Everywhere, one of the biggest non-human victims of the pandemic — second only to national health care systems — has been the central business district (CBD), together with transit systems that deliver people to and from it.
The non-industrial and non-manufacturing business of the CBD have made it possible, thanks to the internet, for millions to work from home. After the pandemic, will they return? And whether they do or don’t, together with how they will arrive and depart, leaves the future of CBDs very much up in the air.
There have been reports, largely anecdotal, that gentrified neighbourhoods close by the central business district may also suffer permanently as young, wealthy good-time downtowners are fleeing the COVID-threatening corridors of condos, choosing to retreat to the grassy breathing space of recently untrendy suburbs.
Certainly, studies are already showing that significant numbers of former CBD workers would prefer to continue to work from home, whether in close-by condo towers, further out in the grassy suburbs, or even well out into more remote countryside. Should the wishes of these workers satisfy business requirements, CBDs are facing a massive glut of indoor space, whether existing condos/rental units that are no longer desirable or office buildings in need of repurposing.
At which point it’s inevitable that public housing will rear its head. Masses of otherwise unsellable office buildings, converted to low and no income housing, could jump-start the flow of cash into the pockets of the unfortunate bankers who have mortgaged this no-longer-needed business building oversupply.
The risk in this solution would be a glut of low and no-income workers now situated downtown. In recent years, unable to afford downtown accommodation and thus living outside of expensive CBDs, low wage service workers have been forced to commute to downtown. If those service job opportunities have permanently left the CBD and followed work-from-homers to the suburbs, will workers who are living in downtown public housing be forced to endure and pay to commute from a job-poor CBD out to the city hinterland?
The range of possibilities are enough to make the head hurt. A recent article dealing with the future of Australian CBD’s unpacks some of these difficult questions, ones that may well reflect post-COVID options for CBDs in a great many countries.
Read more at The Age: Office workers return, but will the CBD ever be the same?
