As the COVID-19 pandemic moves into the rearview mirror, a wide range of its enduring consequences are becoming clear. Trends underway in Canadian cities even before the pandemic have been reshaped and, in some instances, accelerated and amplified by what has occurred since March 2020, when an unprecedented national lockdown began.

Experiences of isolation and hardship have led many urban Canadians into levels of unmitigated distress. The impact has been unequal, with some of the most profound problems arising for low-income workers, essential workers, healthcare providers, immigrants, children and the elderly.

In this article we will discuss some of the key impacts of the pandemic on Canadian cities, in hopes of placing these issues firmly on the radar of leaders everywhere.

The impact on mobility and proximity

Evidence based on cellphone movements shows conclusively that Canadians responded to stay-at-home orders immediately upon their issuance in March 2020, and that, even after a partial rebound in mobility, citizens exhibited continued restraint even after stay-at-home orders were modified and lifted. The overall pattern across virtually all Canadian cities was an initial sharp reduction in mobility after March 13, 2020, followed by some recovery.

Not all types of mobility increased. The rebound was strongly driven by local ground travel within cities and between neighbouring cities (such as Toronto and Peel, or Vancouver and Victoria) rather than by air travel. The analysis showed significant and persistent reductions in the presence of cellphones at airports throughout 2020 even as some mobility arose across Canadian cities.

A critical but less appreciated fact is that the proximity of Canadians to one another recovered much more slowly than mobility. Like mobility, proximity between people can be identified using privacy-preserving cellphone data. Proximity measures represent the average number of distinct contacts that each individual has in an average day.

Across the largest Canadian cities, proximity dropped very significantly in March 2020 and did not begin to recover until the fourth quarter of 2020. By that time, Canadians were more mobile than early in the pandemic, but overall, they continued to avoid interacting with others.

 Evidence is emerging that variation in mobility and proximity between cities occurred over the course of the pandemic, and that this variation persists at differential rates. Residents of the cities of Toronto and Montreal, for example, were relatively less mobile than residents of Western Canadian cities early in the pandemic, perhaps in part due to weather and density exposures to COVID risk. According to a study published in November 2022 by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, mobility in the 10 largest downtown areas of cities in Canada was down 33 per cent as compared to January 2020.

These declines in mobility and proximity have significantly affected various health indicators among Canadians. The impact is evident not only among those staying at home, but also extends to essential workers, including healthcare professionals. Several studies indicate that Canadians report adverse mental-health impacts of the pandemic arising from a range of factors, including premature death of loved ones, illness and isolation.

An Angus Reid Institute report found that 82 per cent of Canadians surveyed indicated that "the pandemic has pulled people further apart”; 79 per cent said “the pandemic has brought out the worst in people”; and 61 per cent said that “Canadians’ level of compassion for one another has grown weaker.” Another report showed that 100 per cent of Canadian critical care nurses under study suffered “moderate to high burnout” as a result of the pandemic, with 74 per cent dealing with PTSD, 70 per cent with depression, 61 per cent with stress and 57 per cent with anxiety.

The decrease in mobility also brought about significant changes in how jobs are designed and geographically distributed. These changes will have lasting effects not only on urban planning, but also on employers’ ability to fill vacant positions. Telework, work-from-home, work-from-anywhere and hybrid work arrangements were widely implemented, tested, improved and — in many instances — made permanent.

The consequences of these arrangements for the downtown cores of large cities were immediately evident as commercial vacancy rates increased, stores became shuttered and furloughs occurred. While high in historic terms, by the third quarter of 2022, analysts reported that Canada boasted three of the five lowest downtown vacancy rates in North America: in Vancouver (7.1 per cent), Ottawa (11.5 per cent) and Toronto (11.8 per cent). Yet some Canadian cities had very high vacancy rates, including Calgary (32.9 per cent), Waterloo (23.6 per cent), Halifax (18.8 per cent) and Montreal (16.1 per cent).

