World City?

When I began to study Australian history the idea that there was anything worth saying about our cities, in a theoretical sense, was only just beginning to gain traction. There were works of what is called ‘local history’ about particular places, but back then a theorised study of the urban condition did not loom large in Australian historiography. Certainly in my undergraduate years in the 1960s the debates and flash points in Australian history did not include any conscious focus on cities as discrete sites of discourse.