Do you really want to see Langley become a sea of ugly little box homes? That's what will happen. Acres upon acres of beige vinyl siding stacked in neat little rows for as far as the eye can see.

Imagine talking to your realtor and saying, what I'm really looking for is a 3bed/2 bath 2000sq.ft in bland boring beige colors built 4 feet away from my neighbor.

"OK, I have 250 to show you..."

Langley is already turning into that right now. The cool thing about that area is you can still have horse farms and acreage.

I'm not against development, but Langley to me now has already lost its uniqueness and is well on its way to being surrey 2.0.

I owned one of those boring beige homes in Ottawa, and worse the construction quality is terrible.

Glad I got rid of it, and judging my my old neighbourhood I only missed out on $10K as prices have flatlined since I sold.

You're talking about 204 by Walnut Grove and Hwy1, right? Yeah, that's turning into a pretty ugly little neighbourhood. That area is going to become badly congested real quickly. Hillcrest is mainly Surrey, which spilled slightly into Langley. I do hate rowhomes with a passion. If I wanted to live that close to my neighbour, I'd choose to buy a townhouse instead of a detached home where I can literally walk down the block by walking on the roof of each house. To be fair, though, those plots of land were already residential. It's just that each plot had multiple acres of land for one house. Much easier to redevelop that land for multiple houses than turn farm land into one.

And yeah, I live in a very nice neighbourhood. Even though it was a housing development back in the super early 80's, each house by me has at least 1/2 acre of land with basically a mini-forest on the property. I'm a little sad that the 4 story restriction was lifted, though. I love driving to work while going down the 208th hill and being able to see for miles. In ten years time, that view is going to look very different.

Langley still has it's charm, though. You just have to avoid anything North of 64th Ave.

The congestion in Langley is brutal, especially on 200 street from 72nd down to the ByPass. I can see traffic getting worse with each new development that pops up.

I ignore these problems until I have a career. so for now, im ignorant and choose to fuck it because I have no control over it.

That's what i was referring to. Our rental is to the surrey side of that. At least with ours, you get to drive through a few minutes of fields and horses before you get back into townhouse hell. Those fields and horses are on a borrowed clock though, as everytime I go, there are another 10 beige boxes plotted out.

And yes Taylor, they are built to the minimum standards. It happens every time there is a larger building boom. I was working on a house in an established neighborhood from the 80's, and the construction of the place was the shits. Exterior wall was 2x4 construction, not even standard 16" oc. There is only so much you can do to insulate a home that has a 3 1/2" wall cavity.

I wouldn't want to be a long-term Langley resident and see it turn into a sea of poorly built, poorly designed houses causing traffic chaos and then top it off with an icing of big box stores lined up to the highway.

But a little bit, that ship has sailed.

What makes you think that you will be in the lucky 20%?

^^ I don't plan being the lucky 20% but think about it for a sec.

The earth is running out of food, usable water, oil....... maybe within the next 40years or so. Sure we can other alternatives for oil but what about usable water? There are only like 2% of total usable water on this planet and we are all polluting it. Is going to run out and then what?

We might not notice it here in Canada but in a lot of the Third World country shortage of food and water is already at a very critical level. Is only a matter of time before it hits us.......

They should call you doctor eugenics.

We have way more than enough fresh water in Canada.

Also
Desalinisation - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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I am little confused regarding the issue of single-family homes being packed into an area, that was once a natural, spacious neighbourhood. I, personally detest neighbourhoods that are backed with cars on the streets and have rental properties left right and centre creating a mass influx of people in one cramped area...But I must ask, why does this happen?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it because building houses this way, attracts more buyers, because these houses are more affordable than those in say a more "spacious" neighbourhood?

Personally, I have 17 acres on non-ALR land in the Clayton Heights area. Acquired it just last year actually. It's in NCP-2 and there are proposals being done up as we speak. This purchase was made for several reasons but mainly because it's going to be a great source of income eventually and because I can freely build a house and buffer myself from any sort of town house or single-family home neighbourhood.

But back to my main point, from what I can see, we are complaining about two things that conflict with each other. I may be wrong though.

1) We're upset because housing is unaffordable and to get a decent house, we have to pay a lot more than say someone in a different part of the country. Some of us believe that this is partially a result of foreigners coming here and investing their money into expensive properties, creating a demand for those high-priced properties, and in return creating a motivation for people to drive up the prices of their properties...

2) We are complaining because there is too much development going on and these houses that developers are building are cheaply made and packed into a small area. But at the same time, these houses are cheaper than the rest because of these above reasons...

So what is it that we want? Cheap housing or houses that are surrounded with scenery and fields and parks? Again, I'm not arguing with anyone's points here regarding congestion and influx of commercial/town house real estate...just trying to figure out what exactly it is that people are looking for here...

Its easier and cheaper to provide services in higher density.

If Vancouver was a spacious sprawling suburb, the cost to provide services with be astronomical. I grew up in the country with 1000 acres to play, yet had nowhere near the services offered where I live now for essentially the same amount of property tax.

That is an excellent point, and an excellent post.

First, I don't think there is a "nice" answer.

Higher real estate prices drive development of condos, townhouses and cheaper, more densely packed homes. To recoup my investment, I need to see this many homes in this area selling for this much.

But let's look at what happens. I'm going to use that crowding of houses by the highway in Langley as an example. Fast forward 30 years.

We now have houses that are cheaply built, next to a highway. Property values are ALWAYS going to reflect those 2 points. People aren't going to maintain that housing stock. The people with money are going to buy nicer homes away from the highway. So that neighborhood is destined to be "average". That starts the potential for the "surrey-fication" of the area where you start to get higher rates of petty crime and businesses that cater to average income.

You now need to build more roads and bridges to handle the traffic. You have congestion.

I honestly don't know what the answer is. If you are buying a house in the GVRD, chances are, you are buying in a sub-divided location that at one point was subject to this same conversation. Some houses in the outer areas were privately built on land, not a "lot".

I find myself kind of stuck on your very good point. I mean, I totally agree. I guess I just look at developments such as that, and a few others in the Langley area and say, "we're designing on money here, not style" and I just think its a shame.

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