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The central business districts were designed to be used by white, middle-class businessmen, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. They were never created to include anyone else.
Those words were written last week by Rob Stokes, the Minister for Cities in the Australian state of New South Wales.
My eyes welled up when I read a comment written for my former newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, by a former environmental lawyer with a doctorate in planning law.
Ministers don’t talk about urban financial centers as white male villages, especially from parties like Stokes’ centre-right Liberal Party.
Nor do they say that central business districts in general were designed by “white, male, middle-class planners” in 20th-century Chicago, a “day-use concept,” as Stokes writes.
Stokes later told me that he was referring to University of Chicago sociologist Ernest Burgess, whose ideas on CBDs — central business districts — influenced the planning of other New World cities.
“For Burgess, the central business district was the central hub of the city at the intersection of the city’s infrastructure, where most of the third-class work was done entirely by white people,” he said. “Other parts of the city reflect the work and roles of other parts and genders.”
Now that cities around the world are struggling to rebuild their epicenters, policymakers like Stokes see an opening. They want to consolidate efforts to turn CBDs into CSDs or central social districts, places where all kinds of people meet to eat, talk and relax, not just to go to the office.
According to Stokes, epidemics and other disasters have long exacerbated urban changes. The Great Plague and Great Fire of London led to some of the city’s first planning controls. Now, he says, the Covid-19 pandemic will bring about even more change.
I hope he is right. So many of the city’s commercial skyscrapers are marred by wind tunnels and soulless streets crammed with cars on weekends and evenings as workers head elsewhere for pleasure spots.
They are still empty, having been replaced by more flexible modes of operation that show little sign of disappearing recently. More than 60 percent of executives in large businesses say they are investing in hybrid work and permanent telecommuting options, a Capgemini report on business investment strategies to 2023 showed last week.
The question is, how many authorities are actually ready to convert CBDs to CSDs?
It’s one thing for some cities to hold an unusual festival to draw crowds to the covid-drained streets, as some cities have recently done.
But this is more of a task than adjusting planning policies to allow for pedestrian-friendly routes. Or building better public transportation. Or new parks. Or, crucially, more housing in business districts.
Melbourne, Australia has been consistently ranked as one of the world’s most liveable cities since the 1980s. But this followed years of government efforts to streamline planning approvals and encourage housing.
Similarly, Barcelona spent years pioneering the “pedestrians” – pedestrian-friendly city blocks – that have captured the imagination of urban planners around the world.
For many cities today, the creation of a CSD requires at least a plagued city reform to stay in place.
Stokes’ hometown of Sydney is off to a good start. One of the busiest downtown streets has become a permanent pedestrian and outdoor dining area. Measures remain to reduce the time it takes to approve eating out from seven weeks to three days.
Inner suburban industrial space is developed along the harborside boulevard with parkland connected to the CBD. Stokes is renovating an old coal-fired power station that could be “Sydney’s answer to Tate Modern”. Most impressively, a new harbor swimming area has opened just west of the city’s famous harbor bridge, within walking distance of the train station. Stokes was so excited that he jumped in fully clothed on launch day two weeks ago.
If this is what the upcoming CBD looks like, who’s complaining?
pilita.clark@ft.com
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