This past month I had the pleasure of visiting quite a few cities. Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, New York, Boston, Toronto, Halifax, Charlottetown, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, and Edmonton. My favourite places, because of the people, were the cities in the Maritimes. I was surprised at how nice Toronto, Ottawa, and Calgary were. I can see why Toronto and Calgary were up there - overall feeling I got.

BTW, a little off topic, it was weird to see that Vancouver proper has a smaller population than cities like Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton - from AAA info.

is Maple ridge or Surrey included as part of Vancouver in this survey?

The problem with nostalgia is most ppl remember the good and tend to ignore the bad.

Ignore the bad? Buddy, I lived in the DTES for 16 years. I know what bad is.

You mean forget the bad. No, I haven't forgotten the bad. The bad is nothing compared to what bad is today.

Anyway, this thead is about some organization that rates cities. I really don't think people decide to move to a city based on some dumb ass report.

"Hey, Honey, let's move to Melbourne! It's rated number one this year. Good thing we didn't move to Vancouver last year. It dropped to third place this year. How about Vienna? Oh, I'm so excited!"

And so solly for the people who got butt hurt by my too many immigrants and visitors comment. How about if I blame skytrain?

read my previous post.

I see............





Melbourne, huh?

I'm old enough to remember that the DTES was once a place where you could actually park your car and go for a stroll.

I have never been any under illusions about Vancouver: it has always been a beautiful place with people a little rough around the edges. The problem now is that people are forgetting this and instead, we're trying to compare ourselves with other real cities in the world. We'll never be the New York of the west coast.

calgary and toronto in the top 10? :fuckthatshit:

vancouver is pretty overrated too imo, what so good about here anyways?

10 months of rain?
high cost of living?
boring nightlife?
shitty transit system?
sharing the road with c-lais? (ok not really srs)

fuck this, time to head back to the motherland lol

With that beind said...name a place that has:

-10 months of sunshine
-low cost of living
-exiciting nightlife
-full functioning and convenient transit system
-good drivers

:okay:

Tokyo Metropolitan area.

Except that doesn't go very well with the criteria used to make the "best livable city" anyway.


-10 months of sunshine - SMOG hell
-low cost of living - outskirts of Tokyo within 1 hour slow train ride radius is rather cheap.
-exiciting nightlife - Oh hellz yeah, not the cheapest but the kinkiest out there.
-full functioning and convenient transit system - where else?
-good drivers - but all stuck in traffic

i fucking hate the rain, but the transit system isn't bad at all

San Francisco?

Not cheap

san fransisco is cold with tons of fog and rain. this aint full house mofucka
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living in tokyo = working 14 hours a day fuck that shit.
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:wgaf:

and 3 generation to pay off housing debt :fuckthatshit:

old man with old views :lol

Things like these are so much BS, cities are only as good as you make em, not as good as some fucking top 10 list.

DTES was our own doing. If we want to talk about this, don't bring up visitors, immigrants, or Expo 86. You can try to say isolation helps preserve the state of a city, but I don't think that's true in this instance.

And for balance:
What was Richmond like? An IKEA, a Futureshop, Landsdowne, and a bunch of fields. Exciting.
What was DT like?
How much public waterfront did we have around the city?
It was a little bit more racist of a city, was it not?
How many educated minorities did you see back then?
The Canucks kept losing.

Cities grow and evolve - that's what they do. As a result, old problems go away and new ones surface. 20 years from now, someone will be having the same conversation as us longing for the good old days.

If Riverview hadn't let out a bunch of people that shouldn't have been let out, I'd argue that the DTES wouldn't have been as bad as it is today.

- I grew up in East Van, so Richmond wasn't relevant to my existence. Is it really better now? As a CBC who doesn't speak much Cantonese, it's hard for me to get service in restaurants, etc.
- DT was a place where business was done. Nothing wrong with that.
- Uninspiring condos are better than industry? I suppose so... but our skyline isn't exactly pretty from an architectural standpoint. Besides, at least I could actually bike around Stanley Park at a reasonable pace.
- Vancouver was a bit more racist, sure. But, you know, being the victim of racial slurs admittedly gave me some backbone.
- The "university of a billion chinks" moniker has been around since the 1970s.
- 20 years later, we still have no cups.

Few things in life are 100% positive and 0% negative. I don't know what your responses really prove other than you see the world "cup half-empty" in a rather distorted way. The totality is what needs to be looked at, if you want to have an honest reflection.

For example: I fail to see how living in a city where you're wondering what the white guy next to you is thinking is better than in a city where the ignorance level is low. If you were middle eastern moving from one to the other, relief would be a good way to describe how they feel.

And it's false to assume you need to be a scarred by racism to build a backbone. I contend you'd build a stronger backbone by growing up in an environment where you are supported and have confidence while establishing your identity instead of questioning it.

Where else have you lived? I assume you've lived in several places, as a basis for comparison to make such a statement.

If you don't understand / can't appreciate what's so great about living in BC, make room for someone who will.
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hmmm... but if people lived in tiny places, I'd think they'd go out more and mingle on the street with other people (e.g. NY, HK etc) -- wouldn't that increased density allow for more culture?

bye:grin-FU: