Regenerated cities produce property developers. That is what appears to be happening with Labor's urban renewal, both in the CBD and in the dockside redevelopment at Port Adelaide along with the huge expansion of suburbia and, to a much lesser extent, increasing the density of the inner suburbs. Adelaide's skyline is developing as the CBD is being rebuilt, and it is different to the dull concrete modernism of the 1960s. But its enclosed space.

The basic premise is right. Cities are very important things. We do need to be building them and conserving them, building up their power and influence and independence. But how this is being done—via private finance initiatives, luxury flats, speculation etc—is fairly disastrous; and the architectural results--mostly modernist--- with few exceptions, look to be very, very poor.

The architects have spent the 80s and 90s agitating for tightly packed housing, the use of urban brownfield sites, compact cities, piazzas and public transport – all attempts to manage and make urban density comfortable. The results entailed four- to 12-storey flats built around with mooted shops and facilities in the ground floor. An inner-city housing boom started to match its suburban precursor.

In reality, the shops and nurseries became empty units or estate agents, the squares are inept and windswept, and speculative developers cram as many tiny flats into their plots as possible.