Seattle and Vancouver: Metropolitan Ports of the Pacific Northwest
Vancouver and Seattle are two of the largest cities in the Pacific Northwest, port towns surrounded on three sides by water. Both used their locations in the Salish Sea, protected from storms in the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island, to obtain a firm foothold in the shipping industry ever since the 19th century during the peak of the fur and lumber trade in the Pacific Northwest. They lie 120 miles (ca. 193 km) apart in a temperate climate. On the surface given their proximity, early roots in similar industries around the same time, current developments in similar industries and even similar population sizes (~632,000 vs ~609,000), Vancouver and Seattle could be considered cities mirrored across the United States-Canada border, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Seattle neighbors Puget Sound on the West, one of the three largest bays in the United States along with Chesapeake Bay and San Francisco Bay. To the east of Seattle lies Lake Washington, a huge freshwater lake which wasn’t originally part of the system of estuaries and inlets of Puget Sound. Because of these two large bodies of water, Seattle is technically built on an isthmus, although the canal in between the lake and the sound can put that into contention. Prior to European colonization, the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup and Klickitat indigenous tribes (who are counted among the Coast Salish people) lived in the area that is now Seattle, and did not simply acquiesce to a colonial presence. Despite this, Seattle is usually dated as being founded in 1851 when the Denny Party, pioneers from Illinois who traveled via covered wagon across the country, built a cabin in what is now West Seattle. The city itself was incorporated in 1865, but it didn’t have a legislature until 1869. Between those dates, especially 1855–1856, the Europeans who sought to profit off of cutting down forests in the area, shipping the lumber down to San Francisco, descended into armed conflict supported by the United States Marines in what is now called the Puget Sound War, in violation of American treaties.
Vancouver lies north of Seattle in British Colombia on the Burard Peninsula. To the north lies the Burard Inlet, to the west the Strait of Georgia, and to the south the Fraser River. By the same criteria as Seattle, it could be considered founded in 1863 when the McCleery family built a farm on the Burard Peninsula after a purchase from the Colony of British Colombia. The area that would later become historic downtown Vancouver was colloquially known as Gastown in 1867 around the city’s first saloon — and finally incorporated by the colonial government in 1870 as Granville before being renamed and reincorporated as Vancouver in 1886 when the city was connected to the rest of Canada via the transcontinental railroad. Unlike the founding of Seattle, the largest influx of Vancouver’s settlement was encouraged by a desire for gold during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, which prompted nearly thirty thousand people to arrive from San Francisco. The lumber industry only reached prominence here in the 1860s. The indigenous people on the Burard Peninsula, also Coast Salish like those in Seattle, were quickly driven out after the nearby Fraser Canyon War occurred in 1858, incited by violent miners, and later by the creation of a colonial military reservation on the Burard Peninsula in what is now Stanley Park in 1859.
Ever since the founding of these two cities, they’ve been ethnically diverse, but Vancouver appears to be consistently moreso. While a white majority existed in the past and remains to this day, up to 14% of the miners during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858 were Chinese. As of the most recent Vancouver city census, the visible minority population is 51.6%, 27% of whom are Chinese, 6% are South Asian, 5.9% are Filipino, 2.8% are Southeast Asian, 1.8% are Latin American and 1.0% are Black. Meanwhile, as of the most recent Seattle city census, the visible minority population is 35.5%, 15.1% of whom are Asian, 6.6% of whom are Hispanic or Latino, and 7.0% are Black or African-American. A good degree of the difference appears to be due to the differing immigration policies between the United States and Canada, while some difference can be accounted for by the average population makeup of each country.
The population density in both Seattle and Vancouver also differs significantly. According to the census’, Seattle has a density of 2799.6 people per square kilometer, while Vancouver’s population density is nearly double, at a density of 5492.6. In fact, the population density difference is so high that the city’s architecture reflects where people live.
