THE Chook was so impressed with Sarah Booth’s Churchill Fellowship report into reviving our ailing CBDs, we thought (with her permission) that it might generate some discussion to run a series on the various aspects she explores over the next few weeks. This week we start with her full introduction

WESTERN AUSTRALIA is often described as the economic engine room of the nation, yet paradoxically its capital city performs among the weakest retail centres in Australia. 

Perth is the capital of a state that drives almost half of the country’s export earnings, but its own CBD and key precincts lag behind their eastern-states counterparts on metrics like retail occupancy, foot traffic and commercial vibrancy. 

Almost one-fifth of our central urban fabric lies idle, according to recent reports on our two major centres, Perth and Fremantle. The vacancy numbers are stark; for 2024 the City of Fremantle recorded a reported commercial vacancy rate of 17.7% (likely higher when including partially occupied or concealed vacancies). Similarly, global commercial real estate advisory CBRE reported that in the first half of 2025 Perth CBD’s retail vacancy measured above 20%, with office vacancy hovering in the high teens. These are extraordinary numbers given the state’s prosperity. 

Disconnection

Far from simply being an economic condition, however, this striking vacancy level is also a cultural one. Vacant spaces tell a greater story of disconnection: between landlords and tenants, between policy and place, between what our cities once were and what they might still become. Across Australia, empty spaces are mute but powerful evidence that systems underpinning our centres and high streets continue to pull further apart, exposing an ever-widening divide between private interest and public life. 

This Churchill Fellowship set out to understand how cities abroad are bridging this gap – places rethinking governance, ownership, and collaboration to keep their centres alive. Over six weeks, I travelled through Europe, meeting with policy makers, innovators, urban professionals, creatives and advocates to study how different cities are responding to vacancy and how they’re aligning policy with people. What I found was not a single solution, but a series of interconnected principles which I share throughout this report. 

In Paris, the city has taken a direct hand in protecting its social and cultural fabric. Through municipal real-estate subsidiaries, the City of Paris (Ville de Paris) owns nearly one-fifth of all retail shopfronts – leasing them proactively to maintain local diversity. It is a quiet but revolutionary act of urban curation. Luthiers, niche bookstores and bicycle repair shops are preserved not by nostalgia, but by design. Here, the city is an active landlord for its culture, ensuring that the character of Paris remains accessible and alive. 

In London, revitalisation is driven by structure. The Greater London Authority (GLA) coordinates transport, housing and economic development across 32 boroughs, ensuring that growth and infrastructure move in tandem. Beneath this metropolitan layer sits a network of intermediaries such as Meanwhile Spaces and the Creative Land Trust, which convert vacant property into affordable studios and safeguard long-term space for creatives. 

These organisations act as ‘space brokers’ – the vital connective tissue that allows government, landlords and creative entrepreneurs to collaborate rather than collide. 

In the Netherlands, specifically Amsterdam and Utrecht, the municipality has become a facilitator of circular and cultural innovation. Through projects such as Hof van Cartesius, De Nijverheid, and NDSM at the port – vacant industrial land has been transformed into creative and sustainable maker districts. 

Citizen-built

These are not developer-led projects but citizen-built ecosystems, enabled by flexible municipal land-use policies, affordable leases and a shared commitment to experimentation. The result is a new model for urban renewal, one that is rooted in participation and trust. 

Lisbon showed me that when political leadership aligns with urban renewal, planning reform and economic policy around the reuse of the existing city, innovation, talent and economic diversification follow. For Lisbon this has enabled a rapidly growing digital innovation sector, attracting global entrepreneurs, start-ups and increasing demographic vitality. The lesson was clear: reducing regulatory friction and actively enabling inner-city reuse must be treated as an economic strategy, not simply a planning objective. 

Then there was Copenhagen. A completely fossil fuel and car dependent city in the 90s, today it has transformed into the world’s most liveable city. This reminder that anything is possible – that cities can change – underpins my entire report. Through visionary political leadership and civic will, Copenhagen reframed environmental policy as an opportunity for innovation. Its evolution proves that where there’s a will, there’s a way. 

Together, these case studies illustrate that vacancy should be addressed as part of a systemic renewal – a well-choreographed, long-term strategy devised by experts, informed by research and data, and led by a city champion as part of an authority with a focus on redefining how people live, move and connect. 

This means untangling the market conditions that have led us to this point. Our property, planning and tax systems currently reward the holding of property over activation; they protect speculative gains over productive use. To reverse this logic, we must make reuse easier and inactivity harder. That means creating a framework that tilts the market towards participation – with such levers as land tax concessions, changes to building codes, incentives for difficult adaptive reuse projects, levies for neglect, and evidence-based policy that seeks to reduec the imbalance of opportunity in our productive cores. 

While I saw many incredible examples of city-making across the different cities I visited – innovative housing, public realm activation, adaptive reuse, diverse active transport options, substantial greening projects – all had only been made possible via political will and a coordinated foundation of city-wide governance. For us to commit to this work, at the scale and the pace required for renewal to have meaningful impact, first we need the mechanisms to bridge our fragmented governance landscape. 

As such, my first recommendation is the creation of an Urban Renewal Authority (URA) to unite state agencies, local councils and private stakeholders around a shared strategy for city vitality. This would be the Perth equivalent of the Greater London Authority, and finding precedent in Perth’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority, and before that both the Subiaco and East Perth Redevelopment Authorities Data is key for improvement, therefore a body such as the Western Australian Centre for Cities (WAC4C) would provide the evidence base: mapping vacancy, tracking reuse, and guiding investment, replicating the rigour that Paris applies through the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (Paris Urbanism Workshop). 

Our cities should be engine rooms of opportunity. With the economist’s adage that you must “incentivise what you want more of, and tax what you want less of ” in mind, I propose creating a vacancy levy alongside a suite of incentives that use opportunity as their axis. The more opportunity one takes from our activity centres, the higher the levy. The more opportunity one provides, the higher the incentive. More on that later. 

Ultimately, revitalisation is not about filling empty shops. It’s about reimaging the purpose of our centres and ensuring they function productively beyond land titles, tax offsets and portfolio spreadsheets. Our reimagined centres will not be transactional spaces of low engagement – but magnetic, mixed-used environments of contemporary cultural exchange. 

If vacancy is a symptom of disconnection, the task at hand is to reconnect in order to repair. The next step would be to start. 

by SARAH BOOTH

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