Launching in Burnaby, district by district

Town Centres

The four Town Centres are Metrotown, which the plan treats as the regional centre, along with Brentwood, Edmonds and Lougheed. Each is served by SkyTrain and each is planned as a dense mix of shopping, offices and residential towers. For a new company, that means density: many potential customers within a few minutes' walk, but also the highest commercial rents and the most competitors per block.

What it means for a launch:

• Food, personal services, fitness, clinics and retail can justify Town Centre rent if the market check shows enough buyers within walking distance.
• Tower residents search on phones and on the move. A verified Google listing and a fast mobile site are not optional; they are the storefront before the storefront.
• Building and strata access matters for service firms that sell into towers. Building managers and concierges can be partners or gatekeepers.
• Lougheed borders Coquitlam's Burquitlam area, so a business there often draws customers across the city line.

Urban Villages

The urban villages are smaller commercial and residential nodes, such as the Heights along Hastings Street, Royal Oak, Capitol Hill, Willingdon Heights, Sixth Street and Cascade Heights. Think of them as high streets: lower rents than a Town Centre, a stronger sense of neighbourhood, and customers who prefer to shop close to home.

For a launch, villages reward founders who become known locally. Neighbourhood partnerships, a well-kept Google profile with real photos, and a presence at local events usually outperform broad advertising. A village storefront also pairs well with a service-area business model, where the shop is a base and much of the revenue comes from customers nearby.

Suburban Multi-Family Areas

These are residential areas of townhouses, low-rise apartments and strata complexes, including places such as Cariboo Heights, Forest Grove, Oaklands and Rayside. Few have much commercial space, so they matter less as places to open premises and more as places where your customers live.

If you are launching a home-based or mobile service, this is often your core market. The City's home-business rules, such as a limit of one customer and one customer vehicle on site at a time, are set out on its business licence page. Those rules make home studios with steady client visits harder, but suit consultants, online sellers and mobile services well. Marketing here leans on local search, strata and community connections, and referrals.

Mixed-Use Areas

The mixed-use areas include Burnaby's employment lands and institutions: Big Bend near the Fraser River, Lake City, Discovery Parks, Holdom, Myrtle Street, the Central Administrative Area at Deer Lake and Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain. Many B2B launches belong here: suppliers, light industrial firms, technology and research companies, and services that sell to other businesses.

A B2B launch from these areas rarely needs foot traffic. It needs a short list of named target companies, a credible website, and direct outreach, plus a presence where buyers check suppliers. If you are near SFU, students and staff are a large and seasonal market, which affects when you open and how you staff. Before leasing any industrial or flex unit, confirm your exact use under the Zoning Bylaw.

Parks and Conservation Areas

Burnaby's large green spaces, including Burnaby Lake, Deer Lake Park, the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area and Barnet Marine Park, are not places to open a company. They still matter to some launches. Fitness coaches, outdoor programs, photographers and tour operators often work near them, and they shape the neighbourhoods around them: the residential streets near Deer Lake or Burnaby Lake attract families who value those amenities.

If your business would use a park for paid activity, check with the City or Metro Vancouver, depending on the park, before you build a launch around it. We don't advise on permits, but the roadmap includes that question so it is answered early.

Other commonly named areas

Locals also use names that don't appear as separate plan areas: North Burnaby, Burnaby Heights, Brentwood Park, Central Park, Edmonds-Highgate, Parkcrest and Still Creek. Your customers will search and describe themselves using these names, so your website and listing should use them where they genuinely describe where you work.

North Burnaby, for example, is how many residents of the city's northern half describe home, and Central Park is a familiar landmark beside Metrotown. We use these names to describe a service area accurately, never to fill pages with place names.

Who your Burnaby customers are

Burnaby is large and diverse. The 2021 Census counted 107,046 private dwellings, of which 101,136 were occupied by usual residents, according to the Statistics Canada census profile. Mandarin and Cantonese were each the mother tongue of roughly one in eight residents, with Tagalog and Korean the next most common non-official languages, per StatCan's mother tongue table.

For a new company, that raises a practical question: should your launch materials be in more than one language? If your market check shows a large share of buyers more comfortable in another language, translated signage, a translated landing page or a bilingual staff member can be a real advantage. We plan for it when the evidence supports it.

Nearby cities

Many Burnaby launches draw customers from next door. Vancouver lies to the west, New Westminster to the south-east, and Coquitlam and Port Moody to the east, with Richmond and Surrey across the Fraser. For eligible mobile and trade businesses with a permanent Burnaby location, the City describes an inter-municipal business licence add-on covering Burnaby, Delta, New Westminster, Richmond, Surrey and Vancouver, listed at $300 for 12 months as of October 2026. Confirm eligibility with the City.

To plan your location properly, read our guide to choosing a Burnaby location, or start with the setup roadmap. Questions about cost are answered on the pricing page.