Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company

About twenty miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia, the 538-acre Southlands site is located in Tsawwassen near the United States Washington border. The Southlands project exemplifies a completely unique method of design that infuses urbanism to interface with all scales of agriculture seamlessly and interactively.

Recognition: Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Award 2010 Award of Excellence for Southlands: Agricultural Urbanism About twenty miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia, the 538-acre Southlands site is located in Tsawwassen near the United States Washington border. A bedroom community where nearly 75% of residents commute to Vancouver, Tsawwassen has seen little to no growth in the last decade and is composed primarily of strip shopping centers and single-family suburban developments. The Southlands is situated among two such existing neighborhoods and Boundary Bay Regional Park. It is the last large undeveloped parcel outside of B.C.’s Agricultural Reserve boundary. Previously agricultural land, the site is crisscrossed with a network of irrigation ditches and is home a population of raptors and water fowl. The site also contains two archaeological middens where First Nation settlement patterns have been discovered. Each of these attributes was used to enhance the site, allocating the middens for open space and preserving and transforming most of the ditches into canals as water amenities, which also doubles as a habitat preservation technique. The Southlands project exemplifies a completely unique method of design that infuses urbanism to interface with all scales of agriculture seamlessly and interactively. In the face of rising oil prices, growing food security concerns and the strain of global warming, Southlands’ developer Sean Hodgins wished to create a new kind of community, which could be sustainable at all levels of design. Focusing primarily on food production, the Southlands master plan eliminates all buffers between urban living and agricultural cultivation and allows each resident the opportunity to farm or enjoy locally produced food. The master plan seeks to create an explicitly green community with a special concentration on food production for the surrounding region. It also preserves a minimum of two thirds of the land for either open space or farmland. Farming and gardening are integrated at several scales and levels of intensity throughout the Transect resulting in ‘Agricultural Urbanism’ where food production forms the basis for urban density. From the larger, more rural farm and the smaller, periurban specialty farm to the urban community gardens and individual window boxes, the Southlands plan offers each resident the opportunity to cultivate food at a number of scales. Agriculture is also integrated at a social and cultural level where the town centre meets food production to form an ‘Agricultural Precinct.’ This Precinct will integrate a main street with live-works, retail, restaurants and civic buildings including a market space for local food producers to sell their wares, a new arts center and an educational center partnered with Kwantlen University to educate residents and students in the culinary and agricultural arts. The town centre will be within a ten-minute walk of all neighborhood homes serving as a gathering place for residents and visitors alike. Southlands’ residential component will consist of townhouses, single-family homes, granny flats and cottages, each with unique access to land cultivation whether in an interior courtyard or a private garden plot. Southlands’ compact, walkable agricultural urbanism will serve as a model for a self-sustaining, food-centered community.