But not just any old shopping. When it comes to shopping we vote with our feet, and our feet go for the packaging every time. But Oxford Street, Bondi Junction, right at the top topographically, is the pits. It is not just tired. In the way of the times, though, it's not the public spaces that'll be getting the treatment.
Public space is too exposed, too uncontrollable, too, well, public for private investment.
The DJTs never leave the safety of the Westfield Centre unless they have to pop into the Carousel for some DKNY sunnies. Which you'd have to say looks likely. And it's this split, graphically manifest in the Junction's municipal pattern, that has doomed it to progressive dilapidation. In a hangover from the days when streets were seen as dividers not connectors, the class chasm runs right down the centreline of Oxford Street. But while it may sound like a good basis for a bad British sitcom, this is the kind of humour that loses its zing when you live every day with the impossibility of holding a joint tea party, let alone collaborative capital works of the kind so desperately needed in the Oxford St Mall.