The purpose of this presentation is to contribute to the debate around the nature of spatial inequality in Australian cities. It takes issue with the view that the extensive spatial form of Australian cities is a major element in the transmission of social disadvantage - a view which has gained currency in recent urban policy debates about “sprawl” vs consolidation. The assumption (in some quarters) that households located at, or moving to, the newly developing urban periphery, have been forced there through housing market processes in which they have had little choice; and further, that once there the lack of proximate resources, particularly in social infrastructure, reinforce the already disadvantaged social and economic circumstances of these households does not stand scrutiny. The coincidence of locational disadvantage and social disadvantage has been assumed rather than demonstrated, seemingly in an attempt to bolster arguments about the need to alter the predominant form of urban growth - outward extension of low density suburbia.