[peter12]

Yeah, it's fairly insane, particularly for what you get. There's just no option for regular people to live there at this point unless you're renting and often then it's like student housing, only occupied by people in their late 20's. My view is that the commuting option is far, far preferable than subjecting yourself to that sort of thing, particularly given what you say below about the cultural issues... the real benefit of living there is the climate, natural beauty and access to the outdoors (which is sort of three ways of saying the same thing).

The natural beauty is nice, but you need a car to get to the mountains and lots of the beaches now (unless you can afford to live by a beach) and with the poor infrastructure comes traffic. It can take us well over an hour to even get to Lynn Valley from Vancouver.

Hence my "live up in the mountains or on an island in the woods" ideas... the best outcome out there is one where your weekend routine is to walk out your door, take a few dozen steps, and slide a boat into the water.

That was our idea for a bit, but you need something really ideal in terms of remote work, which is good for me, but my partner has a big "hands-on" component to her job that necessitates her being able to get into Vancouver daily.

I think that happened in the early 00's. Seems like the only cultural developments since have been wealth-display-oriented. Even the activities are like that... Gone are the days of picking up a $50 lift ticket at 7-11, hitchhiking by the ferry terminal and crashing on someone's floor in Tamarisk. Now you drive your 5 series up the re-constructed sea to sky and rent your room at Legends, or you stay in your place.

There is a lot of nostalgia here for the good ol' days (which ended in the late 90's or so??) and I think that nostalgia really holds the city back most of the time. You find pockets of it from time to time (Vancouver's West End, Wreck Beach), but it is mostly dead.

As for the recent cultural developments, yep, wealth-display and designed by the same people who design airport terminals. Meanwhile, most of the city has fallen into a NIMBY obstructionist debate that sees even important social housing projects held up in council. All this in a city with the most catastrophic poverty in North America. The juxtaposition still shocks me.

On the other hand, Calgary is a lot more fun when money is flying around everywhere. It has a sort of hunkered-down, "we're waiting for the good times to come back" feeling these days, and that started well before Covid. But if you're spending most of your time in your house, and you're spending a million bucks on it, you can live in pretty solid luxury.

I'm tempted with spending half of that and getting something way better that we have here. Our current condo could sell for over $1000 per sq ft. The only problem is we have to reenter the market at that price. It's a zero-sum game.