Downtown/CBD employment

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Docere

Jobs Downtown (2016 Census)

They do have a methodology and it's interesting data, but it seems more useful for tracking changes or development patterns than inter-city comparisons. According to the methodology they use, downtown Victoria has a greater geographical extent (8.1 square km) than Vancouver (6.2 square km).

[Docere]

Not the Statcan definition (which seems to take downtown definition from the cities which may differ) - but maps of six downtowns that seems to be an "apples" comparison:

https://canadiangeographic.ca/articl...es-in-context/

Toronto's a little smaller than the official which has a few centrally located residential neighborhoods like the Annex and Cabbagetown.

[zoomer]

CBC article today about the Calgary office conversions and the challenges that remain.

Includes a bold quote from “Beverly Sandalack is a professor at the University of Calgary's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and she's a co-director of the university's Urban Lab… Sandalack says that, starting in the mid-1960s, a massive amount of effort, planning and money went into changing the form and function of Calgary's downtown. Eventually, it lost its human scale, residential population, vitality, sense of safety, and most of its sunshine. An equal amount of effort, she says, will be required to turn it back into neighbourhoods once again.

When I think about something really radical, an option has to be: do we tear down most of it and start again? To me, that has to be on the table as an extreme option."

Reminds me of NJB video on Montreal and raises a question:for the large Canadian cities that are car dominated do we need to stop tinkering around the edges and rebuild our downtowns even if that means tearing down giant block busting office buildings? Are skyscraper canyons a sign of failure or is it possible to have street level vitality like New York but at a much smaller scale?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Docere

Not the Statcan definition (which seems to take downtown definition from the cities which may differ) - but maps of six downtowns that seems to be an "apples" comparison:

https://canadiangeographic.ca/articl...es-in-context/

Toronto's a little smaller than the official which has a few centrally located residential neighborhoods like the Annex and Cabbagetown.

Those seem decent from what I can tell. Toronto and Vancouver seem a little small while Halifax and Montreal's take in a bit of stuff I wouldn't include. I don't know Calgary and Winnipeg well enough to really comment though.

[Docere]

Officially Toronto's downtown is defined as Bathurst/Don/CPR/Rosedale Valley.

This map includes more mixed residential like Kensington-Chinatown, Yorkville and Old Town/St. Lawrence but exclude the more purely residential areas on the edges of this area.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yes the only things really missing from the Toronto map are that in the north west corner the cut off at Bloor and Avenue Rd is pre-mature as is the cut off in the south east at Queen and Sherbourne. Cutting it off at Avenue Rd and Bloor misses all the stuff like this to the north of Bloor and the West of Ave. Rd. It should have included a couple blocks north of Bloor to say, Lowther Ave. And cutting it off in the southest at Queen and Sherbourne missed some dense, downtown-like stuff like this. At the very least it should have been at Sherbourne and Shuter.

Also, having Parliament as the cutoff in the east is too conservative as it should follow Shuter all the way to the river. But those things wouldn't make a huge difference in terms of the total area.

[Docere]

In that sense, the "existing definition" makes sense as everything "pretty much downtown" falls within it. It's also based on Census Tracts which are defined by major or semi-major streets or notable geographical boundaries.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by zoomer

CBC article today about the Calgary office conversions and the challenges that remain.

Includes a bold quote from “Beverly Sandalack is a professor at the University of Calgary's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and she's a co-director of the university's Urban Lab… Sandalack says that, starting in the mid-1960s, a massive amount of effort, planning and money went into changing the form and function of Calgary's downtown. Eventually, it lost its human scale, residential population, vitality, sense of safety, and most of its sunshine. An equal amount of effort, she says, will be required to turn it back into neighbourhoods once again.

When I think about something really radical, an option has to be: do we tear down most of it and start again? To me, that has to be on the table as an extreme option."

Reminds me of NJB video on Montreal and raises a question:for the large Canadian cities that are car dominated do we need to stop tinkering around the edges and rebuild our downtowns even if that means tearing down giant block busting office buildings? Are skyscraper canyons a sign of failure or is it possible to have street level vitality like New York but at a much smaller scale?

That really is radical and extreme, but very unnecessary. Calgary, or any other city's downtown I can think of for that matter, is not anywhere close to this troubled or car-dependent, and where it may lack in street life, etc. it's due to vacant/underdeveloped lands, not office buildings that are too big. There's plenty of room to return residential to the downtown and bring it closer to what a typical urbanist might have in mind as a nice/successful neighbourhood. The language in that quote speaks to a personal aesthetic preference of smaller buildings with no real rationale otherwise. Skyscrapers are a symbol of high land values and demand for space (read: a strong economy) and, while some of the marquee towers in downtown Calgary maybe could've been designed better with a stronger relationship to the street with retail podiums, etc., they're not so terrible that we need to fantasize about expropriating/forcing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of capital, labour, and materials to be taken apart to try again.

