West End is an inner-city neighbourhood in Brisbane, Australia, about to experience profound change. In the next two decades the population of West End is planned to increase fourfold as the result of local and state government urban consolidation policies, with little planning for services and amenity to cater for this increase. Interviews with 50 residents of West End are used to describe the nature and qualities of a strong existing public realm in West End, intimately tied to place and closely associated with West End’s early gentrification status. It is argued that early gentrification, because of the change it brings, has been consistent with the maintenance and protection of this public realm. As West End is the last neighbourhood of its type in the city (and one of the last in the country), it is also argued that in the absence of any state-led policies to foster diversity, for the benefit of the wider metropolis, these neighbourhoods are worth protecting from the parochialising effects of insensitive developer-led ‘second-wave’ gentrification.