The impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented, but no one yet really knows or understands if, when, or how city life will return to something approaching normality. High on the list of imponderables is public transit. If the pandemic achieves nothing else, it will have given those Torontonians who had to step outside a unique glimpse into life without congestion.

The challenge of imagining the future of cities in a post-pandemic world has been taken up by a wide range of opinion leaders, policy makers and urban practitioners, ranging from urban planners and architects to real estate professionals, economists, and institutional lenders. Thoughtful commentaries by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker and Jack Shenker in the Guardian remind us that plagues, pandemics and comparable disruptions have shaped cities and civic behaviour over many centuries. Expect more of the same, they suggest, and then some. But when it comes to major employment in office buildings there are very distinct differences between short term outcomes and long-term trends.