"Just all of a sudden, there seems to have been an outbreak of infill [development] everywhere," said Delacombe resident Vicky Cameron*, the force behind a recent, but unsuccessful, petition to prevent planning approval of an eight-lot subdivision at 209-211 Greenhalghs Road.
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"People who live in Delacombe don't want to live on small blocks with houses packed in - we moved here for the big blocks, and we're starting to lose that. They're going to destroy the [neighbourhood] character of whole areas."
Ms Cameron, who has lived in Ballarat all her life, was referencing her unease at the unwelcome change afoot in a suburb that has long sold what was once the quintessentially Australian (but now evanescent) dream of the quarter- or half-acre block.
But she was also expressing her discomfort at the marked inevitability of such change in Delacombe, at least under the city's planning scheme as it stands.
"We didn't know developers could do this here - it was a surprise," she said. "It wouldn't hurt for council to actually notify people."
It was a sentiment shared by fellow Delacombe resident Daniel Wilson, who said he felt council had not adequately engaged with residents' objections to the proposed development, still less informed residents why developments of that kind were encouraged in Delacombe under the planning scheme.
"I understand the need for infill, but I also understand the need for larger blocks," he said. "They're opening land in Ballarat's west, so why do they force [these proposals] on existing developments in outer suburbs?"
"There's no consistency in council's approach to infill development."
The truth is few residents would be able to cite the planning zone they live in with any degree of confidence, much less know whether it's within the discretion of council to reject development proposals that elicit community opposition but nevertheless correspond with the objectives of the zone.
This isn't surprising; after all, urban planning, to most minds, prompts the same miasma of irrelevance and endless boredom as Homeric poetry.
"Normally, the first time people encounter planning regulations is when there's a high density development going on over their fence," said City of Ballarat mayor Daniel Moloney. "There's simply no other reason for people to bother investigating these things."
And while true, it's plainly something apt to conceal the reality that future medium to high-density infill development is not something confined to Delacombe, as Wendouree residents along Park St recently learned.
It's conversely a spectre which looms large over any area in Ballarat currently zoned residential growth or general residential - which, with respect to the latter, is close to all suburbs in Ballarat.
Cr Moloney said the "stark lack of community understanding" around this disclosed a failure to properly engage with residents on the broader question of the city's urban future.
"We looked for community engagement around the housing strategy last year, but it's just not a document most people are going to read," he said.
"The problem is we keep on having individual planning applications come forward, which are quite confronting to residents because it's all occurring in a vacuum of not having a vision of what the city should be."
Cr Moloney added that this, in turn, threw into sharp relief the absence of any shared understanding as to the precise role infill development should play in Ballarat's future, at least beyond council's lofty (and unmet) ambition of a 50-50 split between infill and greenfield development to meet housing supply.
"The truth is we haven't had that debate around the degrees of concentration we want to have in each of our suburbs," he said, noting that this airlessness, in part, owed to the failure of state government to provide a consistent population policy.
Speaking in his capacity as Regional Capitals Australia chair, Cr Moloney said, "all we've got is a fairly blanket requirement from the state government to provide 10 years of housing supply", with neither state nor federal government acknowledging that not all regional cities welcome the drumbeat of continued, unabated growth.
"It'd be much better to have that clear understanding as to how many people you want to have in Ballarat over the coming decades, and then once you've got that, match that to housing supply," he said.
"As it is, if we don't have [that 10 years of housing supply] available, the planning minister can - with a stroke of a pen - allow developments in places we don't necessarily want them."
HAVE YOUR SAY BELOW: where should infill development be concentrated, should population growth be curbed and should council amend its planning scheme?
The city's planning scheme, which gives content to the planning zones and their interpretation, is underpinned by both the Victorian planning policy and council's local planning framework.
The latter, it bears emphasising, is informed by several key documents developed by council, such as the housing and neighbourhood character strategies and the Ballarat Strategy 2040 (released in 2016), which identify aspirations like the '10-minute city' and 'urban renewal precincts'.
By design, the overarching vision that council's planning strategies give rise to should afford council some leeway to set general limits or controls around the city's urban future.
But because council has not taken the next step, which is to introduce a schedule to the planning scheme - detailing, for instance, where infill development should be concentrated - its discretion to control planning outcomes is, in reality, severely constrained.
This, says Cr Mark Harris, is a gambit which, over time, has only benefited developers, frustrating both councillors and residents alike.
"As council, we've got to review the planning scheme by refreshing our strategic documents, because while their underlying intent is fine, the way they manifest in policy has been fundamentally poor," he said.
"When you've got individual planning applications regularly called to the chamber, it means we haven't got our [planning] settings right, and if we haven't got our settings right, it means councillors need to have a good, hard look at what they want out of future development.
"The general feeling from council is that we're not achieving the right outcomes for our residents."
Through changes to local planning policy and the introduction of a schedule, Cr Harris said it was within the power of council to designate areas better suited to infill development as well as potentially set limits on population growth.
"It's going to be taxing, but the best we can do for our community is develop some solid policy around a renewed Ballarat Strategy and then, armed with that, we've got our best chance of getting sensible outcomes when we come up against state government legislation," he said.
"At least then we've got community on side."
His was not a lone voice, with councillors Ben Taylor, Belinda Coates, Amy Johnson, Peter Eddy and Moloney echoing his call for a more substantial conversation about zoning and planning reform at council's delegated planning commitee on Wednesday evening.
"As council we need to discuss where in our city these types of zones are located [because] there are other areas in the city that are more suited to that rapid growth with higher density," Cr Johnson said.
To similar effect was Cr Taylor, who said, "the only thing we can do as council is look at review of the planning scheme".
Emerging from that debate was a view that higher density residential development should be concentrated in Ballarat's CBD; not - as it currently is - sprinkled in an arbitrary fashion across any established suburb, including those on the urban fringe.
"We're not some far-flung western suburb of Melbourne," Cr Harris said.
"We have a cultural and geographic centre in Ballarat which we all viscerally know and we want development at scale there. But if you start your more intense development in the periphery of Ballarat, you're in great danger of producing poor outcomes.
"We can't sacrifice everything to the virtue of allowing increased density anywhere."
It's a sentiment strongly shared by Cr Moloney who - in views similar to those aired by Ms Cameron - said the city was on the precipice of losing what makes it a unique and desirable place to live.
"It's better to be masters of our own density," he said.
"We should talk about areas we want to grow and don't want to grow - unless we do that, we risk losing what we love about Ballarat."
Council is due to release revised draft housing and neighbourhood character strategies for community engagement in the coming months.
*Surname changed.
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