Several types of venture fall under the pop-up umbrella: events, businesses developed within existing structures (often abandoned or empty) and structures built specifically to be cafes, shops and business incubators. All are nominally created to reinvigorate unused spaces. However, more is going on behind the scenes of these venues than first appears, belying their seeming spontaneity.

In the ACT, the meeting ground of government departments and bright young creatives can become a quagmire, an example being the well-publicised difficulties Sancho Murphy and Pat Rose faced when trying to prepare for patronage The Chop Shop in Braddon a crowd-funded mechanics garage turned art space and music venue. After repeated false starts, safety clearances and meetings with the ACT Planning and Land Authority, it is now thriving, but Murphy believes there is a need to create a friendlier, more streamlined process for aspiring entrepreneurs and artists.

While safety needs to be considered, she says, excessively strict building codes and classifications, as well as the difficulty obtaining information and support for those with less capital, but she remains "hopeful that it will change".

Yolande Norris, former director of the You Are Here festival, echoes the sentiment that red tape can strangle young creative endeavour. Often "offices are disconnected from the realities" of arts spaces and "it would be nice if cultural activity and the people regulating it could work together", she says.

Murphy is more blunt, saying there are "too many people in suits who don't understand the movement, but are given the power", adding that the government only seems to "fund pop-ups that fit in with their city planning".

Many of these issues seem inevitable when a left-of-field idea is planted in a planned city such as Canberra. "Regulations don't foresee this form of structure, which is in a new place between temporary and permanent," says Terry Shaw, spokesman for the Stomping Ground Collective, which is behind the Westside precinct currently under construction in Acton.

However, he is much more positive about the collective's interactions with government, saying that when its idea of a pop-up precinct of shipping containers to the ACT government, the government thought it was a "fantastic idea" and immediately supported it, because it would "activate the West Basin". He hopes Westside will "generate culture, activity and vibe" and says the structure is designed to be easily disassembled and moved around.

Not all are fans of the idea of pop-ups, however. Dan Hancox writes in Vice Britain that they are a "lunge to inject coolness and spontaneity into consumerism", distract from the need to have permanent artist spaces, fetishise ruin and encourage collusion between developers and councils in gentrifying areas, who need a trendy veneer for their skulduggery. It is a different cultural context perhaps, but an example nonetheless of how the places where we shop and dine exist on a contentious and shifting cultural battleground.

Only time will tell if such spaces are allowed to develop in a way that is both government-supported and free flowing, and what direction the pop-up movement will take. As Murphy says, "a movement is only as strong as its proponents".

Omar Musa is the author of Here Come the Dogs.

Weekly Panorama columnist Chris Wallace is away.