Brail & Vinodrai – Remote Work: Urban Panacea or Curse?

The final secon of the report, Recommendations and Conclusions, presents a series of recommendaons related to best pracces in the adaptaon of cies – physically, economically, and socially – to the future of work and cies. [...] Figure 3 (below) examines the expectaons of businesses in Toronto with respect to the ancipated locaon of work and compares the answers to this queson in the first quarter of 2022 to the last quarter of 2023. [...] Indeed, over the course of the pandemic, and in the current period of recovery, the impacts of the shi to remote work have been both uneven and dynamic for people and places. [...] We have to understand not just the role of downtown, but the role of downtown in the context of the region, and then thinking of different parts of the region in its own context.” 3.3 Remote work and the producvity puzzle Researchers, policymakers and business leaders have also been concerned about the impact of the shi to hybrid and remote work on producvity. [...] Today, data largely confirms that downtowns, like Toronto’s, have experienced an untethering of office workers from offices.66 The combinaon of the city’s economic foundaons, the duraon of the state of emergency and associated closures, and reliance on transit for commung to the downtown core, contribute to the exacerbaon and now the apparent embeddedness of remote and hybrid work pracces.