Dickens (Vancouver)

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Dickens is a small neighbourhood in East Vancouver.

1 Boundary
2 Housing
3 Amenities
4 Active community association
5 External links
6 Notes and References

[edit] Boundary

Street and houses in the Dickens neighbourhood of East Vancouver (with North Shore Mountains in background)

Its areas is from East 12th Avenue (northern boundary) to King Edward, or East 25th Avenue (southern boundary) and from Fraser Street (western boundary) to Knight Street (eastern boundary). Kingsway runs diagonally through the neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood lies within the city-defined community of Kensington-Cedar Cottage.

The area is named after the schools in the area, both named Dickens (Charles Dickens Elementary School and its Annex), which are rated one of the top forty schools in Canada ^[1].

[edit] Housing

Dickens is predominantly residential with retail and service businesses along Kingsway, Fraser and Knight Street. Housing prices have increased rapidly throughout the city and in the area in particular. As of January 2007, the benchmark price for a single-family home in East Vancouver is over $580,000^[2].

The city has worked with local residents to change the zoning in some areas of the Dickens community (principally centered on Kingsway and Knight streets) to allow a variety of housing options, such as traditional row-housing, duplexes, coach-houses and others. As of 2007, several properties in the area were proposed or under development to increase density. This has resulted in increased property values in this area.

[edit] Amenities

Parks in the Dickens area include Glen Park (adjacent to Charles Dickens Annex) and Sunnyside Park (adjacent to Charles Dickens Elementary). The Windsor Way bike path travels past both schools and provides a traffic-calmed north-south route through the neighbourhood.

The existing community library is on Knight Street, near King Edward. A new, much larger library is currently being built as part of the King Edward Village condo-shopping project on Knight. It is expected that this will open in 2007.

The City of Vancouver has recently invested $2.7 million in traffic-calming and beautification measures in the area. This includes improved sidewalks and streetlights, new street trees, sidewalk benches, and others.^[3]

[edit] Active community association

Annual Dickens Community Multicultural festival in East Vancouver

An active neighbourhood association (the Dickens Community Group) works to improve the area.

Activities include community gardening projects, working with city planners on zoning and related issues, garbage clean-ups, hosting celebrations (such as the annual Dickens Multi-Cultural Festival or "music in the park" evenings) and community-safety foot patrols. A running group ("Run like the Dickens") was started in 2006. All events are led by local residents.