A recent New York Times headline read: “New York Faces Lasting Economic Toll Even as Pandemic Passes.” This should come as no big surprise given the nature of New York city’s industrial make-up, a good deal of which depends on foreign and domestic tourism. Indeed, the article notes that the city had an 11.8 percent decline in jobs from February 2020 to April 2021, almost three times the loss on the national level. Boarded-up storefronts and for-lease signs dot many of its neighborhoods. Many of the businesses that depend on office and other workers who work in the core have yet to experience any substantive turnaround, especially in the retail, hospitality and performing arts sectors. Of concern to the services sector is that several large corporations like Google and Facebook, as major commercial tenants, will not require the same amount of office space with a good percent of their staff continuing to work remotely full time or two or three days a week. With fewer people commuting daily to downtown businesses, there will also be a substantive need to examine current public transportation policies.
While the example of New York is certainly considered to be an extreme situation, there is little doubt that all urban centers in North America will have to adjust economically and socially in the near future. The impact of the pandemic will leave a substantial mark on every aspect of urban life for sometime to come. The most evident immediate impact can be seen in the housing market. Working remotely from home is only one of several factors influencing the rising costs of housing, especially single detached homes. The average sale price for a home in Canada for example has surged 38 percent to $688,208 over the past year amid a pandemic-driven housing boom, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association. Technology has allowed more people to work from ‘rurban’ communities than ever before, eliminating much of the need to commute to and from urban workplaces. Employers are having to adjust their working arrangements to accommodate employees, who in many cases have essential skills in short supply.
Even Ottawa, where I live, is experiencing many of the economic and social consequences of the pandemic, despite being primarily a government town and having less of an economic impact that most cities. However, as in the case of New York, Ottawa has seen dozens of small businesses, which before the pandemic employed about much of the city’s work force, haven’t survived. Tourism, a major part of the National Capital Region, is way down, affecting hotels, tour operations, restaurants and bars. The closure of the American border over the past year to non-essential traffic and major restrictions on international air travel has had a major impact on tourism. Sports and entertainment venues, including Ottawa’s large festival industry, have been non-existent since the beginning of the pandemic. Like many urban communities, the city is counting on the vaccination of seventy or more percent of its population to eventually encourage locals to return to recreational and indoor activities across the region. However, much like projections for New York, most observers predict that it’s going to be a long, slow recovery. Indeed, one can further predict that the eventual outcome will be quite different from pre-pandemic conditions in North American cities.
FROLITICKS 