As restrictions lifted, the "great resignation" and elevated retirements led to labour shortages, with consequences for job redesign that amplified the prevalence and extent of attractive remote-work arrangements that are popular with skilled workers. At the same time, the demands for physical presence in healthcare, policing, education and other sectors intensified, leading to widespread burnout, distress and a parallel wave of resignations and retirements among essential workers.

Evidence suggests that reductions in mobility and proximity were also tied to changes in several socio-economic indicators. The pandemic has been directly tied to inflation, rising costs of housing, amplified inequality and detrimental educational outcomes, particularly among children.

Ample evidence exists tying inflation to both supply-chain shortages and labour shortages arising from limitations on mobility, and to monetary infusions that occurred to address job loss during the early part of the pandemic. Increases in housing prices arose in part from ‘safe-haven investing’ and shifting needs that arose from remote-work arrangements aiming at reducing worker proximity.

Low-paid essential workers, laid-off contract workers, recent immigrants and those in need of social services were all made more vulnerable by the dual challenges of relatively greater exposure to COVID-19 and lockdown restrictions in cities with inadequate childcare support. Children also suffered from school lockdowns — both during the pandemic and subsequently, as their development slowed (despite evidence that the closing of schools did relatively little to stop COVID transmission).

These enduring changes reflect that the impact of the pandemic has been profound but variable across Canadian cities. They raise critical questions that must be addressed for our cities to recover in ways that will accelerate human health, wellbeing and prosperity.

Some critical questions

The impact of the pandemic was wrapped up in issues and problems that may have seemed remote to many Canadians before 2020. But the future of Canada’s cities depends on international and national issues as much as on local and individual concerns. Let’s take a look at some of the key areas for leaders to take into account.

International issues: Well before the pandemic, the international focus on climate change carried implications for Canadian cities. Discussions of heatwaves, intensifying storms and climate-driven migration occurred in many different venues. What the pandemic demonstrated was the immediate relevance of international emergencies for Canadian cities. Canadian cities are connected through international travel, commerce, economic exchange and public-policy commitments to places that are especially vulnerable to them.

The capacity of Canada’s large cities to contain infections and protect local populations from both health threats and the economic devastation of lockdowns is directly tied to the global risk of pandemics. Critical questions arise regarding the capacity in our cities to identify and treat infection without resorting to full-scale lockdowns that carry the consequences for human health that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Country-level concerns: Canada’s cities share challenges that were made evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. These include problems of assuring healthcare access and delivery to relatively marginalized and vulnerable populations of immigrants, low-income persons and members of otherwise vulnerable groups that may be better identified by city governments than by provincial or national authorities. The pandemic also made clear that Canadian cities must adapt to better models of eldercare that keep elders in communities and attend to their needs more humanely and effectively. Cities face common challenges in emergency preparedness construed broadly to include effective access to energy, healthcare and priority services.

Cities also share opportunities for collaboration to develop better systems of emergency response enabled by digital technologies. Innovations made in arts communities across cities indicate opportunities both to protect workers in the sector and to preserve the vibrancy of local culture.

Sectoral opportunities: The pandemic revealed that manufacturing efficiencies in the private sector could rapidly become rigidities in periods of emergency. This problem became particularly evident with supply-chain and labour bottlenecks that originated with mobility restrictions and intensified with labour shortages as restrictions were lifted.

City resources enabling communication among local leaders during periods of shortage may be warranted by this experience and need further study. COVID-19 accelerated digitization to the point where some cities, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, have implemented public projects designed to attract remote workers through incentives. Others have made public internet a city service. Yet others have invested to understand the resilience of communications systems that enable information-sharing during times of public emergency.

Some cities were much more effective than others at delivering childhood education during the pandemic. More research is needed to understand how Canadian cities can learn from and adapt to innovations that could improve quality of life, outcomes and cost-effectiveness of core systems dependent on IT infrastructure. The organizational structure of city governments was strained during the pandemic in ways that are important to study and to learn from.

