Under Metro Vancouver Regional District’s regional growth plans, the Whalley area in Surrey has long been designated as the region’s secondary metropolitan core—known as the Surrey Metro Core, Downtown Surrey, or Surrey City Centre.
It is second only to the region’s primary Metro Core, which comprises the combined area of the downtown Vancouver peninsula and the Central Broadway corridor (Broadway Plan area).
Newly created visuals reveal that Surrey City Centre’s skyline will reflect its designated metropolitan core status in the not-so-distant future, showcasing a towering modern transformation replacing the current low-density urban form.
These digital model visuals were created by a partnership between the City of Surrey’s Invest Surrey agency and the Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association.
The visualizations are based not only on existing buildings but, more importantly, also on future towers that are proposed, planned, and/or are already under construction.
Existing skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Future near-term skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Future medium-term skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Future long-term skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Future long-term skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Currently, there are 11 high-rise towers in Surrey City Centre, with 3 Civic Plaza tower being the tallest at 516 ft (157.3 metres). According to Invest Surrey, within Surrey City Centre, there are currently 21 high-rise towers under construction, and another 70 high-rise towers have been approved.
More specifically, there are currently 8,498 new homes and 586,000 sq ft of office, retail, and restaurant space under construction.
Many of these new developments will take physical shape over the coming years and into the next decade, but the completion and construction timelines — particularly for projects that have yet to begin construction — will depend on various factors, including market conditions and construction costs.
Existing skyline (top) and long-term future skyline (bottom) of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Long-term future skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Long-term future skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
Long-term future skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)
The tallest future tower will be the 754-ft-tall (230 metres), 45-storey office tower of the City of Surrey’s Centre Block redevelopment of the shuttered North Surrey Recreation Centre and North Surrey Arena, located immediately west of SkyTrain’s Surrey Central Station.
This will be the second phase of the Centre Block project, which is being led by the City-owned, for-profit real estate development company of Surrey City Development Corporation (SCDC).
When complete, this tower will not only be one of Metro Vancouver’s future tallest buildings (exceeding the height of downtown Vancouver’s tallest building, the Living Shangri-La tower, at 659 ft or 201 metres) but also one of the region’s single largest office buildings with about 1.1 million sq ft of floor area space.
2024 revised concept for the Centre Block’s north parcels redevelopment. (Hariri Pontarini Architects/Adamson Architects/SCDC)
2024 revised concept for the Centre Block’s north parcels redevelopment. (Hariri Pontarini Architects/Adamson Architects/SCDC)
2024 revised concept for the Centre Block’s north parcels redevelopment. (Hariri Pontarini Architects/Adamson Architects/SCDC)
Based on census statistics, Surrey City Centre’s residential population grew by 25% between 2016 and 2021, reaching over 35,000 residents. In contrast, the population of the downtown Vancouver peninsula grew by 7.4% over the same period, reaching about 122,000 in the 2021 census.
On a percentage basis only, over the same census period, Surrey City Centre’s population growth was also higher than downtown Toronto (16.1% to 276,000), downtown Calgary (21% to 46,800), and downtown Montreal (24.2% to 88,200). However, on a density basis (residents per sq km), the downtown Vancouver peninsula is Canada’s most densely populated city centre.
The sluggish growth of downtown Vancouver peninsula’s residential population over this previous five-year period is due in part to the early pandemic impacts, the increasingly built-out form of the area resulting in a shrinking pool of easy-to-develop sites, and onerous building height restrictions due to building shadowing guidelines and the protected mountain view cones, which were relaxed to an extent by a Vancouver City Council directive in July 2024.
Such building height restrictions and other impediments generally do not apply in Surrey City Centre, with the municipal government also known to be more flexible with building forms, floor plate sizes, and density allowances compared to their counterparts in Vancouver.
