Downtown Canada

[J.OT13]

Have cities across Canada made progress in adding residential to their central business districts (CBD)?

Traditionally, the CBDs are booming from 7am to 6pm on weekdays, and the "City rolls up the sidewalks" after 6pm.

Now more than ever, the pandemic has taken quite a hit on CBDs and Downtowns, which requires cities to re-think these areas.

We can expect to see quite a few office to residential conversions. It sounds like Calgary has taken significant action on that point. Of course, not all office buildings are suitable. Often older buildings with smaller footprints are more adapted to this. We also see new (mostly rental) residential towers going up.

I find Vancouver, with its compact CBD and dense Downtown Peninsula has done the best job proving a mix of uses in its core (affordability issues aside). I can only think of one residential building in Toronto's CBD that has been built over the last decade, or maybe century, but the surroundings have densified significantly. Montreal, Edmonton and others have also made improvements.

Ottawa has been slow and steady, adding a half dozen buildings with some residential in its CBD over the last 20 years, but it's picked-up. We're seeing office conversions of mostly 70s brutalist mid-rises.