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Aug 1, 2021Liked by James Hennessy

Another great one James. I had actually just finished reading that Zitron article in The Atlantic based off your recommendation when this dropped in my inbox. It’s all got me wondering what city nightlife could look like over the next few decades. It seems obvious that in our knowledge economy the in-person jobs are just going to follow the remote workers wherever they may decide to set up shop but it’s less clear to me where that will ultimately be. Having a short commute to the office isn’t the only reason to live in the city.

I’ve been thinking a lot about when I first started going to university in Sydney in 2010. I grew up in Berry on the south coast, about a 2.5 hour train ride from Central and for the first few months of uni I was still living at home. I found the constant commuting hellish but most days I recognised about a dozen dads of kids I knew from school and realised many of them must have been making this journey every weekday for many years. Because they valued owning a home and raising a family, being able to do so somewhere relatively affordable was a worth the cost of those many hours stuck on a train. If any of them are still doing that commute the lockdowns probably represented a major lifestyle improvement.

Personally I value living somewhere where there is nightlife. It’s expensive to live in Marrickville but I don’t care because of all the theatres and bars which are a short walk from my house. During the first lockdown when it was unclear if this was going to be a months or years long situation I considered moving back to Berry but in a pre/post-pandemic world the fact that I can live much more cheaply there doesn’t counter the fact that I would be emmiserated by only having the quarterly offerings of the Berry Dramatic Society available at my doorstep. But I wonder how many other remote workers value that?

I can see us drifting towards having smaller cities with no real “business district” as such but a Central Entertainment District. But can these entertainment districts exist if they’re not also where all the business is being done? I imagine there will always be popular bars along King St and around Paramatta, but what does Circular Quay look like in a decade if there’s nobody in those office towers? The return of tourism alone surely isn’t going to restore everything to how it was.

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