ST. LOUIS — An updated study of downtown recovery has St. Louis coming in dead last, down one spot, but the area considered doesn't include Downtown West, which has seen some increased activity associated with the Major League Soccer stadium.
The University of Toronto's School of Cities ranked activity recovery in 55 North American markets for the period from March to mid-June, compared with the same period in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic. St. Louis' ranked last among the markets examined, with just 53% of the activity level from the same period in 2019.
In a previously released data set, the School of Cities used aggregated mobile phone trajectory data documenting the number of visits to places of interest downtown from SafeGraph Inc., a Denver firm. St. Louis ranked second-to-last, beating only San Francisco. That data set covered a period from December 2022 to February 2023.
San Francisco, at No. 38 out of 55, performed better in the new data set, due to methodology changes, including boundary changes.