Surrey City Council officially adopted these principles in 1999 to guide the development of the Clayton plan, but try them anywhere else and you’ll run afoul of engineering standards and bylaws. 

Why would we forbid these practices?

1. Locate different dwelling types in the same neighbourhood and even on the same street. This goes against the grain of single-use zoning, allowing secondary suites, multiple unit dwellings next to single-family homes and other infill housing alternatives.

2. Provide buildings that present a friendly face to the street. Garages go to the back of the house, accessed by lanes.

3. Transit and shops should be within a five-minute walking distance. “For a store, even a small convenience store, to be both viable and within a five minute walk, it need to be surrounded by streets containing about 10 units, or 25 people, per acre,” says Condon. “Interestingly, this density seems to be the minimum for a viable transit system”.

4. Provide an interconnected street system. This ensures that every trip takes the shortest possible route, expanding the reach of the five-minute walk.

5. Provide lighter, greener, cheaper, smarter infrastructure. “This is the opposite of the heavy, grey, expensive and stupid infrastructure we have now,” he says. “The way to save the environment, and money, is to pave less, not more.”

6. Provide natural drainage systems. That means soaking up rainwater into the soils, not sending it down a storm sewer. “Amblewood Green in south  Surrey proves it can be done and that the marketplace will accept it. Here, 100% of all the water that falls on the site is absorbed by the soil, Condon reports.

Put all this into practice and projections by Condon’s team show a development with narrower streets than a typical suburban neighbourhood, smaller lots, the same-sized homes, mortgage helping rental units in every second home and no storm drains. That adds up to a $90,000 savings on the price of a home. Those are just the individual homeowner’s savings.

Now look at the public cost savings. If every new neighbourhood were designed like East Clayton, Condon’s research shows:

- there would be 40% fewer cars on the road;
- the air would be 40% cleaner;
- salmon would thrive;
- the expected doubling of our population could be      accommodated without destroying our environment;
- public expenditure for maintaining and replacing infrastructure would be cut in half; and
- average wage earners could own there own homes and gardens.

Condon says that all that is standing in the way of realizing these gains is inertia, distrust and fear of risk.
 
 

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