In most large Australian cities recent metropolitan strategies have become prominent in state political affairs. At the same time, newly-discovered but long-brewing constraints to economic growth have brought infrastructure issues to national prominence. This might seem propitious for urban affairs. However, there is too little real connection between them. Misfits exist in at least four dimensions: between metropolitan strategies adopted by state (and in Brisbane’s case also local) governments and the often unrelated practices of urban infrastructure procurement, between the national focus on economic and industrial infrastructure and urban infrastructure service backlogs, between older metrowide infrastructure systems that made them primary instruments for urban management and newer technologically-enabled splintering of infrastructure supply options (after Graham and Marvin 2001), and between a public-sector-centric model of urban growth management made less relevant by private provision and public-private partnerships through which compliance with metropolitan plans and priorities is often absent. At a time of opportunity for integrating infrastructure development with metropolitan planning, these misfits present a huge challenge to urban sector planners and managers. The paper explores these misfits, and their occasional felicitous connections, in the context of greater Sydney, metropolitan Melbourne and SE Queensland, where there are now headline debates about the way we wish to live in those cities and about the standards and modes of procurement of urban infrastructure to support such life.

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The State of Australian Cities (SOAC) national conferences have been held biennially since 2003 to support interdisciplinary policy-related urban research.

This paper was presented at SOAC 2 held in Brisbane from 30 November to 2 December 2005, hosted by the Urban Research Program at the South Bank campus, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.

The principal intention of the conference was to lead a dialogue between leading researchers on the state of Australian cities and where they might be headed. SOAC 2 was designed to lead to a better understanding of the research needs of Australian cities and to provide those in the public and private sectors with a better appreciation of the current state and capacities of researchers.

Conference papers published from SOAC 2 were subject to a peer review process prior to presentation at the conference, with further editing prior to publication.