Master planned and active lifestyles developments in Australia: gerotopian dream or dystopian nightmare?

In Australia, Master Planned Communities (MPCs) and Active Lifestyle Developments (ALDs) have often been promoted as the pinnacle of the ‘great Australian dream’ of homeownership. This chapter explores the seductiveness of these two forms of ‘suburban ways of living’. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and psychoanalytical understandings of identity, this chapter adopts a critical stance on how both political actors and developers have appropriated homeownership and packaged MPCS and ALDs as suburban idylls in an effort to assuage the concerns of the elderly. This is explored by an analysis of two Australian case studies located in Adelaide (South Australia) and Brisbane (Queensland).