It’s like that fat guy on TV. He hated being fat, wistfully enumerating all the habits he just couldn’t kick. Even to look at, he was a long thin guy wrapped in a fat guy’s body. Pig in blanket. Trapped. Sydney is that guy. It wants to be muscular and purposeful but keeps being tempted into mall-sprawl and ensuites. Inner Sydney – old Sydney - has a natural modesty, a kind of lean energy. Yes, it was forced modesty, the modesty of poverty. Loading But the Sydney that resulted is still pretty, walkable and villagey. Built poor, it is now the darling of the rich. Increasingly, though, this Sydney is imprisoned by vast, rippling oleaginous layers of bad habits and worse governance. That’s the sad. Not only have we forgotten how to build such flavoursome and eccentric neighbourhoods where walkability, street vitality, community mindedness and charm more than compensate for modest dwellings and inconvenient streets.

But what we do build is immeasurably worse – more convenient, perhaps, but duller, uglier, greedier and more uniform - and will sooner or later destroy the remnant lean energy at its heart. Thirty years ago I left London, forsaking its breathtaking loveliness because (I realised) most of that loveliness was past. London’s present is fairly mediocre and its future likely bleak. Back then, Sydney seemed the opposite: a bit daggy in the present but on an irrepressibly upward trajectory, all glory ahead. Now, I’m less persuaded. Every day Sydney looks more like its best years are already gone. There are many culprits here, many bad habits, but at their heart is government; too much of it doing far too little. The Coalition preaches small government but practices government on a scale that is massive, unwieldy and inept. In Sydney alone we have municipal government plus: the joint city-state Central Sydney Planning Committee (including developers); the state Department of Planning and Environment; completely separate state departments for roads (WestConnex and other motorways) and for transport (rail and buses); the Committee for Sydney (a corporate club of vested interests like Lend Lease, AECOM, John Holland and – rather ickily - state government departments); and the Greater Sydney Commission, whose much-trumpeted “plan” limply redescribes Sydney as it already is, a tri-centric city.

Will Sydney trade its last creative enclave for cookie-cutter apartments? Credit:James Alcock That’s state level. Now the feds also want in. So there’s a Commonwealth Department for Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities with four separate ministers, including the new Deputy Prime Minister. And on top of all that is the supposedly independent Infrastructure Australia, which mouths words about a low-emissions future then funds the blindingly stupid NorthConnex to “reduce traffic congestion”. Yet for all that, our cities remained unplanned, instead shaped ad hoc by road and transport projects - “infrastruktcha” – that are funded project by project, mostly for political reasons.

Now, though, Infrastructure Australia has produced an explicitly planning-type document, Future Cities: planning for our growing population. Is there any good in it? A good plan is like a good story. It starts with, and is driven by, desire. You have to want something, then you work out how to get there. So what does Infrastructure Australia want?

It comes down to money and power. IA wants Australian cities to “position themselves” to exploit the Asian economic miracle. And, since the Commonwealth has no explicit city-making power, it wants to bribe the states into compliance by tying Commonwealth funding to particular city outcomes. But what outcomes? This is where IA’s “vision” fails. It talks medium density, offering a Goldilocks-style buffet of density options (low-density sprawl, high-rise and medium). You’re meant to want the medium or “rebalanced” option (80 per cent infill) but when you drill down this is neither attractive nor logical. It leaves Wolli Creek wildly dense, Paddington less dense than now (what, do they demolish terraces?) and poor old Marrickville completely screwed, triple its current density. Of course, cities need to be economically viable. But still, economy should serve life, not vice versa. Loading

As to desire, say you wanted a walkable, zero-carbon city centre, say, a genuine city of villages. Say you wanted to beat fossil-fuel addiction, foster renewables, fight obesity, walk to work, create cheerful yet diverse communities. What would you do? First, the no-brainer. Build the very fast train: Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Melbourne. Duh. Obviously. Second, kill negative gearing. This would dampen our wild-west speculative culture, generate housing affordability and nurture investment in industries such as renewables. I’d impose rent controls, protecting tenants so Sydney wasn’t home only to the rich - but I’d also stop angsting over the exodus. The flood of young urban creatives to regional towns can only be good. A country the size of the US needs more than seven cities. Bathurst, Goulburn, Bendigo, Dubbo - I’d connect them to the rapid rail, invest massively in solar and and ban sprawl, giving tight, charming, low-rise, medium-density walkable cities with an intense community feel and a green agricultural hinterland. As to positioning Sydney and Melbourne to exploit Asia’s boom? I say this. Marrickville is Sydney’s last refuge of the lean creative energy that once typified our inner cities.

If the price is sacrificing these last hubbubs of painting studios, gypsy cabarets, microbreweries, cheap flats and black-box comedy theatres for serried ranks of air-conditioned, plastic-clad cookie-cutter towers, tell them it’s too high. City is home. They can stick their economic positioning up the hole in their imagination. Twitter @emfarrelly