The decision to buy back and demolish the 1000-plus homes on the fated list was brave and thousands of people are still dealing with the ramifications.

There are many issues that the affected home owners are grappling with and so too are the communities around them.

Just one of these is what our suburbs will look like when the Mr Fluffy homes are razed and new residences spring up across the city.

The ACT government needs to explain what it is trying to achieve, from a planning perspective, as it replaces these homes.

There is clear confusion in Canberra over what buildings will be permitted, and understandable concern from residents that their suburbs will change forever.

This is particularly the case for those areas where Mr Fluffy visited a handful of homes on one street or every second residence in a cul-de-sac.

The former president of the Yarralumla Residents Association is right to question the Planning Minister, Mick Gentleman, over the murky rules tabled in the Legislative Assembly earlier this month.

With such a drastic rebuilding of suburbs across the ACT, residents need to be confident that replacement homes are designed in such as way as to fit their suburb's character.

Clear rules will give builders, developers, architects and planners the confidence they need to build what is best for each site.

Even before the Mr Fluffy crisis, there were sensitivities in Canberra's older suburbs about established properties being replaced by newer homes that did not necessarily "fit" the area.

The criticism against the government's understating of the opportunities to build two-storey homes is just the latest complaint.

The government needs to provide further clarity to Canberrans over the future of their streetscapes.