Census data and City of Toronto building stats prove what our senses have been observing: downtown Toronto is back as the hottest destination in the Toronto region.

The buzz is not limited to the condo craze. Jobs are moving to the core faster than they are moving to the burbs.

For the first time in 20 years, growth in downtown commercial real estate is outstripping growth in the rest of the GTA, sparking a revival of fortunes for the once battered 416 region.

“New business creation, employment gains and population growth in the downtown core are now outpacing that in the surrounding suburbs, reversing a decades-long trend of exactly the opposite,” says a Jan. 22 report from Francis Fong of TD Economics.

The spurt is centred in two wards stretching from Ossington Ave. to the Don Valley Parkway and along a jagged line up to St. Clair Ave. And it has pulled the city along for the ride.

Fong, an economist at TD Bank, has been tracking the trend. He reports:

Since 2000, Toronto has added 4.7 million square feet of office space, compared with 3.9 million in Durham, York, Peel and Halton combined.

After 1991, downtown Toronto population growth stalled at 5 per cent or less over any five-year period, even as the 905 area code regions galloped ahead at 17 and 18 per cent growth. But since 2006, downtown Toronto growth has spiked by 16 per cent, while the 905 rose just 13.7 per cent.

The number of businesses in Toronto grew by 3,600 between 2006 and 2011. In the five years prior to that, there was a net loss of 1,700 businesses.

Over the past five years, jobs based in downtown Toronto grew 14 per cent, compared with 8.7 per cent in the rest of the Census Metropolitan Area, roughly equivalent to the GTA. (Provincial growth was 5.6 per cent). Compare that with the previous five years, when downtown jobs dropped 3.3 per cent, while the CMA reached 11 per cent and the province 9.5 per cent growth.

“This pace is a far cry from the 2000 to 2005 period in which downtown jobs were outright lost,” the report states. “These trends represent a substantial turning point for the City of Toronto.”

For the past decade, critics spoke of the hollowing-out of the downtown core whenever the topic turned to growth and economic development and planning for the 100,000 new residents expected in the region each year. Banks moved back-office jobs to the surrounding regions, following moves by manufacturing. And other office jobs followed the trend. Even when job losses were stemmed in the downtown core, planners fretted about the plight of the inner suburbs of North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke.

Ahead of all that, baby boomers had sprinted to the regions outside Toronto in search of more affordable housing options and open space to raise their families. Like just about every region on the planet, Toronto was unable to provide flexible and sufficient transportation options to match the spaghetti commuting patterns.

Kids of the baby boomers — the so-called echo boomers — saw the price their parents paid for having to travel across the region to work. Now that they have education, money, and housing options in condos close to the action downtown — where the commuting headache is minimal — they are choosing to live close to work in the urban core.

Francis says that choice triggered other outcomes. Businesses saw their aging workforce and realized the replacements were opting to live downtown, so they started moving offices closer to the future workforce. And the trend of outward migration was stemmed.

Now, retailers and other service industry businesses are following the echo boomers and their disposable income and jobs, creating a critical mass that’s led to a downtown renaissance.

Francis says downtown Toronto was always an attractive location. The current boom could propel Toronto towards the realm of the big players in international cities with huge, permanent downtown populations — think London, New York, Hong Kong.

Whether Toronto gets there may depend on how well it meets the challenges the downtown boom creates — especially transportation, which is already denuded and compromised.

The new population cohort, the echo boomers, are now the largest group in Canada. Born between 1972 and 1992, they comprise a quarter of Ontario’s population and the 905 region. Downtown? These 20- to 39-year-olds make up 47 per cent of the population.

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Will they stay downtown? Or will they, like their parents, move out when the children come, leaving a new hole downtown? Or will their parents sell the big house and move back to the condos in the city, and keep the downtown core humming?

Only vibrant, dynamic, blessed cities worry about such things.