Skylines of downtown Vancouver (background) and Burnaby’s Brentwood Town Centre (foreground). (EB Adventure Photography/Shutterstock)
Downtown Vancouver peninsula. (EB Adventure Photography/Shutterstock)
Existing skyline of Surrey City Centre. (City of Surrey)
In terms of land area, Surrey City Centre and the downtown Vancouver peninsula are similar in size, at 5.3 sq km (1,300 acres) and 5.7 sq km (1,400 acres), respectively. However, when considering the full extent of the region’s designated primary Metro Core — which includes both the downtown Vancouver peninsula and the Central Broadway corridor (Broadway Plan area) — the total area doubles to approximately 11.5 sq km, with a combined population of over 200,000 residents.
In December 2024, the Vancouver City Council approved a revised Broadway Plan strategy that adds space for 64,000 more residents within the Central Broadway corridor. As of late 2024, there are currently 139 projects in the development pipeline within the Broadway Plan area, generating a combined total of over 20,300 homes if these projects are fully realized. This includes 15,372 secured purpose-built market rental homes, 3,549 secured purpose-built below-market rental housing and social housing units, 1,403 strata market ownership condominium homes, and over 7.4 million sq ft of job space, such as retail, restaurant, office, and hotel uses.
Based on the City of Surrey’s 2017-revised Surrey City Centre Area Plan, it is projected that the 2034 population of their city centre will reach about 50,000 by 2034 and 65,000 by 2044. The 2017 revisions also provided Surrey City Centre with a “full buildout capacity” of 50,000 to 70,000 homes for up to 134,000 residents within an 80 to 100-year timeframe. But there would be slower employment growth, rising from 23,600 to 38,000 over 30 years. The non-residential space buildout capacity would be 25 million sq ft, and it is anticipated that such floor area space would see a 50% increase by 2044 to 13.4 million sq ft of office, retail, restaurant, service, educational, institutional, civic, cultural, and other non-residential uses.
According to CBRE, as of 2024, there is 27.8 million sq ft of office space within the downtown Vancouver peninsula, 5.8 million sq ft of office space within the Central Broadway corridor and 3.2 million sq ft of office space across the entirety of the city of Surrey. Across Metro Vancouver, there is 53.6 million sq ft of office space.
Metro Vancouver’s designated urban centres. (Metro Vancouver Regional District)
Existing area of Surrey City Centre. (City of Surrey)
2017-revised Surrey City Centre Area Plan. (City of Surrey)
Provincially legislated 800-metre Transit-Oriented Areas around Surrey’s SkyTrain stations, including the future Green Timbers Station. (City of Surrey)
However, the potential exists for even greater buildout capacity in Surrey City Centre than the 2017-revised area plan allows. The municipal government is currently drafting revisions to the Surrey City Centre Area Plan, which is scheduled to be finalized for the Surrey City Council’s approval by late 2025.
These forthcoming changes to the area plan will take into account recent housing supply and affordability challenges, commercial space market changes, the provincial government’s recent housing-related legislation (especially the legislated 800-metre Transit-Oriented Areas around SkyTrain stations), and the impact of 2029 opening of SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension — both from how the 16-km-long SkyTrain extension improves the regional connectivity to Surrey City Centre and the higher-density land use changes from the addition of the new Green Timbers Station on the border of the city centre area.
Two existing SkyTrain stations within Surrey City Centre are already among the entire SkyTrain network’s busiest stations; in 2023, Surrey Central Station was the seventh busiest station with 4.9 million annual boardings, while King George Station was the ninth busiest with 4.6 million annual boardings.
R1 RapidBus at SkyTrain Surrey Central Station. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
February 2022 construction progress on King George Hub next to SkyTrain King George Station in Surrey City Centre. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
According to Metro Vancouver Regional District, Surrey is expected to have 316,600 residential units by 2050, accounting for 18% of all in the region. The 2050 population of Surrey is expected to reach 959,800 residents — up from 597,300 in 2021, 734,000 in 2030, and 859,000 in 2040.
The regional district’s most recent population growth forecast models anticipate Vancouver will remain as Metro Vancouver and British Columbia’s most populous city for decades to come, with Surrey continuing to narrow the gap over the next 30 years.
Currently, in terms of residential population, Surrey is Canada’s 11th-largest city (behind Hamilton and ahead of Quebec City), while Vancouver is eighth (behind Mississauga and ahead of Brampton). In terms of land area, with 316 sq km within its municipal borders, Surrey is nearly three times larger than Vancouver (116 sq km).