Head of the Pacific Northwest

[vansky]

Which city in your opinion is the head of the Pacific Northwest?

in terms of overall economic, enviromental, cultural etc. performance + skyline

A small insight:
Seattle - Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft
Vancouver - placed around 30th in the world in terms of business/commerce competitiveness, hollywood north, top 3 cities to live, multicultural
Portland - The Rose City, big media market (ABC,NBC,PBS,FOX,CBS...)

[canucks23]

Why Portland? Does that city really have much impact?

[cornholio]

Prince Rupert...oh were talking about the American pacific north west...
America is a different country, I dont see how Seattle and Portland are relevant to Vancouver. Vancouver is Capital of the Canadian pacific west and Seattle is capital of the American pacific north west. Oh when the hell did Vancouver the southern most city in Canada on the pacific west become in the Pacific north west...Seriously..im just in a bad mood today. But im sick of grpuping Vancouver in to the American pacific north west with Seattle and Portland, lets grow some balls and say it how it is. Now if your talking about cascadia then thats another thing.

[mr.x]

^ i guess Portland is just another option to keep open.

Economic: Seattle
Environmental: Vancouver
Cultural/Sports: Seattle
Skyline: Vancouver

[vansky]

Originally Posted by canucks23

Why Portland? Does that city really have much impact?

if you exclude portland out of the pacific northwest, it just doesn't sound right.

[vansky]

Originally Posted by cornholio

Prince Rupert...oh were talking about the American pacific north west...
America is a different country, I dont see how Seattle and Portland are relevant to Vancouver. Vancouver is Capital of the Canadian pacific west and Seattle is capital of the American pacific north west. Oh when the hell did Vancouver the southern most city in Canada on the pacific west become in the Pacific north west...Seriously..im just in a bad mood today. But im sick of grpuping Vancouver in to the American pacific north west with Seattle and Portland, lets grow some balls and say it how it is. Now if your talking about cascadia then thats another thing.

I dont want to divide canada up to different regions, but it is true sometimes that cities in similar regions are more similar to one another than cities far apart from eachother. seattle has the most influence over vancouver, say in terms of starbucks culture. some people would think that vancouver is one city all alone in the west coast, but it's more than that for sure. some think van is diff from the east,s ay toronto, but is more similar to seattle for example.

[Nutterbug]

Seattle = Luciano Pavarotti
Vancouver = Placido Domingo
Portland = "that other guy"

[Nutterbug]

Originally Posted by mr.x2

Cultural/Sports: Seattle

Canucks >>>>>>>> Seahawks + Mariners + Sonics

[Mike K.]

Skyline: Seattle, hands down. Driving along the freeways and seeing some of those massive skyscrapers all lit up by night is really something else.

While Vancouver's skyline is very pretty, the over-abundance of thin condo towers masks the impact of the office towers and makes the skyline appear somewhat short and unfortunately table-topped, but hopefully that will change as a few buildings in the 200-meter range start to rise. But what Vancouver really needs is a large office tower!

Economic: Seattle by virtue of Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Nintendo, Costco, etc, but Vancouver does have more international flights than does Seattle so obviously there is demand for plenty of business travel

Cultural: can't say for sure, but as mentioned above Seattle does have more sports and has had some really great concerts that never seem to make it to Vancouver. I'm sure that's also true that some concerts don't make it to Seattle. Perhaps both are 50/50?

[Nutterbug]

Originally Posted by Mike K.

Economic: Seattle by virtue of Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Nintendo, Costco, etc

Even Portland trumps us in that regard with Nike. I'd say Lululemon still has quite a way to go to catch up to it.

[204]

Good article on that here

A Tale of Three Cities

THE NEON SIGNS float like beacons in the night sky at one end of a welcoming, spacious downtown: red, tempting and foreign.

GO BY TRAIN pleads one.

GO BY STREETCAR urges the other.

Something tells me we're not in Seattle anymore, Toto.

No, we're in Portland, American headquarters of the "New Urbanism" philosophy that touts neighborhood density, walking and transit over the car. Portland is doing — almost routinely — what Seattle keeps dreaming and arguing about.

Light rail? It's here. Streetcar? Ditto. Transit mall? Yep. Close-in, upscale neighborhoods dotted with restaurants and shops? Check. Approximately 27 blocks of parks to create an airy, inviting downtown? Got it. Elimination of Harbor Drive along the Willamette River and its replacement with a riverside park? Yes, plus a companion park on the opposite bank. Interesting architecture? Better than Seattle's. Use of brick, trees and design detail to make sidewalk strolling inviting? Of course. Less congestion? Afraid so.

