JUDY VERLIN, former Ballarat mayor: Growth in Ballarat is inevitable and it has been, this is certainly not new news. We've been predicting significant growth for a number of years now, that's why we have Ballarat West Employment Zone and town plans in place for how Ballarat West housing is unfolding now. When zoning in was approved, it was anticipated 18,000 new homes and 40,000 people living in the west.

What I am pleased about is a lot of social infrastructure in place: Delacombe Town Centre; a number of childcare facilities; and police and fire stations in the Delacombe area. We're seeing a lot of social infrastructure that's required and we're seeing a significant amount of green space.

On the other hand, what we're seeing in road infrastructure is not keeping up.

GERARD FITZGERALD, sporting icon: Change is inevitable.

In many ways it is terrific people are wanting to come and live in Ballarat and call this city home. There are positives in people wanting to come and join us. Ballarat is an incredible destination in which to live and work.

Change being inevitable gives us a capacity to prepare and manage growth. It's going to happen, so let's have our preferred outcome and have a say on how we want Ballarat to look when it grows.

JOHN BARNES, former Ballarat mayor: It is very challenging. I agree with Michael Buxton, Emeritus Professor Planning, RMIT, who says the Ballarat Planning Scheme is currently not up to the task of protecting what is good and most loved by Ballarat people. Ballarat has, until recently, offered a compact city lifestyle and a proud goldfields heritage, which bigger cities cannot replicate.

But that is under threat as commute times from an increasingly sprawling city, and the abandonment of retailing in the CBD in favour of big box retailers elsewhere, sees our older buildings and streetscapes in need of reinvention whilst having their heritage values retained and enhanced.

STEVE BRACKS: It is not by chance that Ballarat was crowned Australia's most liveable regional city in 2020. The Victorian Government and the City of Ballarat have worked together to ensure Ballarat's growth is managed in a way that preserves the things that make Ballarat special and a great place to live. There has been continued investment in our beautiful heritage streetscapes, our parks and gardens, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, and Lake Wendouree.

Ballarat's multimillion-dollar government building, GovHub, opened in April this year, and the Ballarat Railway Station redevelopment, Ballarat Line upgrade, the Ballarat Health Services Base Hospital redevelopment and the Ballarat West Employment Zone, are all investments in the future of Ballarat.

JUDY VERLIN: The jewel in the crown of our city is the botanical gardens and Lake Wendouree and the importance that continues. People are still respecting and appreciating this and it's becoming even more the city centre as we grow. That precinct is the envy of a lot of cities and it's critical we maintain that.

It's really exciting that Ballarat has such a wonderful tourism product. Sovereign Hill is expecting to grow visitation to 1.4 million visitors a year by 2046. These people all need to be housed, fed and to enjoy products of Ballarat that keep them here overnight. I always think arts and culture is a big part of what makes us uniquely Ballarat.

GERARD FITZGERALD: We're increasingly seeing more of what I call the capital city experiences - things that once upon a time we had to go to Melbourne for, they're here in our city. We have AFL matches here now in Ballarat and the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. We have incredible diversity in our choice for food menus and cafe culture.

We have fantastic tourism resorts, particularly in Sovereign Hill, to bring people here to enjoy this diversity. We also need to celebrate fantastic quality and diversity in our schools. We've got some great schools in Ballarat, including highly-regarded tertiary institutions and high-quality secondary and primary schools. Education options from infancy to adulthood are outstanding.

JOHN BARNES: Some good initial planning work is being done by Ballarat City Council. They have adopted the Bakery Hill Urban Renewal Plan and have in process over the next year a draft Housing Strategy, a CBD Renewal Strategy, and the Ballarat Station Southside Strategy (in partnership with the Victorian Planning Authority).

The upgrading of sewer mains by CHW in central Ballarat will set us up for future infill development and also service housing growth to our east. Water sensitive urban design of the greenfields sites to our west mean that these new suburbs are highly water efficient.

STEVE BRACKS: I can only see the positive side of these changes. The growth of Ballarat means more young people will be able to study and get jobs in the region. From a broader perspective, the growth of Ballarat takes pressure off Melbourne which is bursting at the seams.