According to Washington State Vital Statistics for 2016, the birth rate was 12.4 and the death rate was 7.5. In British Columbia in 2015, the birth rate was 9.4 and the death rate was the same, at 7.5. Neither of these numbers reflect however that the current population of Washington State as a whole is 7.6 million as of 2019, while British Columbia’s is 5.1 million. Regardless, given that the rates are per 1000 people, Washington’s population is still growing a bit faster than British Columbia’s and presumably that can be extended to the populations of Vancouver and Seattle. Perhaps at some point in time the population density of Seattle will match that of Vancouver, but for the moment Seattle proper is spreading outwards instead of upwards.
This could be a result of geography. Even though both Vancouver and Seattle lie on relatively small landmasses, The Greater Vancouver area has a large mountain range to the north, the United States border to the south, and the ocean to the west; the further inland you head towards the east, the less comfortable the climate and eventually you hit another mountain range. Seattle on the other hand is further from the border between countries, and the larger Seattle-Tacoma area along the Puget Sound allows for greater dispersal of people in a more climatically stable area. It’s easier to travel so why live in the downtown Seattle area when you can commute from somewhere it’s cheaper to live?
And speaking of cost, the median total household income in Vancouver is much lower than that of Seattle. In 2015 the median household in Vancouver made 65,327 CAD, while the median household income in Seattle in 2018 made 85,562 USD, and yet the poverty rate in the Vancouver metropolitan area is only 8.7%, while it’s 11.5% in the city of Seattle. These numbers suggest that outliers are driving up the median household income in both areas.
People living in the Vancouver and Seattle regions are employed in different industries as well, reflecting the trends in incomes. According to census data, in Vancouver 24.4% of people work in sales and service occupations (food, transportation, sales), 12% of people work in management positions, 16% are in business, finance and administrative operations, and 8.9% work in Natural and Applied Sciences including with computers.
In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, 9.4% of people work in sales, 8.6% work in the food industry, and 7.9% work in transportation, 13.3% work in office or administrative services, 8.2% work in financial and business operations, 5.3% work in management positions, 7.3% work with computers alone, and 2.6% work in architecture and engineering. While it’s difficult to draw a direct comparison as the census data provides different numbers, Vancouver appears to have more citizens working in management positions, while the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area has more workers in administrative, financial and business positions, and in the Natural and Applied Sciences. The differences that are evident imply that the wealth inequality in the Vancouver metro area is higher than that of the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, which is reflected by the increased housing cost.
King County, the county surrounding the Seattle metro area, has a higher gross domestic product than Vancouver, at $257 billion in 2017, as compared to the Vancouver metro area’s $136 billion in the same year. The GDP per capita shows a similar trend, with Vancouver metro area at $39,914 while the GDP per capita in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area was $80,833.
Despite Vancouver being more aesthetically attractive in some regards (at least with regards to their bridges), tourism only contributed $4.8 billion to the local economy, while tourism contributed $6.8 billion to the local economy in Seattle
Due to the large number of water features in both Seattle and Vancouver, both have many bridges, both downtown and in the surrounding area. According to the Seattle Department of Transportation, there are seven bridges over waterways in the city proper, while Vancouver has eight. According to their website, SDOT manages around 149 bridges in the city as a whole.
The most famous of these are the Lion’s Gate Bridge in Vancouver which was completed in 1938, and is frequently compared to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (finished in 1937) because it’s a picturesque suspension bridge that crosses a large natural feature. In Seattle the Fremont Bridge which was completed in 1917 is notable because it was the first bridge constructed in the city, in response to the completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal (which was finished in 1916). The Fremont Bridge, as most bridges in Seattle, is known for being functional rather than beautiful.
Necessitated by the higher population density but also due to history, Vancouver has significantly better transportation infrastructure than Seattle, and more people use that infrastructure.
