Sydney is Australia’s largest vortex city, sucking in resources for production and consumption and using other parts of the planet to assimilate wastes. This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of competing definitions and measuring techniques to identify sustainable cities.

This paper investigates some recent changes and public interest in urban nature in Australia and provides an analysis of environmental social movements via a preliminary report on interviews with members of The Greens and The Wilderness Society living in Hobart and Perth.

The creation of greenspace in cities is often spoken of as if it were the result of orderly planning or regulation. This paper explores the underlying factors in this grass roots making of greenspace.

This paper will use a metaphor based on the ecological definition of the “ecotone” to examine the transition zones that occur around the edges of three of Sydney’s major parklands – Centennial Parklands (CP), the Sydney Olympic Parklands (SOP) and the Western Sydney Parklands (WSP).

Using metaphors mapped from the concept of ‘metabolism’ the students gain insights into how the urban form and the dominant beliefs and values of the inhabitants combine to induce major stresses on the city’s hinterlands.