JUDY VERLIN: More and more traffic issues. Road infrastructure has to keep up and keep pace. The point from when the western link started to be proposed to now has been many years. We really only have the first stages done. We certainly can't continue in small stages and keep sending all that traffic through the Buninyong roundabout. We need to continue to lobby three levels of government.

GERARD FITZGERALD: The biggest concern I've got is congestion on our roads. Once upon a time you could get around our city quite easily. When we talk to Melbourne-based friends, congestion is a real issue. So, what can we learn and change? This is an issue that would otherwise only get worse. With growth comes congestion and we need to think about how we manage congestion. We've got to support our leaders as they look to try things to address these issues. Not every idea is going to work. We've got to look at what we can do now and the e-scooters is a really good example of trying to find a solution to a problem.

JOHN BARNES: I worry that the strategic planning work is happening too slowly. Finalising the current strategies will take another year or so, then getting them referenced into the Ballarat Planning Scheme, will likely take another year or more.

Pressure is already on for the release of more land to meet future greenfields demand. There is an expectation that there will be around 15 years supply of greenfields land at any time. Due to the market appetite for housing land in Ballarat West, this condition is not being met.

Ballarat City Council (and other Victorian councils) need the power to regulate the development market, otherwise we will see perpetual urban sprawl.

STEVE BRACKS: Uncapped funding for student places at Federation University and measures to accelerate the return of international students to Ballarat.

JUDY VERLIN: Infill development is critically important. We need more flexibility for housing today's family and what their needs are - a four-bedroom, 400 square-metre block is not what everyone wants anymore. A critical part of addressing this is with infill development. I really believe we need a more concentrated effort in making use of upstairs in building in the CBD [central business district]. We have seen this success in Melbourne. When you drive down Sturt Street and the Bridge Mall there are many empty windows - we need to activate upstairs.

GERARD FITZGERALD: Diverting all traffic that doesn't need to come into the city, particularly in the west and east corridors. This is where the link road project is important.

When you talk to people, such as truck drivers, most don't want to add to congestion, they would much rather drive around the city on high-quality roads.

We also need to continue exploring other options for internal travel. Invariably innovations coming up today will become common sense solutions in the future. We need more railway stations and this could also offer more options for internal travel. People might say infrastructure such as more rail, or bringing back rail along the Skipton Rail Trail, might be too costly but it might prove too costly in the future to not take these options now. There could be light-rail or driverless buses. I would also love to see us become a much more bike-friendly city. These are solutions but we need to be really prepared to give it a go.

JOHN BARNES: Speeding up the strengthening of Ballarat Planning Scheme (though I'm not sure how). The serious pursuit of at least 50 per cent of all future residential development being infill.

Council and VPA [Victorian Planning Authority] need to look at ways in which they can make it easier and quicker for infill developers to get plans and buildings approved. This might involve parcelling sites previously held under multiple titles, and inviting design proposals from developers.

Design excellence should be the minimum for the release of such land, setting clear environmental, height, delivery schedules and design innovation expectations to qualify for fast tracking approvals.

STEVE BRACKS: We need to be planning now to ensure Ballarat has water security into the future. Because we have had a few wet years, it is easy to get complacent.

Climate change means more extreme weather events. We need to ensure we are ready for another millennium type drought and able to manage extreme bushfire threats.

JUDY VERLIN: I absolutely think (the BWEZ) freight hub should be one project that is really discussed more, adapted and one we need to get happening. There is no reason why Ballarat can't be a major distributor from ports for all north and west Victoria. A rail hub is a part of that.

GERARD FITZGERALD: The airport. I would love to see us develop an airport with the same capacity as similar-sized regional cities as ours. There are lots of flights to Darwin and Launceston. We flew a VFL [Victorian Football League] team into Launceston in the early 2000s and I noticed a lot of similar culture and architecture to what we have in Ballarat. This was a regional city hosting AFL football matches and with planes flying extensively throughout Australia. It made me realise we could have AFL in Ballarat - so why not flights?

Ballarat is further from Melbourne than Avalon. It would open up lots more opportunities and economic benefits in freight for BWEZ [Ballarat West Employment Zone] where we could fly out the goods and produce we make.

I would also like us to consider how to make greater use for Victoria Park. We've got the lake, and it's magnificent, but Vic Park is a hidden resource for natural beauty and space. It could become a sporting hubs as schools continue to grow and have more issues of space. There are little fishing spots, playgrounds and people are beginning to realise how much potential is there.