While both Vancouver and Seattle have Bus, Ferry and Light Rail systems, Vancouver’s TransLink system opened a Light Rail line in 1985 and has since expanded to 50 miles of tracks, with trains arriving every 100 seconds to three minutes. They’re currently planning on building another train line in order to replace one of their many bus lines.
Seattle’s Link Light Rail System opened in 2003, 18 years later, and has half as many stations and lines. Its trains arrive every six to fifteen minutes instead of as frequently as in Vancouver. Vancouver invested in the public transit system early, after deciding in 1967 to avoid building a freeway through Gastown, Vancouver‘s historic downtown area, while Seattle’s transit system has had difficulty catching up due to an early focus in car-based transportation.
Unlike Seattle’s Link Light Rail, Vancouver’s SkyTrain is also fully automated. As a result of the political climate in Vancouver, there has been consistently higher investment in a sustainable transport system. Today, Seattle is considered one of the top most traffic congested cities, while Vancouver has managed to stay out of the top thirty, despite being one of the top five most densely populated cities on the West Coast. On the topic of automotive infrastructure, Vancouver does not have any major freeways into or out of their downtown area as a result of their 1967 decision, with only one large freeway going through the city, relying entirely on their public transit system. The Seattle Metro Area on the other hand has 21 freeways, many on elevated platforms. As a result of this higher rate of automobile traffic, there are a lot more parking garages, lots and spaces in the Seattle Area, while the City of Vancouver is able to state on their website that they only maintain 5 parking lots and garages, and about three thousand on-street parking spaces. Seattle uses automobile storage two orders of magnitude more than Vancouver, having half a million on-street parking spots alone.
As a result of these infrastructure differences, Seattle’s infrastructure related fatalities (motorcyclist, car, pedestrian and bike deaths) have hovered around 19 deaths from 2014 to 2016, while Vancouver’s hovered around 13 for the same time period. Most of the deaths in Vancouver appear to be the result of Pedestrian injury, while the deaths in Seattle can be accounted for by Car Crashes. The likelihood of death as a result of a bus crash is much lower than the likelihood of death as a result of car crash. Seattle also has slightly higher rates of air pollution which may be correlated with the number of vehicles on the streets.
Seattle devotes 6414 acres of its land area to parks, at 12%, with over 485 parks. Interestingly, Vancouver has only 11% of its area devoted to parks, at about 3200 acres, a low among Canadian cities, and the city only maintains around 240 parks. Given those numbers, both cities appear to average about 13 acres per park, so they seem to be roughly the same with regards to citizen access to parks. Of note is the fact that the Seattle Parks and Recreation website has a very visible “Volunteer” Link and despite maintaining double the number of parks, they had a $175 million budget in 2020, while the Vancouver Parks and Recreation Department had a $136 million budget. While American Exceptionalism would imply that the Seattle Parks and Recreation department is simply more efficient at maintaining their parks on a lower budget, this does imply that at the very least, Seattle’s Parks and Recreation Department is undervalued, and their parks may be less well maintained.
So after looking at all this data, where can we conclude would be a better place to live? Seattle appears to move a lot more money around, with a higher expenditure by visitors on tourism and higher average income, resulting in a higher GDP, but they also have higher rates of pollution overall and a higher poverty rate. Vancouver has higher housing costs and better infrastructure, more and larger parks, but the median person has less money, and the economy isn’t as strong. Seattle has a higher birth rate, mirroring the rest of Washington, but a less diverse population. Overall, Seattle looks like a younger city, but Vancouver and Seattle are actually about the same age, with Vancouver being slightly younger. One could conclude that Vancouver simply has more money overall but according to the GDP, that’s not the case. In the future, Seattle might catch up to Vancouver with regards to infrastructure, but they seem to have a history of caring less about their populus, and more about the amount of profit they can make off of them, going as far back as the city’s reincorporation in 1869 where the citizens voted to have a mayor and town council because when the city was created in 1865, they didn’t have them, and the board of trustees called the vote for a legislature pretentious.
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