If anyone can do it, Dianne Watts can.

Make Surrey cool, that is.

These days there seems little the popular Surrey mayor can’t do, what with her deft knack for balancing the outspoken desires of her constituents along with the pressing demographic issues that inevitably face one of the country’s fastest growing municipalities.

Since taking over the mayor’s chair in 2005, Watts has been hell-bent on cleaning up the grungy parts of town, and thus its once-tawdry reputation, and of late has been distinguishing her third term at the helm by casting tiebreaking anti-casino votes.

The mayor’s goal, of course, is to attract business, and people, but not at the expense of livability, and she is having much success, eschewing the crunchy granola mindset of her Vancouver counterpart and instead making a political name for herself as a forthright, progressive leader who isn’t afraid to make transformative decisions, unpopular or otherwise.

(And not to compare, but let’s: While Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson is planning plots for rutabaga and busy shopping for new cycling shorts, Watts is admonishing Vancouver for being a spoiled brat about rapid transit, and diving with sharks. Read into that what you will.)

Watts’s goal is clear: Surrey might be a ramble-town mix of farms and subdivisions, of industrial strip malls and big box stores, of shopping centres and corner grocers, of pet cemeteries and ethnic enclaves — not to mention the longtime butt of tiresome jokes — but make no mistake, Surrey is getting its cool on.

Here are just a few reasons why:

• The Surrey Memorial Hospital expansion, with its new emergency room.

• The swank 3 Civic Plaza in Surrey City Centre, with a Bing Thom designed public library, a new city hall and a 55-storey boutique hotel with condos on the top floors.

• The 1,000 people who move to Surrey every month, adding to a population nearing half a million, making it the country’s 12th largest city (Vancouver is 8th) by census numbers.

• More than $1 billion worth of residential and commercial construction in 2012.

• Room to move, with nearly triple the land mass of Vancouver.

• The new Port Mann Bridge.

• Fraser Downs race track.

• Morgan Crossing urban village.

• Crescent Beach.

Oh, Surrey may not have the cachet, that whole city-by-the-sea, where-can-I-park-for-under-$10-an-hour charm, but what it does have is the biggest draw of all: affordable housing.

Which is what Watts was more than happy to remind Metro Vancouverites of last week as they braved yet another missive from yet another international housing affordability survey. Based on the usual complicated equations for reaching its conclusion, the survey deemed Vancouver the second most expensive housing market of the 337 metropolitan centres surveyed, behind Hong Kong.

What else is new? And who doesn’t want to live in Vancouver? The beaches, the restaurants, the Lululemon culture, the bike lanes.

Too bad so few of us can afford it any more, too bad most of us had to decamp to the ‘burbs long ago, the lowly burbs, where the much-decried car culture rules but where, holy real estate boom, you can swing the proverbial cat in your kitchen and not hit the stove.

So you have to love Watts for reminding the city snoots that if their champagne tastes can’t live up to their beer budgets, stop whining and get a move on.

Eastward.

A recent MLS search confirmed her entreaty: Inputting a $500,000 price limit, reasonably cheap by Metro Vancouver standards, prompted 227 matches for detached houses in Surrey.

The same search in Vancouver proper found three, one of which was a house boat and one of which was a 51-year leasehold on Musqueam lands.

The cheapest MLS-listed house in Surrey was a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath fixer-upper (something of an understatement) on a big lot in Bolivar Heights in North Surrey. The cost: $255,000.

There were three Surrey houses listed at $500,000, including a 2,000-square-foot, two-storey, five-bedroom, two-bath home with a two-bedroom basement suite on a 12,000-square-foot lot, with a view of the Fraser River, in Cedar Hills.

The only detached house for sale in Vancouver under half a million was a $499,000 east side, three-bedroom, two-bath home on a 33-by-44-foot lot.

So complain, whine, blame, moan and pray for the bursting of the non-existent real estate bubble in the coveted out-of-reach Vancouver city housing market. And then get over yourself.

And when you’re done fretting about what you can’t have as you house hunt — and, yes, stainless steel appliances may be on that list — consider what you can.

And heed the words of a wise woman:

“There’s still affordability in the region.�

And there’s nothing cooler than that.

sfralic@vancouversun.com