Juno’s neighborhood is the better one

In the (excellent) film Juno, the title character’s lower middle class family lives in an old neighborhood with small houses, while the rich potential adoptive parents (the Lorings) live in a shiny new suburb with huge houses on big lots. But as it turns out, Juno’s neighborhood is more expensive than the Lorings’! Yup, the areas of Vancouver where Juno’s neighborhood was filmed—older areas where you can walk to the store for a pregnancy test and some Sunny D, or run to school—are now more desirable and fetch higher house prices than the eastern gated suburbs where the Lorings’ house was filmed. While our films still reflect the ingrained cultural attitude that newer, bigger houses on bigger lots in distant suburbs are more desirable, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite.