Cities offer enormous advantages and are often places of growing urban inequality at the same time. Numerous scholars have used the term 'cities within a city' to draw attention to urban inequalities. Greater Sydney is also socio-economically divided, and the division has been characterised by an oblique line extending from Northwest to Southeast. The line separates well-off and well-served North and East from less well-off Western Sydney. The socio-economically underprivileged residents are geographically clustered in Greater Sydney's Western suburbs; conversely, socio-economically privileged regions are situated mainly in the East and North of the metropolitan.

The ongoing socio-economic divide in Sydney is somewhat different from other cities as it is reinforced by its peculiar urban planning policy applications and practices. This paper analyses the urban divide in Sydney from urban planning perspectives in the framework of critical philosophies by applying a qualitative research method of documents analysis and semi-structured interviews.