Ideals of community as produced by many planning discourses – in Australia, the UK and America – in the 2000s are not dissimilar to their historical forbears. Most remain associated with aspirations to ‘the good life’, a more caring, sharing, connected and united world (Freie 1998). An imagined gemeinschaft village life is still a popular image of ‘commu-nity’: small scaled, place-based, face-to-face relationships, self-contained, self-governing and self-referential. However, the unquestioned belief that physical planning can create ideals of community and provide the necessary ingredients for ‘the good life’ is no longer axiomatic. The often simplistic interpretation of ‘community’ has meant social and cultural difference has not always been recognised and everyday life patterns have been largely regulated by the ‘master’ plan. We argue that the values attributed to ideals of community have been re-invented, re-produced and re-inscribed, over the course of the twentieth century as universal and unquestionable ‘truths’. This chapter maps some of the planning techniques and rationalities that underpin these ‘truths’; ‘truths’ that ultimately affect the planning and development practices that comprise many contemporary city landscapes and in particular in the case of this book, third places.