Beyond the office : Re-Inhabiting Toronto's Financial District

<p dir="ltr">Toronto’s financial district has experienced a staggering 50% decrease in foot traffic and significant vacancy rates in its office buildings since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Street retail remains shuttered, while newly completed Class A office buildings conceived pre-pandemic, open with empty plazas and lobbies. This is a phenomenon in the centres of many global cities. With numerous companies now embracing remote work as a new norm, this high-density, transit-connected, fifteen-block radius, known for generating the city’s highest value in property revenue, is a repository of underutilized infrastructure. This thesis will look at the history of the transformations of how we have housed the workplace as buildings and districts and seek opportunities to reconceive this urban infrastructure to address both the housing crisis and the demise of the core post-pandemic.</p>