An update to our publication, Benchmarking the Return to Work - Office Employment Downtown Toronto, with latest news from London, New York, and transit systems from around the world.

The following summaries will provide a benchmark against which Toronto’s progress can be measured. We can state on a preliminary basis that Toronto shares the following characteristics with other jurisdictions:

• Even though TTC and Metrolinx have taken comprehensive measures with respect to cleaning, wayfinding and providing for physical distancing, transit ridership has increased marginally but is still much lower than ‘normal.’

• Restaurants and retail stores in downtown cores continue to experience significant losses.

• Landlords in buildings of all sizes have implemented major reallocation of space within offices and adjusted building access and egress in accordance with recommended norms, however, occupancy levels in office buildings also remain low.

Discussions are now underway to facilitate the re-opening of the economy, but re-opening Toronto’s Financial District, which is central to the health of both Ontario’s and Canada’s economy, poses unique problems for decision makers because of its heavy reliance on public transit.

The impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented, but no one yet really knows or understands if, when, or how city life will return to something approaching normality. High on the list of imponderables is public transit. If the pandemic achieves nothing else, it will have given those Torontonians who had to step outside a unique glimpse into life without congestion.

The challenge of imagining the future of cities in a post-pandemic world has been taken up by a wide range of opinion leaders, policy makers and urban practitioners, ranging from urban planners and architects to real estate professionals, economists, and institutional lenders. Thoughtful commentaries by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker and Jack Shenker in the Guardian remind us that plagues, pandemics and comparable disruptions have shaped cities and civic behaviour over many centuries. Expect more of the same, they suggest, and then some. But when it comes to major employment in office buildings there are very distinct differences between short term outcomes and long-term trends.