Quote:
Originally Posted by destroycreate
Recently I went to Burnaby out of curiosity (and having seen it so much on SSC/SSP over the years), and I have to say I was a little disappointed by it. I was expecting it to be this bustling urban little downtown but really it felt like auto centric suburbia with a smattering of condo towers. It didn't really have much of an urban fabric I was expecting. Not saying it's not a nice place, but I guess it's always been portrayed as being a 2nd Vancouver on here.
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Nice that you made a visit! Yeah, Burnaby is still a vertical suburbia, but there is a lot going on in here. The challenge with Burnaby is that the city is concurrently building no less than
four different town centres and they are all cannibalizing each other in terms of attention and public amenities. So there is no one city centre, but thanks to its location right next to Vancouver there is a lot happening.
There are no less than 100 towers going up in Burnaby in the next 10 years, so the pace of change is quick and streets especially around Skytrain stations are getting busier and seeing more services like restaurants go up. My home street Beresford Street is exactly like that with tower podiums having shops in there.
Metrotown where I live is the area that Burnaby is trying to build as its "Downtown" with a mix of office and residential towers, but this is challenging due to the huge mall at the very center. There are long-term plans to possibly put the mall underground or at least split it to make a new small scale street network that would eventually become a walkable city centre. Currently there is still a suburban feel to Burnaby, but things are improving fast. I quite enjoy living in Burnaby, as the city is much bolder than Vancouver and will soon have skyscrapers taller than in Vancouver and several skylines more impressive than many 2nd tier American cities.