Out of all cities across the country, MoneySense ranked Boucherville, Quebec as the best place to live. Low unemployment, high incomes and affordable housing pushed this small suburb to the top of the list. When only large cities are considered, Ottawa comes in top spot. This is followed by Quebec, Calgary and Winnipeg. Not all cities in the Lower Mainland scored as poorly as Vancouver.
The District Municipality of North Vancouver came in ninth place overall. Port Moody and Port Coquitlam also squeaked in ahead of Vancouver, at numbers 32 and 34, respectively. A full ranking can be found here. View comments.
I lived in Vancouver for a decade, visit it at least yearly and expect to retire there. The more cities I spend time in around the world, the more I realize how special Vancouver is.
But why? Vancouver has a supernaturally beautiful setting. There's no way to downplay this. Vancouver is blessed with more natural beauty than any major city in the world. The north shore mountains, English Bay off of the Pacific Ocean sheltered from the worst storms by Vancouver Island, temperate rain forest with huge trees, wildlife on the water's edge and an active volcano, Mt. Baker, standing in as a surrogate for Mt.
Vancouver didn't screw up its beautiful setting advantage. Sydney is almost as blessed. So is San Francisco. So are other cities around the world. However, Vancouver created Stanley Park, a acre blessing of mostly untouched trees in Vancouver put serious limits on urban growth with its Agricultural Land Reserve in and Green Zone in They established View Corridors to allow the views of the surrounding beauty to be accessible by all in They started the Vancouver Seawall which runs 22 kilometres around the downtown and Stanley Park in , and put in place urban planning policies and regulations which required that developers building on the waterfront extended and maintained the seawall with free access and flow through for all.
This kept the people concentrated in specific development areas, but made all of that glorious nature easily accessible by all as well. All of that concentration of people still makes it less dense than many Asian and South American cities, but it means that it is possible to get around on foot, bicycle and transit much more quickly and easily than the majority of cities in the world.
Image by squeakymarmot. Vancouver is a major Canadian gateway to Asia. Chinatowns in other north American cities really don't compare to what Vancouver has to offer. It has a Chinatown, but many Asian cultural elements flow through all of the urban fabric of Vancouver, and dominate entirely in Richmond. The best Korean, Japanese and Chinese food in North America can be found in Vancouver, and there are dedicated downtown supermarkets for Asian food and goods.
A big part of Vancouver's tremendously multi-cultural and multi-ethnic spirit comes from Asia, and that's a blessing as well. Image by Xicotencatl. Vancouver is in Canada. Peace, order and good government. That's in the preamble to Canada's constitution and what it pretty much holds to. Canada loves immigrants, gaining tremendously from their influx, and Vancouver doesn't just have the benefits of east Asian cultures, but most other ethnicities as well, and they pretty much just all get along, eating each others' cuisines and admiring each others religious edifices while working together to make a living and to weave the civic fabric.
Canada is a democracy that works as well as any other, it's just not corrupt at all outside of a handful of instances and we are better known in the world as peacekeepers than warriors, although our current government is a bit more militant. Our biggest source of violence is the occasional hockey riot, but even there we find moments of wonder and peace. Vancouver is rich.
Vancouver is a major north transshipment American port with enormous amounts of container traffic and many cruise ships coming in and out, all of which leave a lot of money in local pockets. Vancouver is the business capital of British Columbia, a stupidly resource rich land of forests and minerals, and many of the companies which extract those resources have head offices or significant offices in Vancouver, once again pumping lots of money into the local economy.
Vancouver's natural beauty doesn't just draw the international rich who have third- and fourth-homes there, but film and television production companies who take advantage of the city and its surrounding beauty to film a lot of media, once again pumping money into the local economy. This leads to challenges with housing prices, but Vancouver isn't that expensive by world standards, just by Canadian standards, and the wealth means that there is transit and other infrastructure that works for the vast majority of people who don't live in multi-million dollar condos.
Oh, and that richness means that they actually have adequate cultural outlets -- symphonies, live music, theatre, art galleries, museums -- for those that want them, although they have to compete with the natural beauty. Vancouver's weather rocks. Vancouver rarely dips below freezing in the winter. The summers rarely get anywhere near 30 degrees Celsius and aren't humid. You can walk, bicycle and do everything else out doors all year long. I've watched people play tennis outdoors on New Year's Day, and lived in a condo without airconditioning for years without it particularly being an issue.
It's a bit grey in the winter, but compared to the compromises most other places in the world make, it's just not that bad especially because Vancouver is green and clean. The climate and the winter rains mean that Vancouver is green year round, and dust and grime just doesn't build up that much even if you live next to a construction site, but gets washed away.
The air is clean, the streets are clean, the beaches are clean. The air there smells so good that whenever I land in Vancouver from anywhere, I stick my head out the cab window on the way downtown to breathe deeply of it. Up the Fraser Valley gets a bit smoggy at times due to the people that are still driving cars, but it's hardly anything by international standards. Vancouver's commute times are good.
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