Every neighbourhood in Victoria
The City of Victoria divides itself into 12 neighbourhoods across 19.5 square kilometres — small enough that most of them are a walk from the next one, and small enough that the municipal boundary matters more than the neighbourhood boundary does. This is a guide to the city one neighbourhood at a time, filterable by quarter below.
Browse dedicated guides for Harbour, North, Central, South.
12 communities across the city
Every neighbourhood the City draws a boundary around, from the 1850s townsite on the harbour to the last of the post-war grids in the north. Filter by quarter, then page through the rest.
Burnside Gorge
The city's industrial back-of-house turned rental district — Rock Bay, the Gorge waterway and the Selkirk trestle, with the lowest house prices in Victoria and the most redevelopment still ahead of it.
Downtown
The Inner Harbour, Old Town, Chinatown and Harris Green — 5,700 homes above the shops, and the only part of Victoria where a car is genuinely optional.
Fairfield
Edwardian houses, Cook Street Village and Beacon Hill Park, running from the edge of downtown to the Dallas Road cliffs.
Fernwood
The Belfry Theatre, the Fernwood Inn and a square of 1900s houses around them — the neighbourhood that bought its own commercial block rather than watch it be sold.
Gonzales
The most expensive ground in the city: large lots above Ross Bay with a beach at the bottom of the hill and Oak Bay over the fence.
Hillside-Quadra
Quadra Street, the Hillside mall and Summit Park's Garry oaks — the middle of the city, and its most straightforwardly affordable house stock.
James Bay
The oldest residential neighbourhood on the West Coast north of San Francisco — the Legislature, Fisherman's Wharf, the Ogden Point breakwater and 13,000 people on a peninsula.
Jubilee
The hospital neighbourhood: Royal Jubilee, the west end of Oak Bay Avenue, and a grid of pre-war bungalows between them.
North Park
The smallest neighbourhood in the city and the least expensive — Royal Athletic Park, the Save-On-Foods arena, and Quadra Village at the top of it.
Oaklands
Hillside, Haultain Corner and the highest median household income in the city outside the estate districts, on Victoria's last big grid of family houses.
Rockland
Craigdarroch Castle, Government House and the consulates — the estate district, long since subdivided into apartments but still reading as one.
Victoria West
Across the blue bridge: Songhees towers on the harbour, Railyards townhouses on the Gorge, and a village core wedged between them.
Showing 1–12 of 12 communities
The four quarters at a glance
Nineteen and a half square kilometres is small — you can cross the whole city on a bicycle in half an hour — but the housing stock, the median assessment and the share of renters swing further between these neighbourhoods than the distances suggest.
| Quarter | Neighbourhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Harbour | Downtown, James Bay, Victoria West | The three that face the water: Downtown and its Old Town, James Bay on the peninsula below the Legislature, and Victoria West across the blue bridge. |
| North | Burnside Gorge, Hillside-Quadra, Oaklands | North of Bay Street — Burnside Gorge's rental blocks and light industry, Hillside-Quadra's middle-of-the-city house stock, and Oaklands' family grid. |
| Central | Fernwood, Jubilee, North Park | The inland belt between downtown and Oak Bay: North Park, Fernwood and Jubilee, three walkable villages with almost no through traffic. |
| South | Fairfield, Gonzales, Rockland | The Juan de Fuca shore and the hill above it — Fairfield's Edwardians, Gonzales' big lots over Ross Bay, and Rockland's estate district. |
The neighbourhoods are official; the quarters are ours. The City of Victoria publishes the twelve neighbourhood boundaries and nothing above them — there is no local equivalent of Calgary's quadrants or Vancouver's West and East Sides. The grouping into Harbour, North, Central and South is an editorial convenience for browsing, not a name anyone in Victoria uses. Note too that the City's boundary file treats Harris Green as part of Downtown, which is why there are twelve rather than the thirteen the neighbourhood associations count.