[zoomer]

/\ It hardly seems environmentally friendly does it - surprising coming from a university professor, or not.. Just the carbon impact of deconstructing dozens of buildings and then landfilling the remnants is huge, never mind the economic cost.

The author of the CBC article seems a bit biased as well: “ When they step out the front door on a weekend morning, staring down the empty, cavernous expanse of Sixth Avenue, or Fifth Avenue, or Fourth Avenue, where will they direct their feet? (And if your answer was — like the line in the song — "to the sunny side of the street," you haven't spent much time in downtown Calgary.)”

I think the real issue are the blocks where there is nothing but blank walls, or parking garages or entrances. It would make more sense over time to encourage turning some of these into storefronts where possible when modernizing the building (yes would require a major renovation/rebuild). Otherwise don’t make the same mistakes moving forward, and let decades of time take care of the rest as the city evolves.

I do agree that the problems the article addresses in Calgary are due in part to large office blocks, hotels, etc that present blank walls and are pedestrian dead zones. I don’t see vacant or underdeveloped land being a more significant issue in downtown Calgary in terms of the present pedestrian experience.

[Changing City]

/\
It does seem a bit extreme, but on the other hand, it's a possible scenario. At some point the owners of vacant office buildings that have no prospect of leasing are going to have to face some difficult choices. The taxes on a vacant site are less than on an empty office tower. Many office buildings are poor prospects for residential conversion. The city of Calgary have already paused their financial program to help those conversions that do make sense (with financial support), as the 13 projects (mostly of smaller buildings) has used up the $153m available. That should see 1.7m sq ft of space reused, if all the schemes proceed, but larger floor plate buildings don't convert very easily (or at all), and the vacancy rate is still around 30%. If the oil and gas businesses continue to merge, downsize or end up moving to the US, the prospects are for more vacant spaces, and there really aren't that many businesses looking to snap up cheap office space in Calgary.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Those seem decent from what I can tell. Toronto and Vancouver seem a little small while Halifax and Montreal's take in a bit of stuff I wouldn't include. I don't know Calgary and Winnipeg well enough to really comment though.

Yes, I think the map for Halifax extends a few blocks too far to the north and south, where it’s still clearly very urban but the character switches to residential/neighbourhood-y. I guess I’d say the same about the Montreal map including the Plateau, though, and Calgary map going south of 9th Avenue (I really consider the Beltline distinct from downtown, for many reasons).

Vancouver on the other hand, I’m wondering why it cuts off the last few blocks of the downtown peninsula to the north and west.

As for the Calgary downtown thing—it’s true, the urban character north of Stephen Avenue has that paradoxical combination of high density and poor urban design, but mass-scale demolitions don’t seem like a very practical solution. Surely a lot more can be done at the street level without resorting to such extremes.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Docere

Jobs Downtown (2016 Census)

Toronto 503,575
Montreal 299,245
Vancouver 163,695
Calgary 137,030
Ottawa 124,865
Edmonton 92,735
Winnipeg 70,870
Quebec 54,405
Victoria 48,345
Halifax 48,295

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...021001-eng.htm

We must have the 2021 numbers by now, no?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Harrison

We must have the 2021 numbers by now, no?

Statistics Canada only published the 2016 data in 2021. The geographic areas of 'Downtown' are based on Dissemination Areas (not census tracts), and as far as I can tell, data for employment (rather than for residents) hasn't been published yet at that level.

They have released data showing place of work by census tract for 2021, (and also numbers working at home), but that data isn't available on the Statistics Canada website from 2016, so it's not possible to directly compare, unless they produce a publication that includes data.

In any case, 2021 data for employment will be very unhelpful, as so many people were working from home during the pandemic. In 2016 the Labour Force Survey found 7.1% of Canadians worked at home. In 2021 it was 24.3%, and it's has slowly fallen to 20.1% in 2023. [source]

Some reports put the change at being even greater. "At the beginning of 2021, 32% of Canadian employees aged 15 to 69 worked most of their hours from home, compared with only 4% in 2016." [source]. It's a topic that Statistics Canada have put quite a bit of work into, [for example, this paper].

It will make calculations of 'employment' in specific locations quite difficult, and hard to compare to past data. The greatest number occupying a Downtown place of work in Canadian cities is now probably on Wednesday. Monday, or Friday would give a lower number. And while data might show that a Downtown office has 100 employees, that could be quite misleading. For example, earlier this year in the US "Kastle Systems, which operates card-swipe security machines in office buildings across the United States, said that the weekly average office occupancy rate at the end of March in the most populous U.S. cities was 49% of pre-pandemic levels." [CNN]

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Those seem decent from what I can tell. Toronto and Vancouver seem a little small while Halifax and Montreal's take in a bit of stuff I wouldn't include. I don't know Calgary and Winnipeg well enough to really comment though.

For Montreal, I find it strange that the western cut off is at Guy street. The whole part west of Guy up to Atwater is the densest part of downtown and is very much more downtown than Le Plateau. So a big fail right there.

