The Griffins knew that. They planned grand vistas fitting for a capital city - one with ambition. The architects Walter and Marion Griffin imagined remarkable buildings fit for what would become a remarkable city.

But now we have come to this: the relatively new police station, in the centre of the national capital, needs replacing because it gets flooded. Rain was too much for it.

"The buildings need to be replaced. City Station was built in 1966. It's not fit for purpose. The watch house is not fit for purpose," the ACT's Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan told The Canberra Times.

In other words, what should have been a prominent landmark of our city needs replacing after a mere 58 years.

The great builders and planners did not think in terms of decades but centuries.

The police station is not the only building which underwhelms.

The Civic Library is tucked into a corner by the theatre.

Contrast it with the magnificent state libraries in Melbourne and Sydney which were instigated by ambitious political leaders as a testament to what they imagined their cities would become.

A mere 18 years after it was built, the City Services minister Chris Steel acknowledged the problem: "The current location does suffer from some challenges.

"It is not directly in the centre of the CBD. It is further away from where people are parking and going to shop and do other activities. It can be inconvenient to get to and actually hard to find."

It is true that the population of Canberra has expanded in recent years, so the ACT government might argue that the sorry state of some of our public buildings is merely the result of them outgrowing their original demands.

It is true, for example, that plans to expand the courts near the police station seem to be necessary because of increased use.

But the great planners and builders of the past, certainly in Sydney and Melbourne, built with an eye to an expanded future.

They knew they had to cater for growing cities.

They did not have smallness of vision. They had, rather, an ambition that civic buildings should signify a confident, ambitious city.

Our current city leaders live in different times, of course. The State Library in Victoria was built in 1856 at the height of the Gold Rush when the money was rushing into city coffers.

There is no similar flow of gold into the coffers of the ACT government.

All the same, it would be nice to see a sense of ambition and aesthetic vision. Elegant buildings which tax-payers can be proud of can still be created on limited budgets.

There may be a wider problem. City centres may have had their day as people choose to get into their cars and head for shopping centres in outlying areas like Majura Park.

In this environment, an underwhelming city centre will be hard to change.

The ACT government intends to paint the Sydney and Melbourne Buildings the same colour, and have their facades restored over the next five years.

That would be an improvement.

Whether it refreshes the heart of the city remains to be seen.

But whatever the future holds in our uncertain times, planners need to be ambitious, they need to think big even within budget constraints.

This is the nation's capital. It needs to look like it.

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Responsibility for election comment is taken by John-Paul Moloney of 121 Marcus Clarke Street, Canberra. Published by Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd.