Okay, I admit it: I grew up in Surrey. Go ahead and take your pot shots and be done with it. Here’s an article by Frances Bula for The Globe and Mail on the work of Canada’s largest municipalities, including Surrey, to add some urban freshness to their typically strip mall-lined main streets. It’s about creating a vibrant sense of ‘place’, a reason to stop and stay awhile and maybe live, in areas that usually elicit little notice from motorists passing on their way to someplace else.
A couple of years ago we took the kids to a fantastic (free) ethnic arts and food festival held on the beautifully landscaped common areas around the Bing Thom buildings at Surrey Centre. Sure there was still a McDonalds down the street as well as sex shops and Shawarma houses, but there was a great nugget of culture, thought and possibility where there had been none. Congrats to Mayor Diane Watts, a politician (dare I say?) worth emulating.