After a somewhat difficult gestation and birth, Melbourne's Federation Square turns ten in October 2012. This book tells the story of those ten years and how it is that a place that was once so reviled has ended up so popular and successful, attracting more than nine million visitors in 2011. But this is not simply another marketing exercise or hagiography. Rather, the book locates the Federation Square story within the paradigm, of 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 leisure-oriented post-industrial spectacle city of the twenty-first century city the line is drawn between spaces that are private and those that are public.