all traffic fatalities) has become. I know people like absolutes and black & white, but that's not how existence and reality works and I wish our policies used language that was more honest and not easily contradicted making it seem like a bunch of BS.
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There are zero 15 minute cities on the planet to date.
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Get your bike and head off to the Netherlands. From the smallest village to the biggest urban centers, everything you could possibly need is within 15 minutes from you.
Get your bike and head off to the Netherlands. From the smallest village to the biggest urban centers, everything you could possibly need is within 15 minutes from you.
Or Copenhagen and Barcelona. The thing they have to their advantage was their cities were built for people hundreds of years ago.
It's just so unfortunate our built form was constructed around the automobile. It's truly irreversible and hard to correct because all 3 levels of governments are disconnected and there's no real desire from the general populous to surrender their personal vehicles.
The fencing came down a couple of days ago, I have seen some people coming out and in and they have a door person inside. Walked around it last night, the retail spaces are like double-height and quite big. Snapped a few pics. I think move ins will start now, expecially this weekend. Interested to see what retail opens.
Tomorrow i'm working a retail space (or office space) at the Flamigo One, I will see what its all about.
I only know now that the Flamigo Bar is no longer there, in 1994 and 1995 I worked has a laborer for Key Engineering at Surrey Memorial Hospital (seismic upgrade and built the new cancer building), every friday after work we would go to the Flamingo to kick off the weekend, I miss those days.
EDIT: I'm not heading to the Flamigo One this morning , the work is above a retail unit and we have no access, it will be rescheduled.
Working an office space in the Flamigo Offices this morning - Mar 11, 2026.
Will be back a couple more times in the coming months, one retail space.
I'll have an update of what retail spaces are lelt for lease or sale through the summer.
Good looking building, inside and out, sorry, I didn't even think of taking pictures of the inside, next time, I will be back for an office space.
Crazy amount of future construction here, its kind of surreal standing in the middle of it, surrounded by the old Whalley neighbourhood and looking at all the new towers sporadically about.
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, the work is above a retail unit and we have no access, it will be rescheduled.
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