There are certain stages that you go through as you move through your 20s – the 21sts (phew, survived those!), the weddings (four this year) and then the babies. With my best friend due to have her first baby, I headed down to Westfield Hornsby today to get vaccinated.

This centre is huge, and yet, it felt so personal.

With the way that the fresh food section was laid out, with produce spilling into the main walkway, and the bustle of activity, I felt like I was on the streets of Italy. There were playgrounds in every corner, and the buzz of noise permeates through the centre. There’s even a pet store with real kittens, so this big kid was satisfied! This centre had a sense of excitement – you didn’t know what you were going to stumble upon next, and so every store felt like a special secret.

What does the future of retail mean for sustainability?

The future looks different. The face of retail is changing, and if talk around the watercooler is anything to go by, people like to shop online. This growing trend makes me feel really uncomfortable for a few reasons.

Excess packaging

Every day, there are at least a dozen parcels delivered to work, waiting to be opened by the eager recipients who ordered them just three hours before (they’ll probably be returned and sent to landfill, but that’s another story). These glossy, plastic-wrapped ‘treat yo’self’ packages are only glossy and plastic-wrapped because they need to be delivered individually. It’s notoriously difficult for soft plastic to be recycled into something useful, and yet we’re not slowing down.

I don’t think this problem is going away, so I’ll give you an entrepreneurial idea for nothing: take-back re-usable packaging for clothes deliveries.

More pollution

These individually wrapped clothes are also individually delivered by individual drivers. What impact is this having on our air quality and traffic congestion? Drone delivery is next, but what will this mean for noise pollution and visual comfort? Thankfully, companies like Sendle provide a 100% carbon neutral delivery service.

Same-day delivery also means changes in the infrastructure required to move products. I expect we’ll see smaller warehouses closer to our high-density population centres. While this may drive up property prices, having more employment opportunities closer to home may be a positive outcome.

As a consumer, please think twice before you buy – it’s not just the purchase price, it’s the whole life-cycle cost of making and moving that product.

Breakdown of human interaction

While we play on our phones and order our shoes from home, I fear that the sense of isolation that is hovering over our communities may increase as we move away from congregating in shopping centres. To remain relevant, we need our shopping centres to be places that do spark joy and a place to mingle. Preferably over food. Everybody loves food.

As urban curators, how can we bring more excitement into physical retail centres, and retain a place for community?