Experts, RMIT University emeritus professor Michael Buxton and La Trobe University's Dr Kiran Shinde provide their take on Ballarat's infill development debacle

RMIT University Environment and Planning emeritus professor Michael Buxton and La Trobe University's head of planning Dr Kiran Shinde, both agree a tailored approach is what is needed to ensure both Ballarat's heritage requirements and community satisfaction are kept in tact.

Of the most recent proposals put to the City of Ballarat for high-rise buildings is for a seven-storey 104 bedroom hotel and a five-storey office space at 116-122 Lydiard Street North and 8 Mair Street, respectively, by Ballarat-based Nigro Group.

Prof. Buxton said while he shared a similar view to those expressed by Nigro Group, including the benefits infill developments could bring about, he criticised the location of their buildings.

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"There's lots of opportunities for infill development in Ballarat, there's no question about it," he said.

"But that particular development really bears no relation to the existing built heritage features of Ballarat as a city; it's too high."

Prof. Buxton was especially condemning of Ballarat council and their lack of enforcing their Making Ballarat Central strategy, which outlines height limits but only acts as a discretionary guideline, meaning it is not adopted in the planning scheme.

"Council needs to take the initiative and set the parameters; set the criteria for infill developments," he said.

"It (the parameters) needs to identify the type of location that's suitable for infill, the types of preferred design and height to ensure that the infill that occurs is consistent with heritage and meets the council's other objectives.

"The council's done a strategy but there needs to be very strong statutory support for this because unless the criteria that council develops are given statutory effect then they are next to useless."

Prof. Buxton acknowledged the challenges the city would have to endure to get such rules put in place however, said such obstacles should not deter the council from pursuing this path.

"It's very difficult to insert into a planning scheme mandatory criteria; it can be done but it takes a lot of persuading and background work for the government to agree," he said.

"So the council has a lot of work to do before it actually gains the kind of statutory criteria that will apply to better protect heritage which is the region's most important economic and amenity assets.

"But the city needs to make judgments otherwise the council will always be running behind the development industry."

He also scrutinised the council's lack of research into the suitability of various infill developments within the CBD.

"There are lots of different types of infill and the task that council has not undertaken has been to identify those different opportunities, the different types of infill and match them to the sites," Prof. Buxton said.

"For example, what are the opportunities for low rise apartments or attached townhouse developments in the central city? Where are the opportunities? Where are the appropriate locations for such developments?"

Contrastingly, Dr Shinde, although he could not comment on Ballarat specifically, said high-rise buildings in regional city centres were crucial for meeting growing housing demands.

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"In regional areas building new infrastructure is very expensive and typically, unless there is a very strong state government push or funding for infrastructure, you can't really go out too much and it completely defies the logic of intense development," he said.

"The whole idea is now we are realising that we don't need to have sprawl that we have seen in larger cities, in regional cities, when we have a fair amount of connectivity and accessibility, it makes sense to make use of that intense development which is within the center.

"Why should somebody have to go 10 kilometres outside (the city) and then struggle the next day morning to come into a bottle neck road that leads to the city? Because this is what you see in most of the new growth areas across Melbourne.

"Instead, a better solution is intensify what you already have because that means then a greater number of people are able to use the same amount of infrastructure without the added stress and strain."

Prof. Buxton. said until Ballarat council took a more proactive stance on infill development it risked falling victim to its metropolitan neighbour.

"Council has to take the initiative and get on the front and make those decisions unless it does what will happen in Ballarat is what's happened in Melbourne," Prof Buxton said.