I think it's a bit of a stretch to point at particular cultural backgrounds, since unique individuals in all of these cultures tend to soften the boundaries we like to create in our heads, but there could be some overlapping reasons. One thing I've noticed is, as the cost of living in the city has increased, the number of people who have to commute to the city has also, of course, increased. What this means is businesses close early and large areas (catering exclusively to the out-of-town work crowd) start to feel like uninhabited, pitch black ghost towns after 6pm. Areas that have no right doing that. I don't think Vancouver has ever been a particularly bustling city, but it wasn't as stifling before since there was a better chance of meeting someone who lives in the same municipality, and more people considering the area they are in to be home, or at least close to it. But at the same time, I think it has largely become a cultural thing. I catch myself doing the Vancouver-style "friendly but not your friend" thing a lot, and I hate it, and I've been trying to do better, but it's hard. "Be the change you want in the world" and all that. We can probably fix this :)

The cliquey and flaky nature of city, along with housing costs, are key reasons I left for Montreal five years ago and have never looked back.

I imagine that: the crush of living costs; the theory someone else mentioned of shops and restaurants closing early due to no affordable housing in the city and people living farther away; the massive influx of ill-adapted rich immigrants uninterested in building social ties, etc. could all be factors.

I used to frequent the social dance community in Vancouver and I'll never forget what someone told me about her having spent her entire time doing her PhD in Van essentially friendless because people really are the - as someone else mentioned - "friendly, but not your friend" type.

Man, so glad to be out of there. I'm surprised more people haven't left that sinking ship already. At this point, it feels like Vancouver needs a good recession and a couple of lost decades, similar to what happened to Montreal in the 90s, for it to eventually get back on track. I chose to make my life such that I could stop watching it ruin itself but it's still sad to watch our third biggest city and all those fellow Canadians suffer this.

Well, it can be isolating, but I've found it reasonably easy to meet people. Having put some thought into why, my idea is that I make myself available and I don't try to hang out with people who don't do the same or aren't fun. You need common ground outside of whatever reason you had for meeting the person. Also, Eastvan is alright and the skateboarding community is super good as two counter examples. I don't have many Chinese friends, but only because they don't happen to be part of the things I do. If you're playing the friend game like you might try and meet someone at a bar, you're not going to succeed too much. Likewise at work. If you meet someone on a hike or at a club or walking around your area hike, and then bring then to the bar, you might have better luck.

Where you born in van or moved here? I find locals already have social circles and new people have a hard time breaking into them. Can’t say why but seems to hold water with my social circles

I moved from the US and every city I went to was really inclusive, but I can be biased because I socialized with churchgoers (where inclusion of outsiders is their responsibility). This is based on a fairly large sample size: Houston, Austin, Menlo Park, New York, and LA for ~10 year period. This subset is completely different in Vancouver though: the cliqueness, especially in Chinese speaking communities, is prevalent- I just gave up after 2 years and ~5-10 churches. Btw, I am Asian and know fluent Chinese...

Holy. I’m sorry to hear it.

I say as a born and raised Vancouverite, since moved to the US... it’s kinda fucked out there.

As someone born here, it feels the same way to me. Basically my entire social circle is just people who are also born here.

You basically have to marry into this social group, and none of us really seem to mind.

That said, people also form groups around activities (like knitting circles, various sports, and what not).

>>You basically have to marry into this social group, and _none of us really seem to mind_.

Can confirm. Vancouver is a completely difference experience when you have friends/family that actively introduce you as a trusted vertex into their pre-existing social graphs. It feels like a social-stakes version of the "Sand Hill Road warm intros" game.

Sounds like London. Lots of people friends with people they knew from their home towns who also moved in. Any time I went to an expat event there, people complaining they never made any British friends.

My brother spent two years in London — nearly all of his friends were either other aussies or from other countries, modulo a few friendly brits: and he ran a pub for those two years!

Vancouver has been seen as "cliquey and flaky" long before the money flooded in but probably exasperates the problem.

I agree with Douglas Coupland who talks about it in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glass_(Coupland_book). People from more populous parts of the country in Ontario and Quebec come to Vancouver for the western adventure part of their lives and eventually return to Toronto or Montreal. So locals and even other "transplants" see little upside to forming deep long lasting relationships.

Now we have wealthy trans-national elites who come here to get their papers and have almost no contact with people outside their immediate circle.

>Some ethnic Chinese migrants in Richmond have told UBC researcher John Rose: “(Canadian citizenship) is more like an insurance policy.” Other transnationals refer to their years waiting in a new land for a passport as “immigration hell.”

https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/the-unsettled-live...

I think the modern world is just more isolated than those golden memories of yore (I can't really speak to their accuracy).

That said, downtown vancouver wouldn't really feel like a community (except maybe Davie) due to the fact that's it's mostly business with a bit of random housing interspersed. If you look out to Burnaby, Surrey, or even better New West, you'll find city centers with a decent bit of community around them. Technically Vancouver does include the DTES along with Kits and various south side neighborhoods, these are more reasonable but are suffering from pretty severe gentrification. In the downtown core everyone I know living there just lives "between stuff" - between stadium and false creek, between granville and burrard station - there aren't any really good nexuses of activity that aren't wholly given over to commercial, but that's sort of alright, Vancouver is a big city and everything in the downtown core is easily accessible to people as far out as Richmond and Surrey.

Compared to what cities? Other cities seem to have the same problem.

people say it like it's a bad thing that people have deep roots in a city and plenty of friends and family they've known for decades. as if a city full of transient people all desperate to make new short-term friendships is a great thing.

just because someone like myself chose to leave behind their hometown and move somewhere new doesn't mean I get to complain that locals aren't going out of their way to bring me into their fold. it's my problem, not theirs.

IMO it's a privilege to have deep roots in your city. it's a normal consequence to not put a lot of effort into developing new ones when you are already over capacity and lack time to see the friends you have. that said, it's fine to remain curious about new people, who can also enrich your life.

Moved to Montreal because found it completely the opposite when I visited. It's just generally the thing here that people tend to be more up for socializing it seems.

It’s called white flight

Even though I think you point at a legit source of the issue, it's much more than that - Vancouver has this inherent aspect of isolation, and it's very hard to put one's finger on.

There isn't much of a night life, people are chill, there's a lot of escape to the mountains.

People are just not gregarious, and as so many are transplants (from wherever or E. Canada), then it's just going to stay isolated.

Add to that the near constant rain and lack of other impetus to fire people up (it's like Canada, without the East Coast historical issues), i.e. no Trumps or heavy duty geopolitical fusses ... and it's boring.

That the Chines expat community is of a very distant kind of culture, one in which it's a big jump especially with language skills, makes it even harder. Every time I go to Vancouver I'm kind of shocked at the 'table segregation' - go into any restaurant and you see tables that are either all Asian, or all not Asian.

For what it's worth, my Toronto DJ friend attended UBC and he said there were simply no parties there. It's as though they forgot how to throw 'ragers'. He tried to teach them the ways of partying, to mediocre avail.

UBC is a highly ranked academic school with a lot of international students. I'd imagine the party scene is a lot like UIC... non-existent.