Dominating the skies is in New York’s DNA, as it is in Chicago, Dubai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and many more. Today skyscrapers; in other times, it was with pyramids or cathedrals.
Draw closer to God. At the sacrifice sometimes, landscapes and skylines that we had ended up believing eternal as they have inhabited our imaginations and travel memories. The landscape of cities is changing.
Stripped of the World Trade Center, New York has given itself other benchmarks. That the Empire State Building is no longer the master of midtown is in the order of things.
Sensibilities to heritage and landscapes are definitely not the same everywhere. We can imagine the outcry if we wanted to “dislodge” the masters of Old Quebec, Le Price and the Château Frontenac, with modern towers.
I haven’t read that New Yorkers are resistant to new skyscrapers on 34th Street. The preoccupation of many is more down to earth.
In the post-pandemic city, will downtown towers have the same appeal?
Telework, the appeal of the suburbs, the rise of online commerce and the fear of public transport will they cut the wings of skyscrapers?
The question arose early in the pandemic. In New York as in other big cities of the world, including Montreal and (a little bit) Quebec.
Was this the end of city centers as we knew them?
The answer came quickly. If people have deserted the city centers, it is only because they were forced to do so by closing their offices, restaurants, bars, shops, theaters, places of culture and education, etc.
With the bans lifted, city centers will regain their vigor.
The explanation is linked to economics, sociology and demography. The forces and trends that gave life to cities are still there.
“People need to meet and see each other for exchanges”, explains Mario Polèse, emeritus specialist in the economy of cities at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS).
Have business dinners, look each other in the eyes, shake hands. In business, personal contact is essential for building trust, Mr. Polèse recalls.
The data shows that young people in startups like “living environments,” he adds. They want to go out at night, have a beer, have a coffee in a Starbuck with their laptop.
They are looking for vibrant neighborhoods and will “not go into a field somewhere”. “This function will remain” and it is often found in the city center.
What will not change either is the demographics. Small households, which are more and more numerous, go to city centers, observes Mr. Polèse.
The age of entry into a retirement home in Quebec continues to decline a little each year. This creates new housing needs, often in urban centers.
What will change is the way of designing and occupying buildings. Two trends are pushing in opposite directions here, observes the professor of administration and finance François Des Rosiers of Laval University.
Teleworking will lower the demand for office space. But employees will want a better quality of work life with larger spaces.
There is also an “other force”, which he also says is very important, which is to reduce costs for owners and large tenants of office space.
Mr. Des Rochers does not dare to predict which trend will win. “I don’t have a crystal ball”.
If we assume that 30% of jobs are suitable for telecommuting and that these employees will stay at home two days a week, this could reduce trips by 12%, he calculates.
But that does not mean that office needs will decrease as much.
Employees will demand better ventilation of workplaces. Larger and ventilated workspaces; larger common areas. There will be more shared work areas.
Maybe more elevators, suggests Mario Polèse. People will no longer want to pile up in cans of sardines like they used to.
The very purpose of office buildings will be at stake, predicts Professor Des Rosiers.
The office could become more of a “place to socialize” than a simple workplace with individual workstations.
The trend in recent decades has been to “optimize” office buildings, recalls Stéphane Dion, regional director of the Urban Development Institute (IDU), which brings together large landlords and real estate players.
The move towards smaller individual spaces has coincided with the rise of “paperless” administrations requiring less storage space.
For 20 years, the area occupied by each employee has fallen from 200 to 80 square feet, noted Vincent Chara, president of Groupe Mach, in a year-end interview with Espace Québec magazine.
The pandemic could signal a reversal of this trend and a return to larger individual spaces. This will compensate, at least in part, for the drop in demand resulting from teleworking.
We could also see a conversion of office buildings into residential with shops on the ground floor, imagines Mr. Des Rosiers.
One of the first tangible signals of the changes that are coming is the signing in the last year of more flexible or shorter leases. Unsure of what to do next, tenants hesitate to make a long-term commitment.
Will the pandemic have made it possible to initiate a shift towards a healthier city, dedicated to well-being, rather than to functional and economic concerns?
Professor of environmental design Anne-Marie Broudehoux, from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), posits the hypothesis in an article published at the end of the fall on the site of the Municipal Information Network of the Quebec.
Research, already numerous, speaks of an increased recognition of the importance of the public space to meet the “primary needs of the population”, their physical and psychological well-being.
A cure for isolation, loneliness and anxiety, describes Ms. Broudehoux.
The pandemic has thus revived the pleasure of alleys, balconies, pedestrian streets and parks as places of social exchange in times of distancing.
“Walking, one of the only exercises accessible to all [sauf après 20h désormais], made it possible to escape confinement, ”she also notes.
Cities around the world have understood the importance of maximizing access to public space, notes the researcher.
I would add that the City of Quebec was a very good example.
We have seen many “creative” and “inexpensive” initiatives, notes Ms. Broudehoux.
And even if this was not the intention, she notes that “the pandemic may have made an unforeseen victim: the motorist vision of the City”. There is a beautiful subject there. We will have to come back to it.
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