The Hope in the City, located on Wallace Street, is laid out in a grid that includes a series of numbered streets that cross Wallace St. Downtown head-on with Water Street, which separates the downtown from the Fraser River. There is a narrow park along the Fraser River and the Skagit Valley Provincial Park can be reached by entering the city at the corner of Wallace Street and Water Street, south of the city centre.

Hope became the station of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886, hoping for further growth, which was expected with the advent of automobile traffic. Few people travel by train in western Canada, but Via Rail eastbound has a whistle-stop called Haig. Hope is a great place to stop and stretch your legs, as there are a number of train stops on the way from Hope to Langley and other parts of the province.

The Coquihalla and Sumallo rivers and Silverhope Creek spring from the town of Hope, Port Coquitlam and Port St. John. A section of Lytton in Hope separates the Cascade Mountains from the Coast Mountains, forming Fraser Canyon, which begins far above Williams Lake and then flows into Hope River Valley. The segment between LyTTon and Hope is separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Cascade mountains, separating it from other parts of the Columbia River Valley and its tributaries, such as the Salmon River, the Salish River and other rivers in the Lower Mainland of B.C.