Developing Squamish
THE COMMUNITY IS GROWING AND NEWBIE FRIENDLY By PAT JOHNSON
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EWCOMERS to Squamish — and by some measures, that’s most people here — might be surprised at the speed with which the community has grown in the past few decades. From a largely resource-based town of 11,000 in 1991 to a mixed-economy of twice that number today, with artists, outdoor enthusiasts, hospitality employees, remote workers, entrepreneurs, techies, and commuters complementing the resource industries, Squamish is one of Canada’s most rapidly growing communities.
This presents benefits and challenges, acknowledges Mayor Karen Elliott, who herself moved to Squamish only in 2012. Preserving the natural and human components that make people want to move here in the first place while accommodating radically increased demands on infrastructure is a balancing act. Providing adequate affordable housing in a community that is disproportionately young and where a large number of residents are service employees is, the 16 | Discover Squamish Summer 2019
mayor acknowledges, “a tough nut to crack.” But Elliott and her council, who were elected in fall of 2018, are determined to maximize the possibilities facing the community and ameliorating the downsides of rapid growth. For example, council has slapped a “growth management boundary” around the town to avoid the kind of hellacious suburban sprawl that has infected communities all over North America. “We are growing quickly
and one of the key priorities of this council is to try to grow within our means,” Elliott says. Permitting new construction only within the growth boundary means a level of density that encourages pedestrian-welcoming hubs and accessible amenities while balancing people’s natural desire for privacy. “The challenge for us is how do you build livable density?” the mayor asks. “One of the things that our council is undertaking this term is to do in-depth
neighbourhood planning … recognizing that we do need to put more density around our transit routes, around our schools and around our shopping areas. We can’t spare any one particular neighbourhood from a need to increase density, but we want to do it in a way that we’re working with our citizens to plan what that looks like and hopefully, in the end, they make improvements that everyone is happy with over the years to come.”
