Mayor Jonathan Cote is fulfilling one of his election promises by entering the blogosphere.
Cote kick-started a new blog on Aug. 18 and followed that up with a post about the Top 20 most popular things in New Westminster on Instagram.
“What I did was I went to #NewWest on Instagram, and basically over the last five weeks, I started counting what people were posting. There were some things that were very popular in the community,” he told the Record. “I thought it was an interesting way to find out what people are loving about New Westminster.”
So just what did he find?
“The top spot was the Pattullo Bridge and the SkyBridge – some from Pier Park, some from other locations in the city,” he said. “Those bridges seem to be what people love to take photos of in the city.”
Cote found that Westminster Pier Park was the second most popular attraction in New West featured on Instagram, followed by the Pride crosswalk at Church and Columbia streets that was installed in time for the New West Pride Festival.
To see Cote’s Top 20 list, visit mayorcote.ca.
“What I take out of all the things I looked at is, Number 1, the waterfront seems to be where people are gravitating to and what people love to take pictures of in the city,” he said. “Number 2, there seems to be a lot of appreciation for some of the unique, small art projects in the city. There’s the Before I Die (at Westminster Pier Park), the parklet in Sapperton. The mosaic tiles get a lot of photographs. Sometimes we think you have to do these big projects to change a city, but I think, to me looking at Instagram, it’s almost telling me these smaller, more unique and creative projects are generating more buzz in the community. I thought that was interesting.”
