It's fun to think about mergers, especially since I think changing municipality boundaries allow for CMA boundaries to be adjusted. However, is there really any practical reason to do so? From what I understand, amalgamation in Toronto ended up costing more money than it saved, at least initially.
But if we're just talking fantasy and rationalisation for the sake of rationalisation, There are tons of amalgamations within Metro Vancouver that could happen.
Vancouver + Burnaby + New Westminster
Politically similar and, at least from my point of view having grown up in the suburbs, functionally a contiguous urban area. If you erased all municipal boundaries and someone asked me what "the city" was in the region, I would say the area covered by Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. Give Queensborough to Richmond though.
District of North Vancouver + City of North Vancouver + West Vancouver
There are some differences between these unicipalities, but geographically it makes sense, and overall I think their interests are similar. Though I am unfamiliar with the area.
Richmond + Queensborough
As per above, give Richmond the Queensborough neighbourhood of New Westminster so it has all of Lulu Island to itself.
Surrey + Township of Langley+ City of Langley + White Rock + North Delta
Functionally, the "South of Fraser" region is essentially one place. Boundaries appear in the middle of developed neighbourhoods ignoring the gaps created by farmland, making for some weird results. White Rock is a tiny little municipality that doesn't seem to have much of a raison d'être aside from being able to say they don't live in Surrey. Same for North Delta. It's really just a residential extension of Surrey. Nobody who lives outside of North Delta knows what it is; everyone thinks it's Surrey already anyway.
South Delta (- North Delta)
I was unsure on whether to give South Delta to Surrey or not, but ultimately I think it doesn't make sense as there's a tremendous amount of farms and parks separating their built up areas. It would be the smallest municipality in my amalgamation, but 50,000 people still isn't bad and with the ferry terminal, the massive port and potentially Tilbury Industrial Park depending on how you split it, it would still have a very sizeable tax base.
Port Moody + Coquitlam + Port Coquitlam + Anmore + Belcarra
Again an area I'm not too familiar with, but travelling through it, you hardly notice a difference. It's continuously built up in a similar landscape. In fact, it is a contiguous extension of Burnaby/New Wesminster. The reason I wouldn't include it in that amalgamation is that politically it's still different. Burnaby and New Westminster seem urban in character. The Northeast is definitely suburban. I would worry about them having too much influence. Despite Belcarra and Anmore being different, I think they're small enough for it to not really matter.
Pitt Meadows + Maple Ridge
Again, a contiguous geographic developed area, with clear boundaries through the rivers. Also without much of a hint that it's two different places.
I drew up a little diagram of what that would look like below. I'm guessing Vancouver's amalgamation would put Abbotsford and Chilliwack potentially into its CMA, but I'm not sure, so I left them grey as a reference. Populations are as of the 2011 census, but are not entirely accurate as I got lazy when splitting neighbourhoods into different municipalities.
Amalgamation Proposal by
Glass_City, on Flickr
Notice how this makes sure Vancouver stays above Surrey for a while
Something I've thought of before is making all of Metro Vancouver into a city, with these sub-regions as boroughs. However, I have no idea what that would do and don't really understand what boroughs do and think about it only because New York has it. For this reason, I have Vancouver's amalgamation as the original townsite was called Granville, and it frees up the Vancouver name for the entire metro.
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