Businesses going under because

of the pandemic has been another constant theme in the media over the past eighteen months.

Some of those businesses would have failed anyway. Others were doing well until the tourists no longer came and people no longer went to work but worked from home. Our "CBD" is much quieter than it once was. 

The city I live has a very central focus in that it has grown out from an original "square mile surrounded by park lands" as envisaged by the man who designed it, Colonel Light.  The good colonel would probably be horrified by the way the city now sprawls north and south along the coast. 

He would be even more horrified by some of the buildings now in his carefully planned square mile and the similar square mile to the north. He would also wonder why, when so much similar space is empty, people are still building office blocks.

I wonder at this too. There are plans to build yet another office block in the central area, a block we do not need.

"Well okay Cat, what should they put there instead? How are you going to get people to move back into the city to work? Small businesses depend on that," I was told.

Yes, a lot of small businesses like cafes and restaurants and associated services have gone in the past twelve months. They could not survive. People have been working from home where possible and some people will go on doing that.

My answer to that (and I may be wrong) was that we need to build housing. We need to build a different sort of "high rise" housing. I am not advocating the worst sort of cramped and overcrowded social housing. What we need is something quite different. 

Lifestyles have changed for many people, particularly the DINKS - double income an no kids. There are couples who don't want the responsibility of a house in the suburbs. They would welcome the opportunity to live in a good sized apartment in the city, an apartment with a balcony for fresh air and a car parking space in the basement. A place where there was access to the facilities they need and the services they want and the lifestyle they enjoy. 

Try and imagine places with the space in which to do all the usual things while working from home and yet being within walking distance of all the things many such people find desirable. Yes, this has already happened in some places. It is happening in others. So why don't we do it here? Are we that attached to a single unit dwelling on a "quarter acre block"?

On my way to visit the Senior Cat yesterday I pedalled past the house at the end of the street. It has been vacant since the old man died about seven years ago. Yesterday there was a small removal van there. The rear doors had just closed. Someone was locking the front door of the house. I assume that person was the daughter I have never met. 

Naturally I wondered about all this. The house will almost certainly be demolished and some sort of multi-unit housing put there instead. It will be a pretence at the sort of housing which was once considered "normal". It is too far out of the CBD for what might work there. The council would not allow a multi storey development. Eventually  someone will almost certainly cram three single storey dwellings into the space now occupied by one house.

If DINKS buy what will be built there I wonder if they will do it because that is the lifestyle they want -  or would they prefer to live in the CBD? Would they be willing to give life to our city's centre again?