The Revolutionary Community
From Revolution to Renaissance
Theme of the
2016 Intelligent
Community Awards
Surrey grew up as a suburb of Vancouver. Twenty years ago, its economy was about cheap land, light manufacturing, warehousing and agriculture (which still makes up 30% of the economy). The political culture was low-tax and low-service.
This culture began to change a decade ago when a dynamic new Mayor and Council won office. The change accelerated when, in response to recession, the city proposed and funded a Build Surrey program to substantially upgrade its infrastructure.
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
These commitments from government attracted billions in private investment, because Surrey is one of the fastest-growing population centers in Canada, which adds 1,000 newcomers plus 500 newborns per month, a 4% annual growth rate. Surrey Economic Development Corporation was re-energized and began examining the city’s economic assets to find ways to leverage them in new areas like clean tech.
Innovation Boulevard
The centerpiece of this strategy is a one-square-mile district now in development called Innovation Boulevard. It encompasses City Hall, Simon Fraser University and Fraser Health, a formerly small hospital now handling 100,000 emergency room admissions per year. Simon Fraser University is a four-year research institution focusing on science and technology, from physics to mechatronics. It has students working on autonomous vehicles, 3D printing (including the creation of new kinds of printers), and robotics. It runs an incubator to commercialize faculty and student research, and their intellectual property policy allows the inventor to retain all rights.
The university finds itself in high demand. It built an iconic building in the downtown core with a tower for commercial tenants and multi-story “vertical campus” on top of an existing shopping mall. It was designed for 2,500 full-time-equivalent students and now serves 3,000. It has won funding to double the size of the university, which already plays a pivotal role in the innovation economy of Surrey.
The plan calls for filling in the district with incubators, accelerators and buildings for growing companies. One example is HealthTech, a newly formed incubator that will focus specifically on reducing the explosive growth in demand for emergency room services by finding effective ways to treat chronic conditions more cost-effectively, then commercializing them for global markets.
Fiber Future
Surrey sees the future as fiber and is pursuing multiple routes to install it where it will have the greatest economic impact. The Innovation Boulevard project will be served by a dark fiber network installed in a joint venture by Surrey, BC Hydro and a network development company. To encourage private-sector involvement, the city is incorporating fiber route data into all its publicly-accessible GIS maps. They believe that, by being transparent and leveraging the city’s property and control of rights of way, they can encourage the partnerships needed to deliver high-quality service at competitive prices.
Today, Surrey is partway through a revolutionary transition from a suburban past to an urban renaissance that draws energy from Vancouver but has an economic momentum all its own.
