Venue: The Edge, Federation Square. A panel discussion to be held at the Edge in Federation Square, presented, and promoted in partnership with Alspec and Open House Melbourne. COVID shifted Australians’ relationship with private and public, built and open space in ways it seems improbable and undesirable we will ever return from. As spheres of work, home and recreation elided in profoundly altered ways throughout lockdowns, value was elucidated where previously it had been hidden or overlooked, and new possibilities for how we might do life and occupy our physical environments emerged sometimes radically. Alongside these rapid recalibrations, paradigm shifting climate impacts and rises in living costs have been exerting their own influence on the shapes and patterns of urban life. So what does this mean for the disrupted city centre? What economic, social, and cultural rhythms do we want to see arise from a disturbance so ripe with possibility? What lessons have the values freshly laid bare by COVID to guide us? To what imaginable but previously impracticable visions has this pivot point suddenly gifted feasibility? Just what is the future of the Australian CBD? The event is in partnership with Alspec and Open House Melbourne.