ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that most difficult of social scientific work, theorizing contemporaneity, in this case urban change and, on the basis of this, undertakes some consideration of the Australian metropolitan prospect. The guiding assumption is that Australia should give much more priority to considering the changing course and fate of its core metropolitan regions, as well as the systems that shape and govern them. Market driven intensification has in many places permitted a fracturing and ransacking of urban value and amenity, and of human wellbeing, by development capital that has worn the thin robe of legitimacy provided by the compact city ideal. The forces of technological and economic globalization are driving cultural pluralization. They include the rise of a massive education services sector heavily concentrated in parts of the major cities. Regrettably, considering the dwindling animus and legitimacy of progressive politics, the likelihood of the redirection appears remote at best.
