The article posited sixteen buildings out of perhaps one hundred that might have been chosen. Some were selected because they were already polarising and known to incite passionate debate – the Civic Hall, The State Government Offices, Norwich Plaza. Some because they simply represent bad planning and design, and inappropriate siting.

It’s very easy to talk about ‘the vision thing’; much harder to bring a coherent plan to fruition. Every person has a different view of what constitutes ‘progress’. For some it’s multi-storey towers on the site of the former Civic Hall and high-density housing. For others this is anathema; progress for them equals repurposing buildings and building a city on a human scale. Neither of these viewpoints are inherently incorrect. It’s about making an argument for the position that carries the population. It’s fair to say that many people simply don’t care. Others will say that jobs are more important than anything to do with planning.

But if a city is to thrive at all levels then it must cultivate and celebrate an identity. Weston Bate in his 1978 history of Ballarat, Lucky City, wrote that the town “has an unchallengeable hold on a prime segment of Australia’s past.” Sovereign Hill has signposted itself as one aspect of this: an increasingly sophisticated and complex interpretation of a living museum. After 45 years it’s moved from being a ‘vintage village’ to a hugely successful, internationally attractive educational experience. While it will always struggle to include every aspect of a time that is far-removed and complex, it can be said that the museum is embracing a modern view of history that is inclusive of a range of views.

Our planning process needs to do the same. It needs to be transparent, patently so. It’s no longer acceptable for developers to meet with council or councillors at private meetings to horse-trade over outcomes. A process that denies ratepayers and residents an effective and equal say will always result in poor outcomes. The current planning process is a vast improvement on what passed for consultation in the past, but it could be improved. It still favours compromise over commitment to best architectural practise.

The Commonwealth Bank building is a tragic example of this. 

It’s now a matter of well-documented history that the Leonard Terry-designed London Chartered Bank building of 1866 fell victim to an appalling process of development and over-enthusiastic modernisation, combined with arrogant dismissiveness on the part of the serving councillors. (Around the same time, 1965, the Ballarat City Council also argued that the gardens of Sturt Street needed to be torn up and an underground carpark put in.) 

Sir Daryl Lindsay, the former director of the National Gallery of Victoria and a noted artist, was horrified at its impending destruction. In an article in The Ballarat Courier of January 1965 he was quoted as railing against the demolition of fine old buildings “in the unholy name of progress”.

When the building was redesigned a decade ago, a campaign – well-intentioned but misguided – to have the original facade reinstated was defeated and the current ‘Meccano set’ enclosure was added. The then mayor described the outcome as a “a good compromise”. Whereas the argument could most likely be made successfully that the entire corner, from the Commonwealth Bank to Eureka House, is a masterpiece of poor planning and design.

The core of Ballarat’s built identity is its post-rush building boom. The city has a remarkable trove of buildings dating from the 1850s through to the turn of the last century. It’s a sign of maturity, of abandoning a post-colonial insecurity, that we embrace a design process in which contextualising that history is paramount. 

There is, though, no need to try and recreate the past in the present. When the planning for the shopping centre that was to become Harvey Norman on the corner of Gillies and Howitt streets was submitted, part of the permit was that it had to be in sympathy with the former Redemptorist monastery situated behind it.

What eventuated was a kind of ‘Disneyland’ mock monastery, a fortress on the scale of Kryal Castle but without the skewiff charm and individual commitment to a single idea that makes the latter interesting if slightly batty and the former simply banal.

Ballarat is pockmarked with these kitsch nods to the past – Alfred Square with its Gothic turret, various themed motels, nouveau-Victorian mansions lining Lake Wendouree. To quote the architect Taz Loomans, they are the Elvis impersonators of architecture, but worse, because at least with an Elvis impersonator we know we are not getting the real thing. With faux replacement buildings, the idea is to deceive.

What Ballarat needs, and soon, is a proper and involved discussion about what our future city will be. It must engage the community and experts about how to revitalise and renew into the next burst of growth that is upon us.