Abstract: This paper examines the making of Sydney Park, a 41.6 ha park south of the Sydney central business district within the context of urbanisation in Sydney. Formerly a brickwork and landfill site, Sydney Park has been the focus of three iterations of master-planning since the late 1970s. Now a greatly transformed landscape, Sydney Park currently figures as a major hub in the Sydney 2030 Strategic Plan and its ‘Green Global Connected’ vision for the city. This research adopts the lens of urban political ecology (UPE) to explore how this former industrial site has come to feature so prominently in Sydney’s journey towards a sustainable city. Drawing on evidence in planning documents and design reports, this paper documents the various ways in which formations and recreations of ‘nature’ were articulated, modified and inscribed into and onto Sydney Park between 1979 and 2010 to direct specific social, ecological and economic outcomes. (UPE) offers a platform for assessing the making of Sydney Park as a case study of ambiguities and contradictions that can result from well-intended efforts to ‘green’ the city. Preliminary findings reveal that the journey from wasteland to parkland has invoked specific concepts of nature which represent and in turn have served broader social, political and economic agendas. The discussion revisits the urban political ecology framework to assess the role of Sydney Park’s constructed ecology in the trajectory of urban transformations, with particular attention to the link between ideas of nature and ideas of public benefit.