Just as the course of true love seldom runs smooth, Canberra's quest to become the "world's coolest city" has hit a number of potholes in the past 12 months. The Australia Day Live concert was cancelled, the raffish ANU Refectory Bar is shortly to be demolished, and Cricket Australia continues to snub the ACT government requests to stage a Test match at Manuka Oval. Even the childish pleasures of rolling down the lawns of Parliament House is about to be denied us, with a fence being erected to protect MPs from the threat of terrorist attack.
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University of Canberra academic Naomi Dale believes the creativity which inspired The New York Times to extol Canberra's "big-sky beauty, breezy civic pride and a decidedly hipster underbelly" in 2014, is at threat of being squashed by "strict policies and red tape". That claim may seem at odds with the increasingly laissez faire attitude of recent Labor governments – and the reality that the National Capital Authority has been shorn of much of its power and influence. It does, however, has some substance.
The federal bureaucracy exercised dictatorial planning control over Canberra from practically its inception in 1913. The advent of self-government in 1989 saw that influence recede, but it's still readily apparent in and around the Parliamentary Triangle, where the NCA maintains a close and proprietorial interest in everything from Floriade to the location of hamburger stands and cafes. Initiatives intended to diminish the city's reputation as a backwater inhabited by dull public servants, have also been resisted by city folk themselves. It was vocal residents, for example, who brought a premature end to the annual staging of the GMC Canberra 400 Supercar race in the early 2000s.
Yet, despite the apparently in-built institutional resistance to change or innovation, Canberra's civic character has evolved considerably in the past two decades, and for the better. Some of that was by design, and some was a natural outcome of Canberra's growth. With a population approaching 400,000 people, Canberra now has the critical mass necessary to stage festivals and events of all kinds, and to offer first-class dining, accommodation and entertainment.
Not all of these events, destinations or cultural landmarks will survive, as the Refectory Bar's fate suggests. But it's likely their disappearance will be dictated by fashion and the inevitability of change rather that the dead hand of the bureaucrats that Dr Dale cited this week. And what replaces them will be as good and probably better than the original.
It's axiomatic that contemporary Canberra will never be as stylish, trendy or fashionable as some would hope. For such people, only New York, Paris or London will do. But despite its bureaucratic overhang (which arguably has prevented the kind of excesses that frequently blight other cities) Canberra is well on the way to establishing its own unique brand of cool.
