Gabriel Metcalf, the Committee for Sydney's recent recruit from San Francisco, spent much of his first year in the job listening to people complain about their own city.

"Everybody just stop whinging!" he joked to stakeholders at a drinks function following the think tank's annual general meeting last month.

One of the recurring grievances? "So many people told me about how after the [2000] Olympics, Sydney took a break from adding to infrastructure, from building, from moving forward - this so-called lost decade. So many people said that."

The Committee for Sydney's Gabriel Metcalf: "So many people told me how after the Olympics, Sydney took a break." Credit:Jacky Ghossein

This notion that Sydney squandered its post-Olympics glory - by failing to invest in transport, culture and amenity - is widely accepted. In a blistering editorial in 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald lamented former Labor premier Bob Carr had left NSW as "the sad state" and Australia's "biggest loser".