[niwell]

The "downtown" classifications don't work as well in cities where there isn't a hard cut-off between business districts and organic residential areas. Despite tons of new condos in this area Calgary does have a hard cut-off with the CP mainline south of 9th ave. I'd hesitate to call the Beltline "downtown" as it's more of it's own thing - and I mean this in a good way!

In places like Montreal and Toronto the barriers between office districts and residential is much more blurred. Lots of non-downtown stuff East of Bathurst / West of the Don but also random office / institutional buildings throughout:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/CAFZAhD2sLzX3o5y6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BDDrR2pJ1Utab8xV7

And streets like these are well within the boundary:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/aqAhjRybV5PxHAxKA

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Yes, I think the map for Halifax extends a few blocks too far to the north and south, where it’s still clearly very urban but the character switches to residential/neighbourhood-y. I guess I’d say the same about the Montreal map including the Plateau, though, and Calgary map going south of 9th Avenue (I really consider the Beltline distinct from downtown, for many reasons).

Vancouver on the other hand, I’m wondering why it cuts off the last few blocks of the downtown peninsula to the north and west.

A lot of the peninsula in Vancouver is very neighbourhood-like even if it has a higher density. Even Davie has a strong neighbourhood feel with a lot of businesses for the people who live around there rather than regional "destination" shopping (plus bars). The feel of Davie is a bit like Gottingen while the far end of the West End, beyond Denman, is a bit like how things trail off around Barrington/Inglis and farther south (maybe because of the similar geography). Vancouver's West End has surprisingly limited transit and not much office development. The Halifax equivalent of the residential parts is something like Fenwick or Tower Rd where there is decent density but little draw for non residents.

Parts of the Broadway corridor in Vancouver on the other hand are very office focused and it's all getting integrated with development along Main Street, the subway stations under Broadway, etc.

In Halifax it depends a lot on your definition. Either you end up with a very narrowly-defined and small "CBD" or a much larger "downtown" where it's hard to draw a boundary. On the Canadian Geographic map they say half of Dalhousie is downtown and half isn't for example. CFB Halifax is a pretty big employer with around 12,000 workers. In a few years the additional development will probably stitch together some borderline areas (but probably not that area around Victoria Rd which I don't consider to be downtown-like at all). I think the definition will get hazier and hazier with the shift toward working from home, infill, and mixed use.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

In Halifax it depends a lot on your definition. Either you end up with a very narrowly-defined and small "CBD" or a much larger "downtown" where it's hard to draw a boundary. On the Canadian Geographic map they say half of Dalhousie is downtown and half isn't for example. CFB Halifax is a pretty big employer with around 12,000 workers. In a few years the additional development will probably stitch together some borderline areas (but probably not that area around Victoria Rd which I don't consider to be downtown-like at all). I think the definition will get hazier and hazier with the shift toward working from home, infill, and mixed use.

Personally, I think we should have both since both boundaries are appropriate for our layout. A NA-style downtown which is similar to a "CBD" and a much larger "central Halifax" which is more like a European city centre where there's a much wider area of elevated activity and concentration of points of interest. When I'm walking around town, the "Willow Tree" intersection at Robie and Quinpool is probably where I feel most like I'm in the centre of everything at the heart of the city. Yet it isn't actually included in the downtown/CBD definition.

It would look something like these:

[Docere]

The "downtown" definition for Toronto has actually been in place since the 1970s - when it came up with the Central Area plan with the same boundaries.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

Vancouver's West End has surprisingly limited transit and not much office development. The Halifax equivalent of the residential parts is something like Fenwick or Tower Rd where there is decent density but little draw for non residents.

Sidebar, but I actually noticed the relative paucity of transit in the area the last time I was in Vancouver, this summer. I stayed with my kids around Commercial and Graveley (about ten minutes’ walk from Commercial-Broadway station) and figured we’d take the Skytrain for an afternoon trip to Stanley Park. I didn’t anticipate the closest station to the park would be Burrard, nearly two kilometres away. Trying to fit the jaunt into the window between a toddler’s nap and dinner time made transit impractical, so we just drove. Similar issue going to the beach the following day—choice between a 45-50 minute trip involving copious walking or train and bus transfers, or a 20-minute drive. Overall I was a bit surprised by how often transit wasn’t the easiest option.

[someone123]

Incidentally I saw this picture of Dalhousie and there isn't really much of a gap along University Ave (while to the right/south it's low density residential zoning; Robie is visible as a green line of trees). On the one hand I think most people wouldn't consider this type of institutional area "downtown", but on the other from a density or employment perspective it is on par with some non-CBD downtown-like areas.

There are 4x30 storey towers proposed behind the church with the square tower on the left side. There are some registered heritage Victorian houses around that area too so it's unlikely to ever be 100% medium or higher density buildings. There could be commercial conversions of more houses.


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