Vancouver
Canada · North America
Forty years of glass towers.
Vancouver's downtown core holds almost no building older than 1970, yet the city draws over 10 million overnight visitors a year on the strength of a coastline that puts the North Shore mountains directly behind the Financial District skyline.
Vancouver organizes its entire daily life around the water — the seawall running from Stanley Park through Yaletown to the Olympic Village is not a scenic detour but the city's main social artery, used by cyclists, runners, and commuters in equal measure. The skyline is glass and steel without apology: little predates the 1970s in the downtown core, and the residential towers of Coal Harbour and False Creek reflect a city that remade itself from a timber and rail economy within living memory. The demographic mix is pronounced — Mandarin and Punjabi share signage with English across Richmond and the East Side, and the food infrastructure that has followed is one of the city's most concrete pleasures. Getting around is straightforward on the SkyTrain, which connects the airport directly to downtown in under 30 minutes, though the gap between the polished waterfront and the entrenched poverty along East Hastings Street is impossible to miss and defines the city's central unresolved tension.
Essentials
The things every first-time visitor should know.
Deep cuts
What the locals know, and most visitors miss.
Day trips
Where to go when the city needs a break.