LIVABILITY
Enhancing Langley's Livability
What does that mean? - “Livability”.
What I mean by ENHANCING Langley’s LIVABILITY in a general sense is working to make Langley City a community where everyone can live, work and play from our youngest to oldest! To THRIVE! We ALL want to be able to thrive and enjoy where we live in all stages of our life!
THAT MEANS … having a diverse mix of affordable housing options to meet our housing demands; while being able to access easy, quick and affordable transportation or a convenient infrastructure to every kind of service needed in life - from health & social services, recreation & lifestyle experiences to enjoying a thriving, vibrant and entrepreneurial business environment that meets our community’s needs and wants.
Let's focus on - AFFORDABLE HOUSING OPTIONS & ACCESSIBILITY
AFFORDABLE HOUSING OPTIONS is a HUGE priority for people in our city TODAY! Many are paying 50% or more of their income on housing - this is a crisis in our city. Additionally though, we have to continue to attract, maintain and keep up with the projected growth in the area - which is in excess of 10% over 5 years - that’s almost 3,000 people.
There needs to be consultation and input from our community - balancing the damaging effects of gentrification with our need for increased and refreshed housing stock - while implementing proper policy ensuring people are not being displaced.
We need planning to bring a combination of mixed-use commercial, residential, and cultural development. Housing and care options for our Senior population is extremely important and should continue to be a priority in planning to increase the number of independent living units for low-income seniors.
ACCESSIBILITY - Our downtown core already is quite walkable and with the addition of the sky-train station our livability as far as access will continue to improve. This is a strength that needs to be built on by continuing to increase accessibility across the city not just in the down-town core but to it.
Each community area should be enhanced to improve connectivity between the community members and the downtown core, using transit routes, bike routes, and pedestrian pathways. We need to plan for increased usage of mobility devices such as scooters, personal e-bikes, E-scooters including rentals accessible from the sky-train station easily and conveniently connecting individuals to a vibrant down-town core.
I will say that as the city needs to be looking ahead and planning for the future - consultation and input from its residents is really important. It is vital for the city to do what they can to make access to input meaningful and thorough process.
If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to reach out and message me - I would love to hear more from you and what you think about ENHANCING LANGLEY CITY’S LIVABILITY!