Downtown London recovering better than other Canadian cities, according to study

Downtown London, Ont. is bouncing back from the pandemic better than all other medium and large sized cities in Canada.

That’s according to a new study by the University of Toronto School of Cities.

According to the study, activity in downtown London has reached 79 per cent of pre-pandemic levels — that’s the highest for Canadian cities in the study.

“London popped up and I’m like, ‘What’s going on in London,” said lead author Karen Chapple.

She explained, “And my gosh, there’s so many buildings in the pipeline, there’s a bunch under construction right now. There’s still an influx from Toronto just because that housing crisis in Toronto just gets worse and worse. So I would be optimistic, I think London will see, it might even get back up to 100 per cent because it’s going to feed on residential, and then they drum up more retail services.”

The study looked at cell phone data, determining not just how many people were in the downtown at a given time, but whether they were staying for significant periods of time, and frequenting various points of interest, like restaurants or shows.

Barb Maly, the executive director of Downtown London, finds the study encouraging, and said it’s all too easy to take downtown’s offerings for granted.

“When you’re in the midst of it, trying to support our members through the various challenges that they’re facing day in and day out I think you forget, you know there are some gold nuggets, a number of gold nuggets that our downtown has, and we have to remember that,” she said.

But not all is on the upswing, from a growing homeless crisis, to downtown office vacancies.

“I don’t think it’s back to pre-pandemic levels,” said one downtown worker CTV News London spoke with. “No, I don’t know if it will ever be. A lot of people don’t want to come back.”

Her friend agreed and said, “I think now we work hybrid, so we are not here as often, and I think that’s the case for most of the office.”

While downtown London ranks number one for Canadian cities, it ranks number 13 of the 62 cities in North America in the study.