The CBD is dead. Long live the Central Social District

Our central business districts aren’t going to bounce back from COVID. Office vacancy rates in the CBDs of Sydney and Parramatta remain stubbornly high. And ideas such as forcing people back to the office five days a week, or Inner West Council’s proposal to charge higher rates for landlords who can’t get tenants, aren’t going to put things back the way they used to be.

Sydney’s CBDs will bounce forward rather than back from COVID. Credit: Jessica Hromas

Our CBDs are going to bounce forward, not back. They will rebound on a totally different trajectory in 2023. Over the course of the pandemic, the NSW government has invested $66 million in ways to reinvent how our central urban areas function. Programs to move dining into streets and public spaces, pop-up events, new walking and cycling paths, and reduced controls over music, retail and service of food and drinks have all changed the way we experience city streets.

CBDs are a concept past their use-by date. The phrase “central business district” was coined by white, male, middle class planners in the 1930s and 40s.

And it has worked. While the pandemic threatened to destroy thousands of urban services jobs, street activation has created more than 13,500 jobs in CBDs across NSW. The lesson is we need more experimentation in using our public spaces, not to retreat back into office towers.

CBDs are a concept past their use-by date. The phrase “central business district” was coined by white, male, middle-class planners in Chicago in the 1930s and 40s, based on the notion that cities work most efficiently when different groups work, live and play in different precincts. CBDs were designed to be used by white, middle-class businessmen, 9-5, Monday to Friday. They were never really designed to include anyone else.

Central areas of cities should be inclusive places, their buildings more than filing cabinets for office workers. Since antiquity, the centre of cities served as the centre of society. Ancient planners focused the business centre around the theatre, the agora and the forum, not away from them.

Separating CBDs from cultural, sporting, and other social infrastructures was always a bad idea. Recovery from COVID gives us the opportunity to reimagine CBDs as central districts for everyone, not merely for business. They should be central social districts where people go because they want to be there, not only because it’s where the office is.

CBDs of the future will be better places. What we eat, how we meet and what we wear will all change dramatically. Here are three trends to watch:

1. The supremacy of street food. Relaxing indoor alcohol service in the 1960s allowed a restaurant culture to emerge in Sydney. Relaxing outdoor alcohol and food laws in the wake of COVID has allowed a flourishing street food industry to emerge. Deregulating eating and drinking in public spaces will transform the way we celebrate our cities.
2. The rise of the walking meeting. The 2000 Olympics transformed Sydney’s smoko culture, where groups of office workers huddled in laneways to have a smoke and a quick chat, into a coffee culture, where people programmed coffee meetings into their daily routine. In the same way, the pandemic will see the coffee meeting augmented by the walking meeting – where a business meeting will quite literally become a walk in the park.
3. The death of the necktie. In 1970s London, the bowler hat ruled supreme. Yet the “big bang” financial deregulation of the mid-1980s saw the rise of the yuppie, and the end of the bowler. The COVID lockdowns of the early 2020s will similarly, and dramatically, consign the necktie to history.

So while our CBDs won’t ever be the same again, they will be better. More inclusive, more dynamic, more walkable, more experiential, and more inventive. Basically, more fun. Bring on 2023!

Rob Stokes is NSW cities minister.

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