Liberal Talk Radio

Courtesy of the P-I’s Bill Virgin, we learn that Vancouver is quickly becoming Canada’s answer to Miami Beach, rather than a Canuck San Francisco. Virgin (does he really still look like that headshot?) points us to Vancouver magazine’s recent article on Seattle.

Boddy declares that Seattle’s bastion of new-economy corporate HQs gives it a business seriousness (and philanthropic largesse) that Vancouver lacks:

Led by the colossus of Microsoft, Seattle has become one of the most important corporate hubs in the world—with Boeing, Amazon, Starbucks, Real Networks and countless other companies founded there, and now spreading their brands around the world.

With its central city ringed with new condos, Seattle has a real downtown, with new office towers rising, and a workaday sense of bustle and purpose. Yes, polar fleece and Gore-Tex make their appearance on weekends, but downtown Seattle sidewalks have a higher ratio of suits (and more of them worn by women) than here. The largesse of Cold War military spending, which once jacked up Boeing and the local economy, also helped to establish the University of Washington as a major research hub—and to make Seattle a nexus of the high-tech universe.

Boddy leaves out Nordstrom, Nintendo America, and Safeco, but we take his point. And since Boeing officially now HQs in Chicago and most of Starbucks’ employees live elsewhere, we’ll call it even.

That said, more suits in downtown Seattle? Wow. Seattle’s a place where you can go to the opera or symphony in jeans and a sweatshirt if you want (I wouldn’t approve personally — I happen to like a little class when I’m taking in The Arts — but it’s certainly done).

Oh, and about that Miami Beach crack:

Vancouver is a wonderful place to visit, to play, to shoot up, to check out of a career, to retire, but it’s no longer a serious business centre.The first people I heard describe Vancouver as a “resort” were Hong Kong- and Taiwan-born businessmen as they re-aligned their investments towards China after briefly nesting here in the 1990s. The resortification of our downtown has been a quiet secret in Vancouver’s development and urban planning communities for a decade.

Anyway, a good read, for those of us (myself included) who suffer from the occasional bout of Vancouver-envy.

Update: If you’re surprised to hear Vancouver compared to Miami, it’s important to remember the context. Vancouver (along with Victoria) is Canada’s most temperate, southernmost city. So if you want to retire to a place where you don’t have to shovel snow — and keep your Canadian health care — Vancouver’s a no-brainer.