Mini-CBDs for a decentralised Future Brisbane

Greater Brisbane must evolve into a city with mini-CBDs scattered across the suburbs to improve its liveability into the 2032 and beyond, leading demographer Bernard Salt says.

• Analysis: Shape of Brisbane to come

Greater Brisbane must evolve into a city with mini-CBDs scattered across the suburbs to improve its liveability into the 2032 and beyond, leading demographer Bernard Salt says.

In exclusive analysis for The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail’s Future Brisbane series, Mr Salt has painted a picture of what Brisbane will look like after the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games.

There will be more people in the outer suburbs with the “groovy inner-city replicated across middle and outer suburbia”, more demand for coffee shops and lifestyle developments outside the CBD and millennials will want larger lifestyle homes.

Mr Salt, who will speak at Friday’s Future Brisbane event at Howard Smith Wharves – to be livestreamed on Sky News and couriermail.com.au – said there needed to be a focus on affordable housing as the foundation of liveability.

“Good cities, good living environments, have a range of housing, social housing, affordable housing, it has apartment dwellings for the kind of the way people want to live today,” he said.

Brisbane has been consistently marked down on affordable housing in The Economist’s liveability rankings, alongside transport, culture and climate.

The Future Brisbane series examined all those issues in depth to explore how the city – which is currently 16th in the liveability rankings – could overtake Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide and crack the top 10 in the world.

Mr Salt said the focus on apartment living only works when the main thriving demographic of any nation is in their 20s and early 30s.

“It all changes the minute children arrive … you can be all minimalist, sleek and chic in an apartment overlooking the river and all that sort of stuff,” he said.

“The minute your child becomes a toddler and is mobile, your world changes.

“All of a sudden, you need three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a front garden, a back yard and a Zoom room.

“In 10 years millennials will be earning peak income, they will have primary school kids, they’ll be thinking about teenagers arriving, and they’ll be looking for what people call a forever home.”

View of current-day Brisbane toward Moreton Bay. Picture: Urbis

However, Mr Salt suggested those millennials do not want to model how they live and work off their parents, citing a “powerful shift in behaviour and priorities”.

Therefore, as well as an increased demand for family homes, there will also be an increased pursuit of “lifestyle forever homes”, meeting middle class millennials' familiarity with inner city conveniences.

Mr Salt painted a picture of Brisbane moving away from being a “fried egg”, that is, centred around one highly developed CBD, to scrambled eggs with suburban lifestyle hubs built across middle and outer suburbs.

“In my view there will be a greater demand for coffee shops and lifestyle type of developments in these centres,” he said.

“Whether it’s Caboolture, whether it’s Beenleigh, whether it’s Mount Gravatt, you would expect a lot of the services that would be in the CBD to start to emerge around these stronger suburban hubs.

“I do expect that the lifestyle hubs will become enlightened, almost like putting a defibrillator on a town like Jimboomba, or Beaudesert, that just jumps it into life.”

Mr Salt said it was important for the suburban hubs to embrace a 24-hour city concept to enliven and activate the full metropolitan area of Brisbane, as opposed to just having “buzzing hubs like the CBD and South Bank”.

“You want a cosmopolitan city that offers opportunity for all kinds of lifestyles … you don’t have that 24 hour city right across the metropolitan area, but in controlled hubs with appropriate security, lighting, and facilities,” he said.

“You don’t want bland Australian cities, you want articulation that makes it interesting and engaging, that will then attract people who want to come and study here, live here, work here, start a business here.

“You would actually get more energy being expended, more engagement in different parts of the metropolitan area.”

The famed demographer also highlighted proximity to employment, and homes that enable remote working, as an integral liveability requirement that could be met by suburban lifestyle hubs.

“Say to a Millennial, ‘great news millennial pandemic is over, you can go back to commuting five days a week, from the edge of the city, and then back out again and you can do that for the next 30 years of your career’,” he said.

“They’ll say they have a better model, one that reduces carbon emissions, reduces the pressure on our roads, and is kinder to mental health.

“That is, if you have a greater proportion of people working from home or working near home, and giving more time back to their family.”

Bernard Salt

Mr Salt said given the demographic of the Southeast region, Brisbane’s suburban hubs could provide a unique opportunity to create a thriving care industry.

“Overwhelmingly, this is aged care, by the time the Olympics arrive you could have the bulk of baby boomers born in the early 1950s just careening into the demand for aged care services.”

He said the skill Brisbane needs is not to just recruit and attract care staff, “but growing your own and actually being world’s best practice”.

“And it’s not just training them either, it’s approving, accrediting, developing the systems around being able to employ people at scale with this skill set,” he said.

“Then there’s a whole range of practical skills, we are discovering that even cleverer countries need people who are good with technical skills: plumbers, electricians, carpenters.”

As well as developing residents with care and technical skills, Mr Salt said the agriculture industry was another opportunity that would benefit the whole state.

“Queensland needs to be more than just a place for all people to retire … there’s a whole industry around agribusiness as the world population goes from 8 billion to 10 billion,” he said.

“Queensland can own that, and what better industry to be in than in food production … it gives us food independence and sovereignty.”

Mr Salt also had a word of warning and said there were many possible consequences of getting Brisbane’s development wrong.

“The worst thing Brisbane could do … is continue to drive growth and not supply housing … it breaks the social contract with the next generation,” he said.

“If you want to see how bad the breakdown of the social contract can get, perhaps go on a study tour to the Tenderloin District of San Francisco.

“This is an appalling breakdown of a western society that for whatever reason, is not delivering to a disenfranchised and disillusioned next generation.”

He said the development of the liveable suburban lifestyle hubs could foster a generation of aspiration and confident residents.

“To the extent that they’re going to live in Brisbane, they’re going to start a business, they’re going to employ people, and they’re going to save the world, whatever it is,” he said.

“As opposed to feeling bitter and resentful about a system that seems to disadvantage them, and not just momentarily, but structurally as well.

“If Brisbane can deliver that, you’ve got the advantage I think, and delivering it means having the zoning in place and retaining the skills and trades.”