Historic Urban Landscapes in Ballarat

22 May 2015

In conjunction with the City of Ballarat, the Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) at Federation University has developed the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Ballarat web portal. This web portal is part of the strategies developed for Ballarat, as a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Historic Urban Landscape Global project, to ensure growth continues to retain the character of the landscape and recognise its cultural significance.

The HUL Ballarat pilot program has a clear vision for equitable and sustainable change through an understanding of historic cities as layered and interrelated cultural landscapes by linking disciplines and involving collaborations with the community through facilitated discussion - and examining existing perceptions of change through exploration and innovation.

CeRDI have been instrumental in supporting HUL Ballarat's goals and developing a website and mapping portal to explore Ballarat's urban landscape using sophisticated visual tools. The HUL Ballarat web portal enables users to easily access authoritative and credible heritage information and the ability to share in the vision of the HUL program through knowledge management and planning tools that engage the community and create an awareness and understanding of the urban landscape and its cultural significance.

The web portal was presented at the HUL Symposium at Ballarat's Mechanics Institute and launched at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in February 2015. The launch completed the first stage of the web portal which was conceptualised in the Visualising Ballarat vision paper. Planning for stage two of the HUL Ballarat web portal is currently underway.