Margo Huxley examines the strategies and resources mobilised in the defence of urban areas, and looks at the way in which the Melbourne resident action group, Save Our Suburbs, was able to subsume different sources of conflict under the banner of a particular representation of "a home" in "the suburbs" of "Melbourne" - representations which the state government of Victoria attempted to devalue through emphases on global economic imperatives, free markets in urban land, and images of new "global" workers and residents.