It's recently won coverage in everything from Wallpaper* to Lucky as a design hub, but plugged-in Vancouverites have known for years that SoMa, South Main Street from about East 2nd Avenue up to East 15th, is hip central. Whether it's the tropical-blue-walled Monsoon, espresso den Soma Café, the Whip gallery patio, or breakfast joint Slickety Jim's Chat 'n' Chew, the 'hood's hangouts are some of the coolest digs in town.

Now a new crowd is starting to move into the artsy enclave for more than a latte or lunch date. A decade ago, artist live-work lofts began cropping up around 2nd and 3rd avenues near Main. But today, the Broadway area is seeing a full-fledged condo boom, with cutting-edge developments concocting spaces to appeal to the kind of creative types who clamour at the nearby bars and patios. First came the Hub (at 10th and Main) and Elements (at Broadway and Ontario). Currently, the residential growth is expanding eastward along neglected Kingsway, with Soma Lofts (at East 12th Avenue) on the market and Uno's building about to rise in the parking lot on East 11th Avenue beside the Biltmore Hotel. Farther up, the King Edward will bring hundreds of new units and some retail stores onto the old Safeway and flea-market eyesore at Knight and Kingsway, and recently there's been word the Kingsgate Mall may be destined for condos and mixed-use development.

"Until now, there just has not been a lot of property available for condo projects on the East Side," explains Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver president Andrew Peck. "But now developers are looking in this area and saying, 'Where are my opportunities?' There's the proximity to jobs downtown, and Yaletown and Coal Harbour areas have much higher per-square-foot costs. That means these are affordable units and they're appealing to a younger market.

"For a lot of these people, the back yard is the outdoor café," he adds. "They're saying, 'I don't necessarily need a big balcony.' They're really buying into a lifestyle there."

The district's new residents won't have any shortage of places to outfit their homes. Livingspace Interiors was one of the pioneers on Kingsway, converting the old Jantzen factory space at 10th into a SoHo-like showroom for its designer European furniture. Midland Appliance shares the same space, and chic hardware outlet Cantu is just up the block. Next year, Toronto's stylish Oni-One store will open its outlet on the ground floor of the new Uno development. (See story above.)

The change didn't happen overnight. A few decades ago, the same section of Mount Pleasant was home to hookers and dilapidated residential hotels. But things started to change when one of the city's first business-improvement associations formed in the late '80s and began tidying up, eventually rebranding it in the '90s as Uptown, with banners and sidewalk improvements.

Peter Vaisbord, the city's coordinator of business improvement associations, puts the boom in context: "Part of the trajectory for neighbourhoods all over the city would be that first the hip and edgy--the urban pioneers--are there, then other people move down to the area because they hear about it....Then it becomes a tourist destination, and before you know it, it has changed. There are ups and downs; it becomes more successful and more mainstream, and outsiders come in and take over. But what it does mean is we have hip, leading-edge areas coming up all the time, and from my point of view, all our community shopping areas are coming into their own after a long decline from as far back as the '50s, when everyone started getting into their cars and started going to the malls and, later, big-box shopping. I think the young people moving into neighbourhoods like this are sick of malls; they want the authenticity and surprise of shopping in their own communities."

The overall message? Enjoy it while it lasts, hipsters. Or maybe, get in while it's still affordable.