Retail Rewired: Creating theFramework for Future Destinations
Retail was built for commerce, but today, it needs to respond to how we live, move, and connect. More neighbourhood than mall, more destination than stopover.
Scentre Group is the owner and operator of Westfield living centres across Australia and New Zealand — a network of 42 major destinations housing over 12,000 retailers and serving millions of people. While Westfield has long defined the landscape of large-scale retail, rapid social and technological shifts were starting to challenge the role these centres were originally built to serve. Scentre Group recognised the need for a bold, long-term strategy — not just to future-proof its centres, but to reimagine their purpose altogether. Craig Walker was engaged to help define that future through a layered research process drawing on foresight, behavioural insight and strategic synthesis to inform long-term direction. The challenge: to understand how Westfield centres could evolve to meet the complex needs of tomorrow — becoming places not just for shopping, but for living, gathering, and belonging.
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The project in numbers
12030 Strategic Horizon
5In-depth trend research reports
13Living destination principles
From Insight to Action: A Layered Approach to Designing the Future of Place
To define how Westfield centres could evolve meaningfully by 2030, Craig Walker led a collaborative, multi-stage design process that moved from broad foresight to focused strategic outcomes. Beginning in 2021, the work combined a global and local scan of emerging trends with ethnographic research, expert interviews, and behavioural analysis to understand how people’s lives were already shifting, and how they might continue to evolve over the decade ahead. The insights informed a set of design hypotheses that imagined how infrastructure, services, and social environments could respond to the shifting behaviours of customers and communities. These ideas were tested and refined through co-design and stakeholder workshops across the organisation, including a custom-built “exhibition in a box” to engage leaders remotely during lockdown. The process ensured the strategy wasn’t just visionary, but grounded in organisational realities and shaped by the people who would bring it to life.
Embedding a Future-Facing Mindset Across the Business
The project resulted in a clear, organisation-wide framework to guide how Westfield centres evolve into future-facing destinations. Grounded in extensive research and shaped through close collaboration, the work culminated in 13 Living Destination Principles, formally endorsed by the CEO and board. These principles now inform decisions across every part of the business, from design and development to leasing, digital, and brand. More than a static set of guidelines, they represent a shift in mindset: a new way for teams to think about place, purpose, and long-term relevance. With a dedicated internal platform supporting their rollout, the principles continue to shape how Scentre Group imagines and delivers spaces that flex, grow, and respond to the needs of the communities they serve.
