ABSTRACT
The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach has been developed as a way of rethinking the relationship between heritage and development and managing change in sustainable ways. Advocates of the HUL argue for a more flexible and integrated approach to urban conservation that recognises change and provides relevant and effective tools. Nevertheless, this view of the urban landscape as part of a continuum is open to critique as part of a modernist discourse of linear development. The natural landscape of Ballarat began developing 500 million years ago and it was through a series of massive changes caused by tectonic forces, erosion, volcanic activity, climate change and subsequent water flows that Ballarat's alluvial and deep lead gold deposits were formed. Without acceptance of the need to see Ballarat's urban landscape differently and to change practices accordingly, the HUL programme could not have attained the needed level of formal support from the elected Councillors and Council senior managers.
