Though the community of Yaletown technically is defined as part of Downtown by the City of Vancouver, really it is a neighborhood all to itself with unique traits and residents. Set along False Creek, this area is one of the youngest in Vancouver, mainly only an industrial area until the Expo 1986 World's Fair. At that time, Yaletown began to turn residential, with high-rise apartments and converted warehouses turning the area into one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city.

Yaletown earned a reputation for affluence in the 1990s, when a number of Dot Com Boom companies set up shop there. Film offices, art galleries, gourmet restaurants and expensive boutiques followed, and by the end of the '90s Yaletown was known to be the ritziest area Downtown.