In the last 30 years, Sydney's urban planning framework has been infused with mechanisms designed to encourage public involvement and participation. Typically positioned in opposition to various pro-development lobbies, the public viewpoint in planning practice emerged dramatically in Sydney in the early 1970s. Here, the resident view came to represent interruption and possibility within a heady development trajectory led by a State government feverishly engineering Sydney’s transition to a global city. More recently, consultative processes around urban planning have proliferated on a project-basis for a number of large property developers and place managers, arguably smoothing, and ‘civilising’ the planning and development process. This shift to greater awareness of a non-expert, public view in the planning and development community, has recently been labelled the ‘communicative’ or ‘cultural’ turn by a number of planning theorists