After a somewhat difficult gestation and birth, Melbourne’s Federation Square is now ten years old. This book tells the story of those ten years and of how a place that was once so reviled has ended up popular and successful, attracting more than nine million visitors in 2011. It locates the Federation Square story within the new role played by city centres in the economy and culture of the contemporary globalising world. While narrating the story of Federation Square, the book also asks questions about the design and management structure of the Square, the tensions between its public and private roles, and about just where in the new leisureoriented, postindustrial ‘spectacle’ city of the twentyfirst century city is the line drawn between spaces that are private and those that are public.