Favorite Vancouver area Neighborhoods to Live in

What are peoples thoughts on good neighborhoods to live in that balance access to trails with a still reasonable commute to downtown?

Just daydreaming a bit haha. Girlfriend (who is Canadian/from burnaby) and I are contemplating making the move sometime in the next year or so.

Brentwood area of Burnaby

Downtown Vancouver is actually one of the closer neighborhoods to the trails in general so that's a good option depending on your situation (i.e. if you guys are currently childless and don't mind living in a small condo). North Van itself is also pretty close to downtown and the commute is reasonable but the traffic can get bad depending on the bridge situation. Other than that, East Van and North Burnaby have a pretty quick drive to the North Shore.

North Shore. Walk to the Otter if you work Downtown.

Fraser St.  The next Mt. Pleasant. Cool restaurants/coffee shops,  pretty quick trip to d/t, hwy 1 or the North shore..

Cool to hear north burnaby/brentwood mentioned since that's her preference. I spent quite a bit of time there before border was locked down and definitely a nice, more quite, place to be. 

Whats the Otter? Lonsdale ferry?

Posted by: Bull_Dozer

Downtown Vancouver is actually one of the closer neighborhoods to the trails in general so that's a good option depending on your situation (i.e. if you guys are currently childless and don't mind living in a small condo). North Van itself is also pretty close to downtown and the commute is reasonable but the traffic can get bad depending on the bridge situation. Other than that, East Van and North Burnaby have a pretty quick drive to the North Shore.

traffic? on a distance easily be done by bike?

CBCs Justin McElroy had a head to head bracket style best neighborhood in VanGroovy on Twitter a few weeks back.

Posted by: moraucf

Cool to hear north burnaby/brentwood mentioned since that's her preference. I spent quite a bit of time there before border was locked down and definitely a nice, more quite, place to be. 

Whats the Otter? Lonsdale ferry?

I work in this area and have lived in North Burnaby in the past.  It was always one of my favourite spots for the central location, but if you are into shopping or restaurants it wasn't the best.  A lot has changed in the last few years though with some large condo developments around Brentwood.  I lived up by SFU for a while as well and I really liked it up there.  You have the Burnaby Mountain trails at your door, enough stores, etc that you don't generally need to go anywhere else to shop and as a resident, you can use some of the University facilities.  It also snows there more than the rest of the city.

Here's Justin's, definitely amusing, bracket style results. https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/1299358067558027265 

So I'm hearing that bike commute from North Van to downtown is chill?

And yeah it was insane to see how much development going on around Brentwood, good for them, you guys can definitely use the housing lol. Hopefully some more shopping/restaurants with character start popping up as well.

Mt.  Pleasant.  It's ground zero.  Perfect location for being closest to everything.

Nicest place is False Creek.

Posted by: moraucf

So I'm hearing that bike commute from North Van to downtown is chill?

It depends where in North Van you live. If you live right by the trails (Fromme or Seymour) then it isn't super close but if you lived within a few km of the north end of the Lions Gate bridge then it would be a quick commute. 

If you used an e-bike as a commuter then that would open up your options a lot.

Port Moody for that Wobbly Pop Alley. 

I really liked the Commercial/Boardway Area but the underground would get broken into way too often. Aside from that it was good. 

I found 2nd Narrows traffic to be almost non-existent when leaving for Whistler in the AM. 10-15mins later and it’s another story.

Are you more of a pedal vs a shuttle type? Plan to bike commute to work? 

Central Lonsdale get's my vote. Short walk to lots of stuff, close to the new breweries and trendy stuff in Lower Lonsdale, short walk to all the older restaurants along mid Lonsdale. Short enough pedal up to Fromme. Can hop the bus to seabus for commute to downtown or bike commute over either bridge, or bike to seabus and bike on the other side. 

If you know you're more likely to shuttle lap Seymour then other options might be better.