The research reported in this paper is situated at within a set of contemporary literatures concerning the spatial development of large urban areas, within the context of the ongoing restructuring of urban employment and housing markets.

Is the Australian city entering a new configuration? Or is it just more of the existing trends? This paper provides an overview of recent trends in Australian cities’ structure and the dynamics of change.

This paper explores the record of the Office of Western Sydney, as a thinly resourced and barely empowered institutional mechanism with a nonetheless impressive record, and identifies the strategy of dynamic network creation and utilisation that allowed positive changes to be achieved in developing and diversifying local and regional economies.

According to this paper it is the relationship between multiculturalism as a policy issue and social harmony among different cultural groups, specifically that of avoiding spatial (and implicitly social) segregation, hence pluralism, that most concerns social scientists and commentators.

Although the telecommunications networks that exist in our cities may not have the physical presence of the other systems, they are nevertheless, an increasingly crucial component of a well functioning and, moreover, an efficient urban environment.