The communities that used to be the outskirts of Metro Vancouver are becoming giants in their own right.
Surrey's population will surpass Vancouver's in a few years. Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, and 91原创 City and Township 鈥� the four communities at the farthest east end of the regional district 鈥� collectively have more than 300,000 people, and they're still growing at an amazing clip.
What we don't have? Enough jobs for all the new arrivals. Vancouver is still the big magnet for commuters, even as the length of commutes gets longer, and our roads and transit are put under more strain.
It isn't all bad news on the jobs front.
As Vancouver redeveloped much of its industrial waterfront into condos over the past 50 years, new industrial parks sprang up in Surrey and 91原创, providing a lot of skilled and factory jobs. The film industry has a strong presence here as well, including with a number of back lots and sound stages. And of course there's agriculture and food processing, thanks to the ALR.
But Vancouver, thanks to its business-oriented downtown and a century-long head start, has a lock on many office-based enterprises. Similar businesses like to cluster together, and they also like to be close to their clients. Law firms will want to locate near major courthouses, shipping firms near ports, and banks and insurance companies will want to be near one another.
We can't expect to pry loose major employers with long-established headquarters and drag them 45 minutes to an hour from Vancouver.
But we can play to our strengths and start business clusters of our own. There are synergies between the tech industry and the increasing manufacturing base of eastern Metro Van; between clinics and our expanding hospitals; between film, animation, and video games and our sound stages.
Bringing jobs to our city centres can't be seen as a one off, grabbing a single company. Businesses need a reason to locate outside of downtown Vancouver, and there are plenty of good reasons, including cheaper land for office construction.
Giving local governments a more diversified tax base and local workers a chance to trade their hour-long commutes for 15-minute ones is a win-win, taking pressure off highways and transit while improving the work-life balance for locals.
