We looked at a similar angle of Downtown in a 2002 image. This is all the way back to 1987, and the ‘after’ shot was taken in 2018 from the Global TV helicopter by Trish Jewison.
Thirty three years ago Downtown South (to the east of Granville Street) was still all low-rise, mostly commercial buildings, that had replaced the residential neighbourhood that developed from the early 1900s. We’ve seen many posts that show how that area has been transformed in recent years. In the 1986 census, just before the photo was taken, there were 37,000 people living in the West End (to the west of Burrard and south of Georgia), and only 5,910 in the whole of the rest of the Downtown peninsula (all the way to Main Street on the right hand edge of the picture). In 2016, in the last census, the West End population had gone up to 47,200, adding 10,000 in 30 years. What was a forest of towers in 1987 had become a slightly thicker forest in 2018. The rest of Downtown had seen over a 1000% increase in 30 years – there were 62,030 people living there. Both areas will have seen more growth since 2016, and the 2021 census should show several thousand more people in both the West End and Downtown.
In 1987 the Expo Lands were pretty much bare, with the exception of the Plaza of Nations pavilions in front of BC Place stadium and what soon became Science World on the eastern end of False Creek. The addition of new residents means there are now more local conveniences. Thirty years ago there were only four supermarkets Downtown, all of them in the West End, and now there are sixteen, with two more being built.
On the south side of False Creek, to the east (right) side of Cambie Bridge, industrial sites and the City’s Works Yard have been transformed into South East False Creek, a new residential neighbourhood, heated from a neighbourhood energy system that extracts the excess heat from the sewer that serves the site. Among the first homes completed here were 1,100 in the Olympic Village for the 2010 Games, but there are now over 5,000 completed homes, with 500 more underway and several sites still to develop. Over 650 of the units are non-market housing; some providing welfare rate homes, and others in housing co-ops.,
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Changing Vancouver 