There is a long history of urban communities and neighbourhoods fighting vested interests over competing visions of what the city might look like and how it provides access to housing, transport and other amenities. Cities are one of those important sites for contrasting ideas about how a society should be structured and organised. In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, the area around Alexandra Parade has been the location of struggle over the building and extension of the Eastern Freeway into inner northern suburbs.