Report touts future of Canada’s ‘18-hour cities’

They are the cities that hardly ever sleep, or get only about six hours of shut-eye.

In the report published Thursday, PricewaterhouseCoopers, now known as PwC, says Toronto is the only Canadian city that can count itself among global players such as London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Tokyo and New York as so-called cities that never sleep.

But some of Canada’s major centres are almost 24-hour cities and make it into the category of 18-hour cities, says the report. Vancouver and Montreal are already in that category, known as the long-day/seven-day city, while Calgary is ready to make a claim on the same status.

“Many more, ranging from Quebec City to Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo to Edmonton could evolve into 18-hour cities,” said the consulting firm in its report, Emerging Trends in Canadian Real Estate, which is now in its 39th year.

A clear advantage these cities have is better housing affordability and a lower cost of doing business, according to the report. As part of the report, 800 individuals were interviewed while survey responses were also received from more than 1,600 individuals.

“Affordability is a dominant theme amongst all residential real estate developers and clearly it is mostly in Toronto and Vancouver,” said Frank Magliocco, a national real estate leader with PwC Canada. “What we are starting to see out there is people looking at the outside of the suburban centres across the country to ensure affordability issues are addressed.”

The report, referencing data from Statistics Canada, notes the percentage of young adults living at home continues to rise across the country.

In 2006, 33.1 per cent of those between 20 and 34 were living with a parent, but that climbed to 34.7 per cent in 2016. Toronto was the leader in 2016 with 47.4 per cent of young adults living with a parent, up from 44.6 per cent a decade earlier.

PwC said the national occupancy rate is about 95 per cent, but in Toronto and Vancouver most buildings are almost 100 per cent full.

PwC predicts there will be more co-living in the future as people tackle the cost of housing. It also predicts more multi-generational living in the future.