This paper investigates social divisions and the spatial patterns that result from differential levels of engagement with jobs and housing markets in a contemporary Australian urban setting. The new geography of social division is highlighted through an investigation of the changing patterns of relative socio-economic disadvantage in Gold Coast City over the past decade. The multidimensional concept of socio- economic disadvantage is used to measure social differences, map their spatial patterns and make an assessment of how one Australian urban area has changed over the decade of the 1990s according to this measure.