ading picture and beneath the leasing momentum lies a city economy still negotiating what it is becoming. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly five per cent of the workforce operated remotely, whereas today many sectors continue to hover between 35 and 40 per cent hybrid participation, according to labour force and workplace utilisation data. While Property Council of Australia workplace occupancy tracking typically shows physical attendance gradually rebuilding, which is typically strongest mid-week and softer on Mondays and Fridays, utilisation still trails pre-2020 norms. This translates to the daily, predictable five-day commuter swell that once underpinned CBD retail has not fully returned, even if the shopfronts appear more visibly occupied. For retail consultant Dean Salakas, the tension is less paradox than timing. “Retail occupancy and office desk utilisation are different things. They are related but also not the same and so other factors are at play for retail occupancy,” he told Inside Retail. Leasing cycles in retail tend to reset faster than commercial office stock, where long leases and institutional capital create inertia that slows structural correction. Therefore the retail layer of the city has, in many ways, adjusted more nimbly than the office towers above it. “I believe we are seeing retail real estate adapting faster than office real estate,” Salakas continued. “Office occupancy cycles (rent or owned) are longer than retail as drivers also.” In practice that adaptation has meant landlords recalibrating expectations through shorter lease terms, pop-up activations and turnover-linked agreements that share risk more transparently. This allows vacancy rates to tighten even if underlying sales productivity has not entirely normalised, because a leased tenancy is not necessarily an economically dense one. That distinction is critical, particularly when many retailers continue to report trading intensity below pre-Covid-19 benchmarks. You can have leased buildings and leased shops without having full desks or pre Covid trading,” Salakas noted, “sales per sqm is still down on average from retailers I speak to.” While vacancy data captures spatial occupancy, it does not automatically reflect revenue recovery and the two measures, though related, are not synonymous. CBRE attributes the tightening vacancy rate to a combination of return-to-office momentum, tourism growth, infrastructure investment and international student inflows, drivers that are observable in pedestrian counters and airport arrivals data as well as in anecdotal retail feedback, Salakas cautions against assuming that these inputs translate into consistent weekly trading. “CBD retail is on a different rhythm to [pre Covid-19]. I would expect stronger Tuesday to Thursday trading, softer Mondays and Fridays and for some, weekends outperforming pre-Covid norms.”  This reshaped rhythm also alters category advantage, with hospitality and food-led experiences often capturing mid-week congregation and event-driven surges, while discretionary fashion and service operators must contend with variability rather than steady commuter flow, and Salakas agrees with this hierarchy when asked whether hospitality remains the primary beneficiary. Expanding on the episodic nature of current demand, Salakas noted  that “Tourism, major events, infrastructure projects and student inflows all create demand spikes,” though he emphasises that “the more important change is that CBD now rely on more than just office workers.” The implication is not decline but diversification. The CBD no longer runs on five uniform days, but on layers such as mid-week office clusters, event surges, tourism flows, hybrid work still shaping movement. In that setting, retail must become “more experiential and social than convenience,” folding into “more residential/mixed use.” The vacancy figures, then, do not mark a return to the past so much as a city resetting its commercial spine.