Search for Metro Vancouver's best neighbourhood: Vancouver, round 1

What is Metro Vancouver's best neighbourhood?

On one hand, it's a complicated question, almost impossible to answer, that depends on how much you value different things that make a neighbourhood attractive. It could be affordable housing, nearby schools, great parks, or a beloved small businesses.

But, on the other hand, for most people it's a straightforward answer: wherever you live.

This summer where we're all being asked to stay close to home and appreciate the things nearest to us.

It's providedan opportunity to explore the different ways people value the communities they live in not to mention also having a fun, worthwhiledebate.

So for the next six weeks, each day from Monday to Thursday will have a new article to help determine Metro Vancouver's best neighbourhood.

Each article will focus on a different part of our region, and there will be a series of polls where you will have to choose between two different neighbourhoods with only the winner going on.

We'll start with 192 neighbourhoods from Vancouver, to south of the Fraser, to the Tri-Cities and the North Shore and week by week we'll go down from 192 neighbourhoods to 128, then 64, then 32 ... until we eventually crown a winner.

However, that won't be for a while. Today, July 13, we'll have voting in the first round of the Vancouver quadrant polls are open until midnight.

Let the voting begin with the polls at the bottom ofthis story.

How were neighbourhoods determined?

We've divided the 192 neighbourhoods into four quadrants, aiming for relatively equal population between them and as Vancouver has 26 per cent of Metro Vancouver's population, it makes sense to be its own section.

But we've also roughly divided the city into 24 neighbourhoods on the west side, and 24 on the east, so we can not only determine the best neighbourhood in Vancouver, but in each half of the city.

Choosing the 48 was tricky.Vancouver officially has 23 neighbourhoods, but they haven't been updated for decades.

We've added newer population areas like Olympic Village and Yaletown, historic neighbourhoods like Gastown and Chinatown and the Musqueam Reserve.

We've also split several neighbourhoods that already combine two distinct places, like Dunbar-Southlands or Renfrew-Collingwood. Others, like Kitsilano, have multiple main streets.

(A Twitter poll also determined that Kitsilano would be separated along north-south dividing lines, and not east-west)

By including all of those, and by adding two neighbourhoods in Electoral Area A the area in and around the University of British Columbia with no municipal government we got to our 48.

The following neighbourhoods received automatic byes to the second round: Point Grey, Dunbar, Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, Marpole, Oakridge, West End, South False Creek, Hastings-Sunrise, Grandview-Woodlands, Mt. Pleasant, Strathcona, Gastown, Yaletown, Chinatown and Olympic Village.

West side neighbourhoods

East side neighbourhoods