“This is city-as-marketing-exercise, with all the blandification so implied. Addressing the annual conference of the Chicago-based Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in Sydney last week, I was struck both by the extraordinary chromosome imbalance of the audience – at least 90 per cent XY – and the competitive tone of the lexicon. It was all about the tallest, the wildest, the thinnest, the greenest, the most expensive. Even the richness of place-making was discussed primarily in terms of competing for global workers. Erectile? It was positively ejaculatory.”