Central Victoria

3 neighbourhoods in the belt between downtown and the Oak Bay border, none of them on a highway and none of them large. North Park is the smallest in the city at 55.5 hectares and the cheapest, with 85 detached houses in the whole neighbourhood, 79 per cent of households renting and a median household income of $49,600, the lowest of the twelve by roughly $12,000. Fernwood is the one that famously bought its own commercial block rather than watch it be redeveloped, and it is where the bicycle is most obviously the local vehicle: 11 per cent of employed residents ride to work. Jubilee is organised around Royal Jubilee Hospital, open since 1890 and still the biggest employer on this side of the city, on the 96.2 hectares that make it the second smallest neighbourhood in Victoria.

These are the most walkable non-downtown addresses in Victoria, with a village core each at Quadra Village, Fernwood Square and the west end of Oak Bay Avenue, and the housing is correspondingly mixed: pre-war houses, converted duplexes and low-rise apartment blocks on the same street. Renters outnumber owners in all three. The civic infrastructure is out of all proportion to the acreage. Royal Athletic Park has been the city's ballpark since 1925, the 1971 Crystal Pool is the only aquatic centre a city of 19.5 square kilometres has, and the 7,400-seat arena beside it brings eighty-odd event nights a year with the parking pressure that goes with them.