Where do the rich and poor live? Not surprisingly, there are distinctive geographical patterns. Social differences based on class, age, gender, sexuality, religion, culture and health are etched into city structures. The same is true of the broader regional landscapes, where social and economic conditions vary significantly between the metropolitan and non-metropolitian areas. Economic inequalities, based on industry and occupation, employment and unemployment, produce a complex mosaic of relative wealth and disadvantage.

The spatial dimension to economic inequality exists in all countries. This reflects its systemic character. Space acts as a medium through which those with the most wealth and income express their preferences – for business locations, housing, recreation and transport, among others – while those with less economic resources take what is left. As the geographer David Harvey put it, ‘Low income populations, usually lacking the means to overcome and hence command space, find themselves for the most part trapped in space’ (Harvey 1989: 265). Space then becomes more than a medium through which inequalities are expressed: it becomes a mechanism by which those inequalities are reproduced and reinforced. The spatial dimension of inequality is particularly striking in Australia because a highly urbanised pattern of population coexists with vast tracts of what has come to be known as ‘regional and rural Australia’.