Our Sense of Place
Metro Vancouver is surrounded by restless ocean, spectacular mountains and open floodplain. This setting shapes our communities in countless ways.
Our ocean access makes us a port city, a transportation gateway, and an entry point for immigrants, many of whom now call this place home. Together, the mountains and ocean offer uplifting beauty and abundant recreational opportunities, which make the region a desirable place to live and work. They have helped contain sprawl and create the dense downtown core admired by urban planners worldwide. And the Fraser River’s fertile delta offers us abundant local foods, a strong agricultural base, and pastoral landscapes.
Metro Vancouver is also shaped by our region’s history. First Nations peoples lived in harmony with the abundant natural resources for millennia and continue to have a strong presence. Immigration, resource extraction, agriculture and industrialization have also helped create the complex metropolitan area we live in.
Today, over two million of us call this region home.
We share the positive aspects of our region such as mild weather, beautiful scenery, celebrations, and high-quality food, as well as the less pleasant elements of large city life like traffic congestion, poverty, and the scarcity of affordable housing.
We are not homogeneous. Our 21 municipalities have different assets and needs. We have many mother tongues, occupations, lifestyles, family structures and cultures. And we each have our own priorities and approaches when it comes to addressing issues and problems.
We may not always see eye-to-eye. However, Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs underscores that most of us share the same concerns and have the same aspirations to live in a community that is healthy, prosperous, welcoming and equitable for all of its citizens.
As the saying goes: If we don’t know who and where we are, it’s hard to figure out who we want to be and where we want to go. By combining facts, opinions and perceptions, Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs provides a realistic look at our strengths and weaknesses in metro Vancouver today, so we can effectively move toward the metro Vancouver we want to create for ourselves and our children.
Geographic Reference
Most of the facts and data in Vital Signs pertain to the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of metro Vancouver, which is the same geographic configuration as the Metro Vancouver Regional District (see map below). Data that is not specific to the CMA is noted in the report.
(CMA) is a metropolitan statistical area’s geographic area, consisting
of one or more adjacent municipalities situated around a major urban core. To form a CMA, the urban core must have a population of at least 100,000.The boundaries of the Vancouver CMA are identical to those of metro Vancouver.
For definitions of other technical terms used in Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs, click here.
