This paper examines the adequacy of the New South Wales (NSW) Government’s current approach to linked urban regeneration and community renewal, using the Redfern-Waterloo area as an example. It first outlines the complex nature of Redfern-Waterloo as a place, and comments on its actual and symbolic significance for the people who live in it, work in it or use its services, and for the NSW Government. It then summarises the Government’s current approach to improving social, environmental and economic outcomes in the area, which focuses on the development of a 10 year Redfern-Waterloo Plan, made under the provisions of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority Act 2004. It next analyses the factors that led to the development of this approach, and assesses whether the approach is capable of delivering holistic, integrated planning that can underpin both urban regeneration and community renewal. It concludes that this approach cannot do so, even though the scope of the proposed Plan is broader than that of an environmental planning instrument. The final part of the paper outlines an alternative approach, based on an integrated spatial governance model, that can deliver improved outcomes for Redfern-Waterloo and elsewhere - without either statutory change or wholesale restructuring of bureaucracies - as long as there is political will and real community participation. It recounts how this model was tested in Redfern-Waterloo through the work of a local community group which, fearing that the redevelopment of the area would leave no place in it for current residents, has developed its own framework for how the Government should plan there. The paper examines the benefits gained from this application of the integrated spatial governance model as well as the limitations encountered in the attempt. It concludes with a summary of the lessons learned from the Redfern-Waterloo experience over the last several years. These lessons reinforce the need for planning to be better integrated with other areas of public policy and public administration if it is to respond effectively to the complex interactions of people, place and governance that are characteristic of all urban areas, especially those where past failures of policy have resulted in calls for renewal.