Behind the glittering image of 'Marvellous Melbourne' there existed in the popular imagination another, very different, picture of the colonial metropolis. This was the city of 'low life', of crowded slums, poverty, disease and vice. The nine essays in The Outcasts of Melbourne attempt to reveal the social realities behind this picture. They include new accounts of the forces which created the city's physical environment. They show how perceptions of a city can be shaped by campaigning journalists, artists and writers. They present collective portraits of the poor and the 'criminal classes' - and of those who set out to save them. They describe how the city's guardians - the police, public health authorities and charity workers - responded to the challenge of the slums. By imaginative use of the rich deposits in the public records, these explorations in social history present new ways of documenting the lives of people whose daily activities were seldom reported in the popular press. In doing so, they also map the chains of causation which link the actions of individuals - appearing before a committee of a benevolent society, getting arrested, evangelising at a Salvation Army rally - to the social forces which have shaped the cities in which we live.

A public intellectual known for his deeply humane approach to social, economic and urban issues, Hugh Stretton was an Australian original. His Political Sciences was described by The Times Literary Supplement as 'a work of near genius'. His groundbreaking Ideas for Australian Cities became the manifesto for a generation awakening to the distinctive features of our cities and suburbs. In this selection, leading historian Graeme Davison includes highlights from these and other published and unpublished works, showcasing Stretton's bravura intellectual style, grounded analysis, literary flair and the remarkable range of his thinking on history, politics, urban planning, and progressive social and economic development. Davison also provides a substantial and valuable introduction, setting the work in context. Stretton saw the dangers of the neoliberal orthodoxy that took hold in the Anglophone world from the early 1980s. With subtlety, imagination and rigour, his work offers an alternative vision of a good and fair society. 'Stretton could see beyond the cliches and into the lives of ordinary Australians.' DONALD HORNE 'Stretton may have been Australia's most distinguished post-war social scientist.' ROBERT MANNE

A new edition of this classic work which looks at Melbourne, among the most surburbanized of nineteenth-century cities, in its pursuit of 'suburbanism as a way of life'. Looks beyond public events to discover how the experience of boom and depression touched the lives of ordinary Melburnians, at work and at home, and reshaped their society and their sense of urban identity.

In the 1960s and 70s, Australia's inner cities experienced an upheaval which left them changed forever. People from all walks of life who valued their suburbs - places like Balmain, Battery Point, Carlton, Indooropilly, North Adelaide, or Subiaco - resisted large-scale development projects for freeways, 'slum clearance, ' and mass-produced high rises. Unlikely alliances - of post-war migrants, university students and staff, construction workers and their unions, long-term residents and city workers - challenged land-grabs and inappropriate development. When the dust settled, Australian cities were different. Many suburbs kept their village qualities. Shopping strips were revived and cultures celebrated. While areas like Fitzroy or Redcliff were derided as 'Trendyville' - the fate many American cities suffered - a 'hollow core' had been avoided. In the process, heritage conservation, party politics, and Australian assumptions about domestic life, education, and lifestyle had all been transformed. This book is an in-depth examination of the causes and consequences of urban protest in a democracy. It shows how this resistance changed the built environments, as well as its participants, and resonated in many of Australia's institutions, including politics, media, and multiculturalism