Quote:
Originally Posted by Bcasey25raptor
Vancouver is an absolutely lovely city but I think a reality check is in order.
1) Vancouver is NOT a global world class city, stop comparing it to Sydney, Toronto, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.
2) For it's size it performs quite well to be entirely honest, but even than it is a drag.
Vancouver is a small oversized fishing and logging town that has been given world stardom due to the Olympics and thanks to dozens of quality of living reports.
Vancouver isn't the worlds most liveable city, heck it isn't even in the top 10 as far as I'm concerned.
The worlds most liveable cities would be in Europe and possibly Australia/NZ. Not in Canada.
As Far as fun is concerned? If fun = friday and saturday night on granville street downtown, than as far as I'm concerned, I don't exactly want anymore of that.
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I agree with you that Vancouver gets carried away with this "world class" notion, and is nowhere near San Fran, Toronto, Sydney ..... let alone NYC, Paris or London !!
However, I'd say it is a more than an oversized fishing-lumbering town. (It's only 130 years since the railway reached the coast - give it a break!)
Vancouver is rather like a adolescent, growing up to "be someone," yet perhaps not yet having realized its full identity.
It has a contingent of small-town mentality people ... and a big-city aspect as well:
It entered upon the world stage in 1976 with the UN Habitat Conference, and has since seen the Commonwealth Conference, an Expo, even the Clinton-Yeltsin summit back in the 90s.
That would not have happened in a large fishing-lumbering town.
It's entering it's next phase now, becoming economically more important, and paying more attention to its appearance at street-level - with mixed success.
But it's really "only a kid" as cities go. Give it another 25 years, and it may seem a lot snazzier, sleeker, and (dare I say it) ... world class, and is already setting an
example of urbanism copied in cities around the globe. (Melbourne is an example of one of our emulators). Give it time; it's going places.