I am glad to see that the claw back of public access to the Harbour cliff tops is now happening in the built environment of Sydney. Land ,such as this, should never have been allowed to have been privatised in the first place. Too much of Sydney Harbor has been privatised. Public spaces need to be reclaimed and a more civilized relationship between public and private spatial expression established.

Too many spaces along cliff top walks, beaches and river frontages in our major cities have been privatised, and the public locked out from what should have remained urban public spaces. Such areas should have remained crown land and so part of the public commons so that the people as a whole can share and use the space as members of a community.

South Bank in Melbourne is a good example of the reclaiming of the public space along the Yarra River. Another is the transformation of the old Expo site on the Brisbane river into the public space of the South Bank precinct. South Bank in Brisbane is a strong public space that counters the withdrawal from the public sphere into the privatised suburbs to ensure self-preservation.

The fight to create the public space shows that the importance of public space in our cities has not died. The notion of the agora and square has been diminished by the car and the relationship to the public space and public buildings died. Victoria Square in Adelaide is a classic example of cars eating a public space.

In a market culture the above South Banks act as a counter to the authoritarian populism that extends the coercive of the state over public spaces with its anti-crime campaigns. This populism reduces a public urban space to a harmonious leisure spot or place to eat lunch, and so disconnects a public space from democracy. All that is left in Adelaide, for instance, is the steps of Parliament itself.

From the perspective we can view and interpret the spaces of the urban environment in terms of a landscape of power.