Urban development in Melbourne over recent years has been driven by two primary yet contradictory imperatives. The first is that of urban consolidation—within the Melbourne 2030 planning framework development is to be contained within urban growth boundaries and focused on a number of activity centres including suburban transit nodes. The second is the protection of urban and neighbourhood 'character' which has also become a key plank of the planning code. This paper is part of a larger research project which seeks to explore the phenomenology and discursive construction of urban character and place-identity. It focuses on the middle-ring suburb of Camberwell where one of the city's primary transit nodes and development sites is juxtaposed with fierce resident resistance to change. Interviews with those involved in this resistance reveal a range of dimensions to the experience and meaning of Camberwell's 'character' and the ways it is seen as threatened by development. This character is identified through a series of themes such as 'consistency', 'modesty', 'taste', 'comfort', 'security' and 'custody', themes that apply at once to both spatial and social identity. The identity of Camberwell is constructed in part by struggles for symbolic capital within the socio-spatial urban field, framed by differences of ethnicity and class. The proposed redevelopment of the Camberwell Railway Station has become a trigger that stimulates many of these concerns about the loss of 'character'. The phenomenon of urban character, like its cousins ('place', 'home', 'community', 'neighbourhood') is not easily defined nor contained within the spatial field of urban planning regulation.