The Barangaroo precinct on Sydney Harbour has attracted its fair share of criticism in the past week after prominent architect Philip Thalis accused successive governments of betraying the original winning design for the site.
Thalis pulled no punches in a diatribe in the Sydney Morning Herald, describing "fragmented and diminished parks atop massive car parks, mean streets with no connection to the harbour, cursory cultural investment, dictated by development cartels delivering a shiny 75-storey casino hotel plonked right on the foreshore and a phalanx of bulky commercial and glassy residential towers hogging the foreshore and despoiling historic vistas".
The former City of Sydney councillor was part of the architecture team that won an international competition to design the 22-hectare site in 2006.
The team's vision included affordable housing, theatres, community buildings, event spaces, floating harbour pools and a public park covering half the land.
Suffice to say he is not a fan of what he terms a "developer-led" outcome and a "wasted opportunity".
Premier Dominic Perrottet has defended the "beauty" of Barangaroo's headland, paths and parks, which he says have replaced a "dirty concrete slab" on the waterfront.
As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
On a far less grand scale, the same arguments could be made about Newcastle's 30-year-old Honeysuckle precinct.
In some eyes, and no doubt the government's, Honeysuckle has replaced an ugly industrial area with an attractive harbourside path, a new road along the inner-city's spine, restaurants, bars, housing, offices, hotels and space for a new university campus.
To others, the area is lacking in green space, view corridors, useful connections between Hunter Street and the water, cheaper housing and a cultural life.
Government cannot be accused of ignoring a plan for Honeysuckle as there never appeared to be one.
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said last year that "carving off" Honeysuckle from the council's planning processes had led to "unfortunate" results for the city.
"That has given a very separate look and feel to Honeysuckle," Cr Nelmes said at the time.
"There is a lack of connectivity from Honeysuckle back into the city ... there needs to be focus on public open space."
History will be the judge of whether allowing developers to build a seven-storey wall of apartments close to the waterfront has been a planning success.
Perhaps the university campus and the apartments to be built on the Honeysuckle HQ site will supply the critical mass of people to "activate" the area, but the jury is still very much out.
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