Dang. This is embarrassing.

Head the other way on Interstate 5 and the comparison is even more striking. Downtown Vancouver, B.C., is becoming a glittery, mini-Manhattan, but cleaner and far more livable. It, too, has a transit mall, and the elevated Skytrain. The entire downtown peninsula is ringed with a continuous, magnificent park, much of it paid for by developers instead of taxpayers. The city's downtown residential population is four times higher than Seattle's, in a metro area with only two-thirds the population.

Condominium towers are so popular that they're sold out before they're built. Some 25 percent of the units are designed for families with children and 20 percent for low-income residents. Vancouver is building its first inner-city elementary school in 30 years. Nearly 20,000 more people have moved downtown in the past six years, and, as they do, auto traffic is perversely declining as people give up a car.

"Vancouver is a counterintuitive city," says Larry Beasley, the hard-bargaining planner of the city's downtown development. More people, less congestion. Go figure.

[nathan6969]

Originally Posted by Mike K.

Skyline: Seattle, hands down. Driving along the freeways and seeing some of those massive skyscrapers all lit up by night is really something else.

While Vancouver's skyline is very pretty, the over-abundance of thin condo towers masks the impact of the office towers and makes the skyline appear somewhat short and unfortunately table-topped, but hopefully that will change as a few buildings in the 200-meter range start to rise. But what Vancouver really needs is a large office tower!

While the vancouver skyline is amazing, Seattle does have some massive office towers...can't imagine we'll be getting anything like BofA in vancouver.

[EastVanMark]

Originally Posted by Nutterbug

Canucks >>>>>>>> Seahawks + Mariners + Sonics

Well looks like Seattle might lose the Sonics to Oklahoma City

[Yume-sama]

Economically it has to be Seattle. But... livability wise, I'd never want to live in Seattle over Vancouver.

[agrant]

Gee this is hard. Think of Seattle as a city about the size of Montreal with a hell of a lot more corporate presence. Even if you were to say Vancouver has a better skyline, and is more livable , it means shit.

Originally Posted by vansky

if you exclude portland out of the pacific northwest, it just doesn't sound right.

Pacific northwest doesn't sound right.

[djh]

Originally Posted by cornholio

Prince Rupert...oh were talking about the American pacific north west...
America is a different country, I dont see how Seattle and Portland are relevant to Vancouver. Vancouver is Capital of the Canadian pacific west and Seattle is capital of the American pacific north west. Oh when the hell did Vancouver the southern most city in Canada on the pacific west become in the Pacific north west...Seriously..im just in a bad mood today. But im sick of grpuping Vancouver in to the American pacific north west with Seattle and Portland, lets grow some balls and say it how it is. Now if your talking about cascadia then thats another thing.

LOL~
Next you'll be saying "I don't see how Detroit is relevant to Canada" - what, just because it's in a different political country?! Don't be naive.

[giallo]

While we all love Vancouver, Seattle is the obvious choice regarding this poll. Why?
-Their companies are huge and known around the world. Microsoft is a beast of international importance.
-The city spawned a music scene that dominated the early to mid 90s.
- Because of Starbucks the city IS the coffee cultural capital of NA.

Skyline- Seattle (Vancouver's is looking better ever year though)
Culture- Seattle (Music, drink, technology. It isn't even close).
Business-Seattle (Again, a no-brainer)
Environmental-Vancouver (I'm maybe a little bias, but who can deny the coastal mountains with their ski hills overlooking the city. Vancouver is the Rio of the north).
Livability-Both (I've never lived in Seattle, but it looks like a very nice place to reside. If we focus on just downtown then Vancouver takes the livability point).

So Seattle wins this particular contest. It shouldn't come as a big surprise. Seattle is a very successful city. One that I'm honoured to live so close to. The fact that we can have four* amazing cities so close together in such a phenomenally beautiful part of the world makes ever city a winner.


*can't forget about lil' old Victoria now, can we?

[Urban Zombie]

^
You seemed to have left the most obvious--and important--factor off of your list: the fact that yours truly has made with the love with females, human females, in Seattle.

My serious assessment though, is that both cities seem to have what the other lacks. They are rather perfect complements.

[SpongeG]

I love portland and would move there in a heartbeat

i prefer it to seattle

[vansky]

vancouver lacks world famous corporate headquarters, but it does score well on forestry.