Parking Time

One thing that most communities have in abundance is surface parking lots. If you read this blog regularly, you will know by now that I’m not the biggest fan of the asphalt.

When the City of Langley was working on their Downtown Plan, they did an inventory of asphalt and found that a large area of Downtown was covered in it. They even had a map that outlined parking lots in black. It was meant to show that we are not using our land to its fullest potential.

City of Langley Casino Parking

Today’s surface parking lots can be tomorrow golden mind for development, but there are a few things we need to do that I’ve already posted on: basically building should front the street. What was interesting to hear of recent was that as part of the development application process, as well as the artist’s rendered side view of sites, they also include a top-down view. This will allow planners, council, and the public to have a better understanding of site coverage. That may led to improved development decision making.

What will be interesting to see is how the Township of Langley plans to deal with the Cineplex movie site surface parking and how the City of Langley will deal with the casino surface parking. What I believe will happen is a new road will be built across both sites to break up the parking lots to provide access for hopefully new, mixed-use buildings.

While need to accommodate (not cater to) the auto in the South of Fraser while we wait for better transit. We can do much today to ready our sites for transit in the future. We can start building with the pedestrian and bicycles in mind today.

Cineplex Parking Lot in Langley Township