Killing Sydney: The Fight for a City’s Soul

For Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney was love at first sight. But in 2012, looking on aghast at the scale of the development firestorm poised above the city, she made a silent vow: I will do what I can to protect you. In this book, she calls on us to wake up and do the same.

As an architectural graduate, academic, city councillor and writer, Farrelly has considered what makes cities tick for more than thirty years. Now she believes her home faces destruction. Relentless motorway construction, tree-lopping, park-shaving, heritage demolition, the Powerhouse relocation, the mistreatment of public lands at Barangaroo and Darling Harbour and of public assets everywhere. Epidemic resi-towers in every pocket of the metropolis … the list of ill-considered development feels endless.

Killing Sydney is part-lovesong, part-warning; a parable for all our cities and how we shape them for the future. It lays down a gauntlet for the enrichment and protectino of a green, beautiful, affordable, sustainable, heritage-grounded and accessible city.

Little by little, our politics are being debased and our environment degraded. The tipping point is close. Can the cities we love survive?