The Inner East, as we have defined it, contains over 5000 businesses. Separated from Sydney by a gulf described by the Domain, St Mary's, Hyde Park, Elizabeth Street and Central Station it is, for all intents and purposes, a separate business district, the other CBD - the Cultural Business District

If you were standing on this cusp and didn't know Darlinghurst existed, there would be no way to know it is there and yet it is less than 5 minutes walk from George Street?!

Typified by small and independently run operations, the Inner East oozes flavour as people go about doing their own thing. This is what makes the Inner East unique and what attracts the artists, musicians, designers and so on.

It also lies at the heart of the problem. There is no central coordination of all the greatness. No centre management; no marketing budget and no business mix strategy.

When times are good, this doesn't matter, but when the demographic of an area shifts and there is no one managing the transition, it is very easy for a few unconsidered actions to send an entire business district off in a direction that no one wants to go in.

The answer here is obvious. The Inner East needs a Town Management Strategy and it needs to be funded out of the umpteen millions the Council gains in revenue from business.

People have asked why don't the businesses get off their backsides and cooperatively promote. Well, they have tried, there has been a volunteer business group in the area since 2004 and it has tried everything. Sadly, it's simply beyond the capacity of any volunteer group to compete with Westfield, let alone the internet, especially with the RTA having rammed a six-lane highway through the heart of the 2010 community.

And unfortunately the model that the City of Sydney currently uses to engage with local business stakeholders is both divisive and flawed.

There are numerous reasons to preserve Main Street shopping in the face of the shopping mall onslaught, but the stand out is simply this: people don't live at shopping malls.

Main Streets are embedded in and surrounded by communities. Oxford Street in particular is surrounded by small businesses that are either run by locals or employ locals. It is also surrounded by more than 20,000 residents who should be calling it home, but when faced with the shemozzle that is Oxford Street, choose to socialise elsewhere.

For the Inner East to be desirable to other people, for reasons other than sex, grog and techno, it needs to be desirable to its own and in this it is failing.

The factors governing this have been mentioned on the main page, but the pertinent one here is the fact that every major suburb in Sydney is or has a dedicated shopping mall, with all the bells and whistles that come with that (read security, marketing budget, business mix strategy etc).

If the City and State are serious about curbing the late night free-for-all that has eventuated on their watch, then simply targeting the 24 hour binge drinking culture is only half the mission.

The other half must be rehabilitating the Main Street of Sydney's Inner East, both in terms of Infrastructure and coming up with a viable plan to support a healthy 24 hour economy (day, transition, night, clean-up)


Infrastructure remains key, and there are two ways this can be managed.

Council could create and lead an Oxford Street Main Street Strategy Group involving key stakeholders such as the RTA, Landlords, prominent Business people and residents. This would ensure that decisions affecting the whole street are not taken independently.

Or council could create an independent, fully funded, profit making entity that reports to council, whose sole purpose is the town/centre management/coordination of the Inner East. Something like SHFA perhaps.

In addition to actually running the place effectively and being able to capitalise on the huge amount of potential in the area, it will be far more effective at lobbying and project management.

This can and must be funded from the huge amounts of money council generates from businesses rates and can be justified on the simple premise that it is in the city's best interests to have viable, functioning precincts outside of the CBD and harbour..

Of course there are combinations and variations of the above suggestions. The main point is that unless Oxford Street has someone steering it, it will keep heading down the dark path it was inadvertently put on.