I came back to work to find a letter on my desk from a reader distressed about the state of our public libraries: understaffed, underfunded and plagued by unplanned closures.

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That same day we learned that diving facilities, which just a fortnight ago were still in scope for the new city aquatic centre in Commonwealth Park, were now ruled out because of costs.

It brought to my mind a made-up and, admittedly clunky, word "de-amenitying", a way of describing the loss or degradation of things we have taken for granted.

Our doomed public pools are the most obvious example. As property prices gallop ahead, upending the economics of running a pool business on valuable inner-city land, the developers are swooping in, offering token replacement facilities to win DA approval. Protests from pool users seem to get nowhere.

We're also now home to the worst stadium in any major city centre in the country, one which embarrassingly oozes bad smells near visitors' change rooms and is snubbed by any performers more relevant than Ricky Martin or the Goo Goo Dolls. Our convention centre and indoor sports venues are on the same atrophic trajectory.

This sense that we are losing rather than gaining amenity is difficult to take in a city supposedly striding towards one........

© Canberra Times