It is one of my favourite parts of Sydney: Victoria Street in Potts Point, lined with grand terraces and huge trees which arch sleepily and provide cool shade in the middle of summer.

Dogs can turn inner-city parks into dog toilets. Credit: Getty Images

In those warmer months, it should be one of our city’s most pleasant localities – the murmur of young French backpackers loitering outside hostels; a sprinkling of cafes and restaurants; glimpses of the sparkling harbour and the gleaming city in the distance.

But like so many other dense parts of Sydney, Victoria Street has an invisible problem. As temperatures increase and the humidity rises, the litres of canine urine excreted onto poor Victoria Street’s paths and gutters heats up, forming a festering vapour of acidic stench that has effectively made what should be one of our city’s most beautiful streets an open-air dog toilet.

The invisible problem was best illustrated by the entitlement of one man I witnessed earlier this year. Proudly carrying a Sydney Writers Festival tote bag in one hand, and holding the leash of his gargantuan greyhound in the other, he paused as the canine unleashed what........

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