Using mobile communications as an example, the paper focuses on critically exploring the implications of our reliance on complex technological networks with reference to urban Australia.

Are local schools the beating heart of our communities? Or are they underutilised public assets, closed out of school hours and off limits to local residents? • A new discussion paper on the extended use of schools released by New South Wales Labor asks these questions and raises a significant national issue. Australia has more...

Introduction: Broadband is described as essential civic infrastructure of the twenty-first century, yet Australian local authorities have taken few initiatives to provide it as a local public good, similar to physical facilities and community services. This situation contrasts with local initiatives in many other countries. In Europe and North America, for example, city governments are...

Two new books look at the places where social ecologies take root and flourish, writes Ian McShane in Inside Story.

GOVERNMENTS place great emphasis on self-promotion, especially when it comes to announcing high profile public works. But no government has yet discovered which mysterious property in signs fixed to taxpayer-funded constructions seems to render them invisible to the public but a provocative eyesore to political opponents. So it is with the signs on school fences...