Panorama Ridge, the area near 152nd Street and Highway 10, is a perfect example of Surrey’s confused persona. Is it trying to be an auto-centric suburb or a vibrant urban centre? On Sunday, I took a walk in the commercial area of Panorama Ridge.
One of the first things I noticed is that the area does a pretty good job of providing an urban residential neighbourhood. This is evident in the different housing choices in Panorama Ridge. Things start to break down in the commercial and retail area.
At the corner of 152nd Street and Highway 10 is the Panorama Village Strip Mall. It uses higher-quality building material and includes pedestrian amenities. One of the strangest things about the development is the pedestrian plaza at the corner of the property. It’s a very nice plaza with high-quality lighting, sidewalks, and benches, and in and of itself would be a great place to eat your lunch or hear a street performance. The problem is you have a parking lot surrounding two sides of the plaza and highways surrounding the other sides. Who wants to hang around an area where cars and semis are barrelling by at 80 – 100km/h? It seems like this plaza was building to prove on a sheet of paper how pedestrian-friendly the development was hoping that council would not look at it in the context of the overall area.
Speaking about that, on the other side of 152nd Street is another strip mall that attempts to be pedestrian friendly. It even includes buildings that front Highway 10 with entrances and all. Again, this looks great on a sheet of paper, but who wants to take a stroll along Highway 10 with its narrow sidewalks to visit the shops?
I have to give Surrey credit for at least thinking about pedestrian amenities, but like they say: land-use cannot be independent of the transportation system. How could this area actually accommodate a pedestrian environment plus the needs of a major highway? Boulevard that provide a buffer between high-speed traffic and slow-speed traffic.
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- Example Boulevard from Complete Streets Presentaiton by Brandon Yan and Nathan Pachal
Surrey is a city in transition and Panorama Ridge is another example of how the city is starting to embrace the ideas of urbanity, but is still holding on to the suburban past.
I agree. The main issue though is that Highway 10 is just that, a highway, and unfortunately out of the jurisdiction of Surrey from what I recall. As such Council has little actual say in how it was or is designed.
I do think though that they could have did a better job in the actual commercial property projects in light of that. An example would be Fraser Highway and Venture Way. The new “strip mall” with the Starbuks that has been constructed. The sidewalk on that stretch is a good 10+ feet away from the highway with a median between . While it doesn’t have trees like your drawing does, I know from personal experience that it is much more comfortable to walk that stretch of sidewalk than it is any other stretch on the majority of Fraser Highway.
So that’s a case where I think Council could have did a better job. Forcing the design of the commercial to add that buffer themselves to the highway. When 152nd is widened straight through to Highway 99 and with the overpass being constructed now, that intersection is going to get doubly busy. Not to mention the pure density of Panorama. It really deserves a better feel. I think the neighborhood itself is quite amazing with the parks and winding streets though.
That’s an area where I think Clayton has done well. Even though it too has other problem areas, along Fraser Highway the sidewalk buffer right side east bound makes it much more comfortable to walk along such a busy stretch of road.