Across Canada, some city services were shut down (or nearly so) during the pandemic. In some cases, functions such as licensing and social-services enrolment were completely suspended.

Yet there were examples of redesigning organizational arrangements that can inform governments. Innovation in retailing and restaurants during the pandemic was extensive and can be seen as a learning opportunity. The opening of city spaces such as parking spots to restaurants for outside dining exploded in popularity in many Canadian cities.

In the U.S., removal on restrictions for food distribution to retail customers through commercial challenges facilitated access to food for many families. Removal of reporting requirements facilitated rapid distribution of food and beverages in some communities. Extensive analysis is needed to understand and document the effectiveness of various arrangements, and to promote their widespread adoption, if warranted.

The impact of the pandemic on the transportation systems in cities should also be studied to cultivate understanding of transformational opportunities. As the air cleared during the 2020 lockdowns, Canadians were provided with irrefutable evidence that changes in transportation arrangements could significantly and immediately reduce air pollution. Many Canadians reported that the experience of not commuting was central to decisions to resign or retire from employment post-pandemic. Patterns in the usage of roads, subways, trolleys and train systems during the pandemic reveal important opportunities for city managers to redirect investment towards high-impact reforms with permanent impact.

One of the most important and enduring impacts of the pandemic has been in real estate. Significant opportunity exists for study of how downtown spaces can become revitalized and improved. Learning across cities is a major opportunity, as breweries and biotech take hold across the country in urban centres. Much more creative and innovative initiatives are warranted, with experimentation and learning as the objective. The implications of the pandemic for small- and medium-sized businesses across Canadian metropolitan areas also warrants further research as we know little about whether transitions to remote work have led to their growth and prosperity.

Residential real estate and finance are among the largest of Canadian industries. The impact of the pandemic on housing costs is confounded by trends that had been in place prior to 2020. Research is needed on whether and how shifts such as foreign investment, condominium projects and urban sprawl were affected by the consequences of the pandemic, particularly through inflation and changing wage agreements. The consequences for innovations in housing design, including construction using climate-friendly materials, should be considered comprehensively.

Individual prosperity: One of the most poignant and concerning impacts of the pandemic has been on the health of Canada’s urban dwellers. Too many Canadian urbanites died from COVID; a vast number of children are behind on educational outcomes; and there is an epidemic across Canada of mental health challenges, depression, stress and anxiety arising from death, illness and isolation. All of these things continue to challenge the vibrancy of our communities.

We must better understand how neighbours support the individuals within their cities. We must find ways of understanding the stories of individuals who have chosen to resign their jobs and yet stay in urban communities as vital members. Questions regarding the antisocial behaviour of drivers, bikers and even pedestrians must be raised and addressed. Similarly, we must understand the challenges facing those who are not thriving, and the underlying unmet needs that city governments might address.

Implications for organizations

The rebuilding of organizations after the pandemic cannot fully occur without attending to the critical issues raised above, and yet already, some successful initiatives have emerged from which leaders in Canadian cities can learn.

Implication 1: Emergency resilience can be built in advance. One of the most vivid distinguishing features of cities around the world in pandemic response was their pre-planned capacities to respond effectively once the emergency became clear. Cities that had established emergency response protocols that conferred authority for action on key leaders, and that had developed committee structures that tapped authorities from multiple sectors, generally were able to marshal an effective response relatively quickly as compared to cities without such capacity.

Post-pandemic retrospectives are beginning to reveal that quick deployment of emergency services at levels appropriate to local needs was important to preserve public trust and to maintain orderly citizen response in the face of the emergency. Specific areas of importance include managing emergency declarations, appropriate enforcement of mandates, services for children, eldercare services and homelessness.

