ABSTRACT
There is underlying agreement that neighbourliness matters in Australian cities and towns, although there is an inherent disconnection between the set of cultural understandings of what it means to be a good neighbour, the management and regulation of everyday neighbourly interaction and the actualities and variations of social experience over time and across space. This chapter reads the emotional dimension of neighbourly relations in an urban setting through the particular framework of local government. Emotional and statutory regimes are seen to have powerfully intersected over the back fences of urban and suburban lives. Living as neighbours may have been historically mediated by social protocols and cultural codes, but relationships between neighbours have themselves been forcefully shaped by local government frameworks.
