A few months ago, a major European bank announced a big move. Specifically, the British bank HSBC said it would move its headquarters from Canary Wharf—an office park on London’s outskirts—to the Panorama St. Paul’s office building, beside St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the heart of the City of London.

The Financial Times covered the relocation shortly before the summer. The main argument offered to justify such a seismic shift was “talent retention.” It was a polite way of saying that, in the post-pandemic era, workers don’t want to go back to the office if it’s in the middle of nowhere.

To get a sense of whether Canary Wharf was the back of beyond or the new center of the universe, you only had to visit HSBC’s website. In the “come work with us” section there was an office-interior image showing leisure areas for talent—pod coffee machines, vending machines, and foosball and ping-pong tables of the sort no one dares use during working hours.

There’s no doubt talent will feel at home in the City. Within a 400-meter radius—about a five-minute walk—around the new offices, there’s a retail corridor and a shopping center, with dozens of restaurants, cafés, and shops of all kinds. There’s also St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now the talent can go to mass.

In the end, retaining talent comes down to having offices in the city, surrounded by good retail services—because if the retail is good, it means everything else is there too: amenities, public transport, and so on. Commerce makes a city—and it makes office parks better. Amen.