I do have to wonder if these white collar, office-heavy mid-sized cities are going to hurt worse from Covid and work-from-home.
Most US downtowns and probably a lot of Canadian ones stopped being the pre-eminent employment center of their regions a long time ago and have had like 40 years to adapt. Dallas for example hasn't built any "landmark" office skyscrapers downtown since the 1980s, and some of the oldest office buildings have since been converted to residential or hotel use. The new office developments have been mid-rises in uptown, and those are intermingled with a lot of residential or hotel or other.
However a city like Calgary seems like its so heavily dependent on office workers in the oil industry, and that can't have a good forecast. A lot of that could crash at once, and bring down with it all the service related businesses in downtown. Calgary is legendary for light rail ridership, but isn't that mostly a result of downtown parking costs and a concentration of employment? That could be another casuality.
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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
Nashville, charlotte, and Austin are some of the fastest growing cities in the US, which I think lends to their comparisons to Calgary and western Canada in general. Western Canada as a whole is insanely new. A building feels ancient out there if it’s more than 50 years old.. coming from Toronto where a ton of houses are 150+, and about half the apartment stock is 50+, it’s just something completely different. Same thing with those fast growing US metros, they are all “new”.
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I think what makes downtown Nashville and Austin unique for "new" cities is that a lot of the most notable tall buildings are hotels or condos/apartments and there is a high level of activity at street level being fueled by people who come in from the suburbs or out of town. The whole live music thing got a snowball effect going.