Surrey's population explosion leaves city looking for answers
City planners seek faster, more reliable data to keep Surrey ticking.
MATT ROBINSON Updated: July 30, 2019
With Surrey in the midst of a population boom, city staff are looking for a data whiz who can find a better way to capture that growth on the fly and project it into the future in a bid to bolster planning efforts.
By 2016, the city had surpassed half a million residents thanks to a 10.6-per-cent jump in population from 468,251 people in 2011 to 517,887. For city planners, that population growth represented nearly 50,000 new residents in just five years who had to be absorbed into Surrey’s infrastructure and services.
Surrey remains one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Canada, although it grew slower than both Edmonton and Calgary, among others, from 2011-2016. The city’s population is expected to reach 770,000 by 2041, according to Surrey’s official community plan.
Preet Heer, a manager of community planning for Surrey, said the city continues to grow faster than the Metro Vancouver average, which was at seven per cent from 2011-2016.
“I think affordability is a huge factor. When you look at the cost of housing, comparatively, Surrey may be more affordable than some of the other urban areas,” Heer said. The city is also geographically large with plenty of undeveloped land.
What planners see in Surrey is growth that is concentrated in transit-supported areas. The city typically wants at least 40 per cent of its growth in urban and transit centres, and it is now tracking at around 43 per cent, Heer said. With rapid transit plans in the works, that trend may continue.
“I imagine that with the SkyTrain plans we’re going to see, potentially, higher growth in those areas once we have some land-use plans established,” she said.
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