Implication 2: Private-sector leaders are partners in city resilience. By engaging private-sector leaders as partners in pandemic abatement and recovery, city leaders marshalled greater resources and capacity for a coordinated and effective response. Cities such as Montreal sought greater engagement by private-sector organizations. A central opportunity to accomplish this is to engage private-sector leaders in decisions about the resource requirements to amplify, for example, talent retention and community development. This type of engagement may be especially effective when it rewards increasing commitment by private-sector leaders over time.

Implication 3: Housing and immigration are dual challenges. Evidence reported by Statistics Canada indicates that, for at least the early months of the pandemic, immigrants were likely more vulnerable to COVID-19 due in part to living in crowded and multigenerational housing. Even as the pandemic abates, 75 to 82 per cent of Canada’s population growth is from immigration. This is associated with an escalating housing crisis, particularly in Canadian cities, that is characterized by rapidly rising home prices and the potential for large increases in rents, especially in Western provinces and territories where the increase is likely to be concentrated. As these developments unfold, the opportunity for pandemic-informed innovations in the housing stock is substantial.

Implication 4: The nature of work is changing. The remote-work movement that began prior to the pandemic and was amplified by it is still in its infancy. Sophisticated systems of remote work that account for transportation challenges, childcare needs, unstructured interchange between employees and productivity measurement are in development. Each of these changes has implications for the structure of cities and city services.

These shifts are set against the backdrop of labour shortages, particularly of workers with specific types of skills. Creative city leaders invest with private organizations to develop specialized programs that differentiate their cities. For example, workers who value flexible hours, affordable childcare and high-outcome primary education systems may be attracted to both a city and an employer simultaneously. By working with civic leaders, companies can identify, hire and retain workers with critical skills.

Implication 5: Digitization, privacy and a community-centric approach to artificial intelligence are important. During the pandemic, many online workers reported subjugation to painful and painstaking productivity-management systems. Stories arose of workers choosing to work ‘off the clock’ rather than to risk random monitoring through computer systems by an employer that would result in an adverse performance appraisal if, for instance, the worker took a few minutes offline to change a child’s diaper. In some communities, such appraisals were not tolerated through either formal or informal restrictions.

The character of a city as a safe and supportive place has now extended into the digital sphere. Opportunities exist for Canadian cities to protect resident privacy while encouraging digital exchange and remote work. Building community in the face of artificially intelligent analytics and measurement systems carries the potential to distinguish a city in the wake of the pandemic.

This idea has been tested through the Tulsa Remote program in which prospective residents — in this case with remote jobs — are offered US$10,000 in various payments together with high-quality access to Internet connectivity, remote workspace and priority consideration for high-quality urban housing. Innovative programs such as this serve as test beds for comprehensive innovations in attracting and retaining community members.

Implication 6: Mental health depends on community vibrancy. The pandemic revealed that isolation leads to profound mental health challenges. Vibrant communities that offer residents opportunities for social exchange, support, entertainment and meaningful interaction are increasingly valued as a result of the COVID experience. Commitments to local institutions that create great experiences of community such as in the arts, sports, after-school programs, education and civic engagement are characteristic of vibrant cities.

At the same time as COVID-19 challenged Canadian cities at their core, it also revealed the extraordinary strengths of Canadians in our capacity for mutual, coordinated commitment to health and well-being. With the pandemic behind us, we now face the challenge of rebuilding our communities for greater resilience and vibrancy. The challenge is compounded by long-term and perhaps permanent reductions in the types of proximity that are central to the identities of cities. We must find ways to collaborate together effectively despite this loss of proximity.

The pandemic uniquely threatened cities as places that exist to foster interaction and to cultivate community. Our collective recovery depends on our ability to imagine new ways to build resilience in our communities as the ways we interact change fundamentally.

This article is a summary of their chapter in Urban Mobility: How the iPhone, COVID and Climate Changed Everything (University of Toronto Press, 2024). It originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of the Rotman Management Magazine.