This paper presents an argument for the need to develop a more sophisticated and much needed understanding of the economic role of Sydney within the contemporary Australian eastern seaboard economy as a prerequisite to the development of appropriate urban and regional physical, economic and social development policies.

While globalisation and production chain unbundling is allowing Advanced Business Services to reach out to clients in distant regions and countries, the tendency towards consolidation of these firms into Australia’s biggest cities, in particular Sydney and Melbourne, is of policy concern.

Using the concept of “ethnic community capital” and using data provided by 344 ethnic communal organisations, this paper outlines major social, economic, and spatial aspects that have helped establish Sydney as a multicultural capital on the Pacific.

According to this paper it is the relationship between multiculturalism as a policy issue and social harmony among different cultural groups, specifically that of avoiding spatial (and implicitly social) segregation, hence pluralism, that most concerns social scientists and commentators.

The conflation of community with place in planning is so ubiquitous, and so clearly well intentioned that it almost seems churlish to point out that if there is one thing that a community is not these days, it is a place.