City might appear to be down, but it is far from out - Sydney Morning Herald

Welcome addition ... Headland Park.

The chief executive of the Committee for Sydney responds to Elizabeth Farrelly's column last week on Sydney's urbanism.

During the London Games, I reflected on a decade of personal involvement in the renewal of East London working alongside many Sydneysiders who helped make it happen. I marvelled at how cities are galvanised and brought together by such events. Then I thought about my new home city and wondered: what happened after 2000? Sydney was the place to be and staged the best Olympiad ever in a united, transforming city. Then it lost its mojo. The morning after the night before? Perhaps, but also something deeper. A loss of direction and purpose summed up in that death-knell of urban ambition, Bob Carr's ''Sydney's full up''.

A light turned off, home-building numbers slumped and Sydney, the historic engine of Australia's wealth, stalled. Our housing supply grew at half Melbourne's rate and our contribution to Australia's gross domestic product fell from a quarter to a fifth. Without vision or leadership, NIMBY-ism took hold and we experienced relative decline while Australia rose. We must act now to provide the homes, jobs and transport our communities - our own young people - need. We must ensure Sydney - whose financial and professional services produce more value for Australia than mining - is able to play its essential role for state and nation.

The Committee for Sydney - a coalition of significant companies, key councils, social enterprises and major cultural and sports organisations - is clear about the prime element in a reform package for greater Sydney: an effective partnership between the public, private and not for profit sectors - and an engaged and enthused community embracing growth because of the benefits it brings. There is market failure in housing here and the urgent need for innovative private-public-community partnering to deliver new supply.

The progress of cities is based on partnership. Cities are complex places where no one force or ideology, left or right, can successfully manage their energies or deliver their potential. They require leadership but of the kind that can create coalitions for change, structures and processes that release the widest range of energies and imaginations and a civic - and civil - dialogue that is inclusive. We're all in this together. Where do we start?

We need to fix a broken planning system but in a way that enhances community participation in designing our city's growth. The government's planning green paper is an opportunity to rebuild trust; to introduce the progressive engagement processes found in the Sydney Architecture Festival's Super Sydney project or Adelaide's Integrated Design Commission.

Sydney's decision-making deficit must be overcome. The Council of Australian Governments reform council critique was that Sydney has no big city capacity to deliver its metropolitan plans. As competing cities consolidate and create metropolitan governance, Sydney must not get left behind. Auckland has one council, as does Brisbane. Sydney has 43. Go figure.

Poor land use and transport integration has resulted in low-density dispersed settlements with inadequate access to jobs and social facilities. Such an urban form weakens the basis of the economic success of cities: agglomeration. With demography and time-hungry lifestyles now favouring more compact development closer to public transport, there is an opportunity to promote a more sustainable, high quality, urban form for Sydney. The committee is an advocate for such change. There is no alternative for a global city of 6 million at mid-century.

Both a strategic road network and a metropolitan mass transit system will be needed in that city, as in any global city. Los Angeles is showing the way. There the community has backed a vision for an integrated city with the public transport network and highways essential to it. This is funded by a half per cent sales tax levied for 30 years, which is securitised and hypothecated to those transport projects. Whether or not this is the right device, this is the right debate. We need a grown up discussion about transport funding needed to renew our economic momentum and, vitally, to overcome the barriers between Sydney's east and west.

Treasury also needs a more rounded, less short-term cost/benefit approach to infrastructure. Transformational city projects rarely pay back over 10 or 20 years. Many city-making projects may not see a return in 50 years. They still have to be done notwithstanding the influence of that recent cult of ''AAA rating'' that is meant to make borrowing cheaper not prevent it.

But wait. That sound I hear is of Sydney beginning to remember where it might have put that mojo. There are signs of renewed momentum. The new Museum of Contemporary Art. Barangaroo with its professional services precinct of global standing and a beautiful park. Darling Quarter where Sydney comes out to play. The Convention Centre enabling Sydney to become a global leader in business events. Royal Randwick's renewal. Gehry's University of Technology, Sydney building. The laneways and small bars re-animating an increasingly 24-hour city.

In what will be Sydney's second central business district, we have Eclipse tower and transformational projects in Parramatta Square. Sydney Olympic Park is becoming a special place to live and play. Fine new communities, whether in Rouse Hill or Green Square. The emergent Macquarie Park. And soon will come game-changing projects from the Infrastructure NSW strategy and Long Term Transport Masterplan, whatever their flaws. Whether it's the north-west rail link, WestConnex's reanimated Parramatta Road and environs, or plans for light rail. All are opportunities for the use of innovative ''beneficiaries pay''/value capture funding mechanisms, and properly designed can create great places not just move people.

If bricks, mortar or infrastructure don't do it for you, there's always the Sydney Swans winning the AFL reminding us Australia now has another sporting capital. We already have more theatrical openings in Sydney than the ''Other Place'' and in Walsh Bay arts complex a new cultural initiative befitting a global city. We have the Lions in Sydney next year and the AFC Asian Cup arriving in 2015. Whisper it: I think Sydney might be on the move again. So I ask: what might we be capable of if we really got our act together?