We are on the cusp of a radical change in our city.
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Until recent years, Canberra grew predominantly on a suburban vision, with an idyllic prospect of detached homes with gardens. Single-storey houses for families on streets lined with trees typified the dream.
Certainly, the Burley Griffins envisaged grand boulevards but living would be done in more intimate, neighbourly areas.
We have already seen some change from that early vision as Canberra has literally grown in height. The apartment blocks on Northbourne Avenue may well be what smaller families and single people want but they are very different from the original suburban vision.
That change already underway is going to accelerate.
Documents prepared for the ACT government outline a need for 100,000 new dwellings in the next 40 years, just to keep up with the expected growth in population.
Given the constraints of space, these new homes will predominantly be an upward growth - in apartment blocks - rather than an outward growth in new suburbs of low-rise houses. It will be, in the jargon of the planners "urban infill" rather than more detached houses.
The best cities of apartment blocks retain a sense of neighbourliness.
The ACT government envisions that 70 per cent of the new dwellings will be within the existing urban areas.
Some of these will be lower-rise - townhouses and the like - but the sheer arithmetic of many more people within the existing space means apartment blocks.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. Many pleasant cities are predominantly apartment blocks.
But it would not be the Canberra which many of us love.
Dense living demands thought and planning otherwise it can become inhuman and nightmarish. The best cities of apartment blocks retain a sense of neighbourliness. They have local cafes, local shops and local entertainment venues. They remain human.
They are also cities which are not dependent on cars. In them, public transport is abundant and cheap.
Canberra is morphing from an intimate small city into a metropolis. If we don't think about how we retain the attractive aspects of life in this city, we risk it becoming inhuman and even unpleasant. The best of Canberra is too good to lose.
