  The spatial distribution, galactic model parameters and luminosity function
of cataclysmic variables (CVs) in the solar neighbourhood have been determined
from a carefully established sample of 459 CVs. The sample contains all of the
CVs with distances computed from the Period-Luminosity-Colours (PLCs) relation
of CVs which has been recently derived and calibrated with {\em 2MASS}
photometric data. It has been found that an exponential function fits best to
the observational z-distributions of all of the CVs in the sample, non-magnetic
CVs and dwarf novae, while the sech^{2} function is more appropriate for
nova-like stars and polars. The vertical scaleheight of CVs is 158$\pm$14 pc
for the {\em 2MASS} J-band limiting apparent magnitude of 15.8. On the other
hand, the vertical scaleheights are 128$\pm$20 and 160$\pm$5 pc for dwarf novae
and nova-like stars, respectively. The local space density of CVs is found to
be $\sim3\times10^{-5}$ pc^{-3} which is in agreement with the lower limit of
the theoretical predictions. The luminosity function of CVs shows an increasing
trend toward higher space densities at low luminosities, implying that the
number of short-period systems should be high. The discrepancies between the
theoretical and observational population studies of CVs will almost disappear
if for the z-dependence of the space density the sech^{2} density function is
used.
