Urban Vancouver

Maybe I've misunderstood some of those other sites, but it seems
to me that most of them are either trying to get you to sign up
for a monthly "web-hosting" fee, or want you to buy some program
which will make blogging easy for you.
Urban Vancouver, on the other hand, does all the difficult or
tricky stuff for us already, and all we have to do is think about
whatever we want to write about. I like this a lot, being a
relative ignoramus about computers and programming & all that.
So I would have to rate Urban Vancouver right up there at the
top of the list, for ease of use, ease of access, and also
of course for its circulation - which is practically everywhere!
Keep up the excellent work, Folks, and thanks for making it fun.

Not quite sure what you're talking about, webhosting fee. Metroblogging Vancouver has a number of authors all of which have their own blog, and had it before, but use the site as a place to post about Vancouver. We don't charge a fee, or anything, it's just like any other blog.

And fairly easy to boot.

Thanks for the link to the Globe and Mail article. I'm an Honours student at SFU and this semester I'm actually conducting a research project on the Vancouver blogging community and community blogs in general as a channel for public discourse. It certainly is interesting to watch other media raise the profile of blogging as a conduit for community- or city-centered information and communication. My thesis aims to explore that idea and bring collective identity, user experience and public access into the discussion, and ask whether or not it is feasible (in future years) for cities to use community portals/blogs as kind of the main Petri dish for the public sphere to manifest itself.