  Classes with bounded expansion, which generalise classes that exclude a
topological minor, have recently been introduced by Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il and Ossona
de Mendez. These classes are defined by the fact that the maximum average
degree of a shallow minor of a graph in the class is bounded by a function of
the depth of the shallow minor. Several linear-time algorithms are known for
bounded expansion classes (such as subgraph isomorphism testing), and they
allow restricted homomorphism dualities, amongst other desirable properties. In
this paper we establish two new characterisations of bounded expansion classes,
one in terms of so-called topological parameters, the other in terms of
controlling dense parts. The latter characterisation is then used to show that
the notion of bounded expansion is compatible with Erd\"os-R\'enyi model of
random graphs with constant average degree. In particular, we prove that for
every fixed $d>0$, there exists a class with bounded expansion, such that a
random graph of order $n$ and edge probability $d/n$ asymptotically almost
surely belongs to the class. We then present several new examples of classes
with bounded expansion that do not exclude some topological minor, and appear
naturally in the context of graph drawing or graph colouring. In particular, we
prove that the following classes have bounded expansion: graphs that can be
drawn in the plane with a bounded number of crossings per edge, graphs with
bounded stack number, graphs with bounded queue number, and graphs with bounded
non-repetitive chromatic number. We also prove that graphs with `linear'
crossing number are contained in a topologically-closed class, while graphs
with bounded crossing number are contained in a minor-closed class.
