The study, called “Death of Downtown?”  used data from cell towers to track the return of people to the core in 62 urban centers.
It found that the level of cell activity measured in downtown Toronto between March and May of this year was only about 46% of the pre-pandemic norm.
That put the city 49th among North American cities, well behind places like Salt Lake City (155 percent) and Columbus (112 percent), which have fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Francisco finished dead last in the rankings, with mobile pings still hovering around 30% of pre-pandemic norm downtown.
Karen Chapple, who is director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto and one of the study’s co-authors, told CP24.com this week that Toronto’s recovery has been slower, in part because of deeper restrictions and longer than in many other cities.
But he said there are also “structural” issues with Toronto’s economy that make a full return of office workers to the core less likely in the future, notably the prevalence of technology and financial services jobs that lend themselves to remote or hybrid work.
“This is a collective action problem and Toronto seems to have been very passive, waiting for individual actors to make it all better and it’s not (going to improve),” he said.  “Will it take a real concerted effort of the public and private sectors together to figure out what are the spaces that are likely to continue to be dead in the future?  What are these specific blocks?  How can we bring these blocks to life?  How can we find new tenants there?  How can we make the private space, the commercial space and also the public space work?  This is a problem we have together, so it’s something we have to solve together.”
The data suggests that cellphone pings in downtown Toronto dropped to 28% of the pre-pandemic norm, both at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and during a devastating third wave in the spring of 2021.
In recent weeks there has been a steady uptick in activity downtown, but the data is starting to show signs of leveling off, and Chapple said she does not foresee a scenario where the vast majority of office workers return downtown five days a week.
Not this fall, not ever.
“We will not go back to normal,” he warned.  “The question people are debating right now is is it going to go to 40 percent or 60 percent?  Will people come back for two days a week or three days a week?  This really hasn’t been settled.  But if you’re going to have, you know, half the economy downtown in a hybrid work program, then you really have to think about how you’re going to reuse that space.”
Passenger traffic is slow to recover on weekdays
Both the TTC and GO Transit have reported increasingly strong weekend ridership this summer as street festivals and other major events return to the city.
Transit agencies, however, have said that weekday ridership is approaching 50 percent of the pre-pandemic norm.
Meanwhile, the latest data from the Strategic Regional Research Alliance suggests overall occupancy at downtown Toronto workplaces is still at just 27% of pre-pandemic levels, essentially unchanged from last month.
The slow pace of the recovery comes as no surprise to Marcy Burchfield, who has been tracking it as part of her work with the Toronto Region Economic and Trade Institute.
Burchfield points out that travel restrictions were still in place in Canada as recently as April, which “has implications for people’s attitudes about going back to the office.”
But he said things have started to change in downtown Toronto since May.
He sees this trend continuing into the fall as people begin to see the value of in-person collaboration after more than two years of Zoom meetings.
“The study kind of ends in May, and that was an unfortunate data endpoint because we’ve seen a real increase in activity in downtown Toronto since then,” he said.  “Well, yeah, you know, there’s no surprise when you look at when that study was done (that Toronto was lagging) but if you look at more recent data, I think there’s a difference between what they found and what’s happening now.”
Tory says the hot job market is a factor in the pace of downtown’s return
The city has taken an active role in encouraging workers to return downtown and was among the first major employers to ask their employees to return to the office, at least part-time.
This week, Mayor John Tory also announced the creation of a new economic recovery task force whose initial focus will be on “addressing the future of work in Toronto.”
In a statement provided to CP24.com, the Tories admitted that the return of workers to city center apartment buildings has been slower than some stakeholders had hoped.  Still, he said he remains optimistic about downtown Toronto.
“If you had to pin down one reason why the inner-city recovery has been a bit slower, it’s the slower return to work, especially by those employed by larger companies.  I meet with these employers all the time to help and encourage them to get their teams back to work in the city center but I understand the challenge involved,” he said.  “First and foremost, the lack of manpower has made it much more difficult to set rules or deadlines as opposed to persuading and offering incentives.  By definition, this is a slower process, but it reflects the fact that a stricter approach may have forced some of these same employees to change jobs.”
Tory said in his statement that he hoped the drop would represent a “sensible time” for more workers to return downtown.
He said there are already “definite signs” that “recovery is accelerating”, including city traffic data, which suggests a recent increase in pedestrian volumes in the city centre.
“The approach was more gradual and more based on persuasion and it worked although it took a little longer,” he said.  “I think one has to realize the size and scale of the challenge relative to other cities to bring downtown back to life.”
Canadian cities have lagged behind compared to the US
The return of workers in downtown Toronto has been particularly slow compared to many major US cities, including New York, where cellphone pings are now about 76 percent of the pre-pandemic norm.
Toronto’s experience, however, is not entirely unique among Canadian cities, with both Vancouver (55th) and Montreal (57th) among the cities the study identified as having the slowest recovery.
Chapple said she speaks to many stakeholders and business organizations and gets the impression that they “expect employers to crack down on people”.
But he said it may be the wrong attitude amid a major shift that appears to be around the very nature of work in many industries.
“Cities like San Francisco and Toronto should just rethink what their downtown should be like and refocus on arts and entertainment, even non-profits and health and education.  This is the future of the central cities, when professional services sort of clear up,” he said.