We have what a lot of cities don't have - and that is space.

Where possible, I would like to see powerlines underground. They are a visual disruption on our historic streetscape and neighbourhoods. I know it is costly, but we need to be looking to invest.

JOHN BARNES: Councillors are too often making poor investment decisions without proper business cases and cost benefit modelling. Projects need to go beyond the capital cost and look at the whole-of-life costs of what is being considered.

Does it make us wealthier as a community? Does it rank higher than competing projects?

Some poor recent decisions include the Bridge Mall reopening for $17 million; refurbishment of the Civic Hall $10 million; advocating for Ballarat Station redevelopment - $43 million of public funds that fail to deliver a relocated regional bus interchange (the original motivation), no disabled access between platforms, and nothing spent on refurbishing the heritage Station buildings.

STEVE BRACKS: Ballarat is expected to be home to at least 200,000 people by 2050. The biggest problem facing Ballarat then will be shared by the rest of the world - it will be dealing with the consequences of our generation's failure to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions.

JUDY VERLIN: The fact we have such limited options to travel across the north-south and east-west corridors in the city. One of the biggest issues is moving people around. The only way we can do that is to think more about public transport and educating people to use public transport - it's not front-of-mind at the moment.

We need to make public transport easy. We need to make public transport reliable and we need to make public transport accessible, so it's in all the right place.

Public transport needs some flexibility, particularly in peak times, and responding to what the community needs.

GERARD FITZGERALD: Congestion, as already mentioned, but also education as we grow. I would like us to see us continue to support, where possible, the fact we have high quality education and high diversity in education, from pre-school to tertiary. We need to maintain access to our high quality education as we grow as a city.

The same also goes for health care in our region.

I feel we can also all play a role in retaining that sense of belonging we have as Ballarat people. When we have 200,000 people living here, we still want everyone to truly feel they are a resident of Ballarat and don't have that disconnect to community in other cities where almost mini-cities pop up. When someone buys a house in your street, how long before you invite them in for a drink or offer to take them to your sporting club? Do you offer to get that person's bin?

That sense of belonging is something we can control and do not have to lose just because we grow as a city.

JOHN BARNES: By the time Ballarat is likely to hit a population of 200,000, the Anthropocene and all the associated problems of water scarcity, wild fire risk, storm damage, environmental degradation, pandemics and species extinction will be added to our challenges. If global action fails to limit our abuse of the planet to a 1.5C rise, we may be facing the imminent extinction of Homo sapiens along with upwards of 90 per cent of all living things.

STEVE BRACKS: An ideal regional capital is a primary production, export and employment hub seamlessly connected to the nation via high-speed broadband, flawless mobile access, regular flight services and fast rail. It is a sustainable city, powered by renewable energy and using fit for purpose water. It is congestion free, has affordable housing, outstanding health and education services and a vibrant urban lifestyle and culture.

JUDY VERLIN: It has to be a dynamic service hub for regional Victoria. When we say we need people to think of us as a capital city then we have to think of what a capital city needs in housing, transport, other essential services and arts and culture.

GERARD FITZGERALD: To recognise and celebrate our history. Yes we're 'old and gold' and that's fabulous, but we need to be combining new and old and try to find balance there.

We need to retain key elements of our history so, for example, people can wander Lydiard Street and imagine what it was like in the past.

I have a vision for a sense of community, a sense of belonging and a sense of identity.

We are a country town that grew. We need to acknowledge the basis for what this community has and how we can retain this as we grow.

We can continue to have world-class facilities for education, manufacturing and as a regional sporting hub.

In sport, I would love to see greater access for players to find the highest state levels they can, in any sport, without having to find somewhere else to play. We've had connections with AFL via our VFL team and we used to have netball in state league. Sports like basketball and soccer are still doing a good job but I'd like to think players can at least reach state league level without having to go to Melbourne.

JOHN BARNES: A population confident about its future, living in a physically compact medium-rise city with great services and infrastructure, in which the well-educated, happy and healthy residents celebrate the many diverse and vibrant communities and institutions that comprise our city; where we humbly recognise our interdependence on all living things and environmental cycles; and where no one is ever left behind.

If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.