"We're building Sydney's future!" declare the hoardings. And they're right. That's what scares me. For it's a future that reduces this intricate and leafy heart of old Sydney to a concrete-and-steel cacophony; fast, featureless and corporate-minded. In a word, grey. Much of Sydney is naturally blessed but this historic core is unique as a made thing. It can never be recreated. Inner Sydney is ours to share and treasure. Destroying it is not forgivable.

The hoardings in question enclose the light-rail construction site, but it's not small, and it's not temporary. It's not breaking eggs to make omelet. It's breaking eggs to funnel public assets permanently into private coffers, draining the city of its texture, lifeblood and sweetness. Protest, and they fence you in, arrest you and fine you thousands. Are we still calling this a democracy?

Illustration: Simon Bosch

Infrastructcha! is the war cry. And it is a war, as anyone knows who has passed lately along Anzac Parade or Alison Road, or through Haberfield, Frenchs Forest, St Peters, Mascot or the dozen other parts of Sydney being flattened for the infrastructcha gods. But even for those of us inured to neo-liberalism's rapaciousness, this latest destruction is next level.

It has three parts. All of them alienate public land, destroy public beauty and funnel public funds for private benefit – and they focus on poor, hacked-about yet much-loved Moore Park. There's the huge Allianz Stadium redevelopment that keeps seeping out through leaky government denials. There's the Entertainment Quarter (the old Royal Agricultural Society showgrounds) redevelopment by a bunch of wealthy mates. And there's yet another massive new road being ramrodded through some of Sydney's most fragile fabric by the Sydney Motorways Corporation.