In her 2012 book Ground Control, Anna Minton details the insidious privatisation of public space in British cities by multinational development corporations and “acronym-laden quangos”. One of the companies she mentions is immediately recognisable to Sydneysiders.

Lend Lease is currently designing the major part of the 22 hectare waterfront redevelopment at Barangaroo and an additional 20 hectares to its south, at Darling Harbour. The future of the entire western side of the city rests in its hands, and all of it is publicly owned land.

Opened in 1988, Darling Harbour was supposed to be Sydney’s bicentennial legacy project, but lacked a clear structure of public streets and spaces that would fuse it into the surrounding urban fabric. It became a place apart – a retail and tourism folly that lasted just 25 years.

Such a stunning failure in recent memory should have ensured that the renewal of Barangaroo and the second attempt at Darling Harbour were more adeptly handled. Inconceivably, the mistakes of the past have been repeated and compounded.

I was involved in the proposal that won the East Darling Harbour international design competition in 2006, but have had no professional involvement in Barangaroo since. It has been depressing to see how every attempt to set an urban framework that would protect public rights, make the sites an inclusive part of the broader city and ensure long-term adaptability, has been undermined by commercial interests. Rather than inclusive and lively public streets, parks and squares, we are offered exclusive places to spend, and ever-diminishing open spaces surveilled by the lofty eyries of the international elite.

The guardians of the public interest, state governments of both political stripes, have capitulated. The local authority, the City of Sydney, with its unparalleled expertise in making memorable public places, has been wholly excluded from these projects. The civic fundamentals that these sites should have delivered are subjugated to corporate self-interest at best, and completely absent at worst.

Last week’s announcement that James Packer’s proposed Crown hotel and casino had displaced the waterfront park and insinuated itself onto the harbour’s edge should not have been a surprise; it is the latest instalment in a cynical fait accompli. Barangaroo and Darling Harbour are civic failures, and a horde of international and local architects are busy polishing a broken carcass.

This must be acknowledged, because important changes are needed. We must address the lack of transparency and rigour in the release of development information to the public and the ensuing debate. We must understand how good urban places operate, demand architectural drawings that allow us to accurately assess proposals and resist arguing over side issues like whether the architectural imagery is interesting or pretty enough.

We must be precise with language and resist spin. For instance, the Crown “casino” is in reality an enormous apartment and hotel building, with casino attached. While we have been distracted by Crown’s machinations to secure another casino license, it has received tacit approval for a 70-storey building on public land and sidestepped established statutory processes.

We must also seek to balance the ledger. The financial deal between the NSW government and Lend Lease is deemed commercial-in-confidence, yet how could releasing this information harm the commercial interests of a monopoly? When the details are finally revealed we need to set the opportunity cost against the revenue, and see exactly what has been forfeited on our behalf.

What is the cost of exploiting this remarkable public place while failing to secure even modest social benefits such as the City’s desired minimum 10% affordable housing target? How will we reconcile the loss of the irreplaceable social housing at nearby Millers Point – always under pressure, and now surely doomed? How do we audit the decision to give these large development parcels to one developer, rather than leveraging a more competitive and diverse market? What is the price of a breach of public trust?

The major elements in Barangaroo betray a lack of knowledge of our city’s history and lack of faith in its design culture. We have traded the opportunity for meaningful and intelligent architectural responses to our place for the vapidity of corporate internationalism. The headland park, the most important park to be built in the city for decades, eschews the vibrant possibilities for recreation in the heart of a contemporary city and instead limply mimics the abundant natural conditions of the harbour.

Is the city’s western edge destined to become a disposable commercial precinct so pessimistic that it can’t see beyond the financial returns of the next 25 years to the extraordinary cultural potential of our collective civic life?

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. What does a third attempt tell us? That the corporations currently managing the largest parts of our city are banking on the fact that Sydney lacks sufficient knowledge and respect to defend and sustain the public framework that supports its rich urban culture. It urgently needs to do better.